Melnichuk Mikhail & Yelizaveta

Melnichuk, Mikhail Melnichuk, Yelizaveta Mikhail and Yelizaveta Melnichuk, farmers, lived on an isolated khutor near the village of Warkowicze, district of Wołyń (today Varkovychi, Rivne District). They were well acquainted with Dr. Leon Scheuer, the head of the local village clinic. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, fierce battles took place in Dubno. Wounded Soviet soldiers were brought to the clinic in Warkowicze, and as a result Scheuer couldn’t escape to the east. The German army conquered the area on June 25, 1941. Initially, Scheuer was permitted to continue with his practice but in October 1942, all of the Jews still living in the village were ordered to move to the Dubno ghetto. Scheuer fled to the forest in the hope of joining the partisans. By the end of the month, when he was on the verge of physically collapsing, he met a woman from Warkowicze, who brought him to her brother, Mikhail Melnichuk. Melnichuk and his wife, Yelizaveta, were now offered the chance to repay Scheuer for successfully treating Melnichuk when he had been seriously ill, and they hid the Jewish doctor at first in their attic, and later in a hideaway underneath the kitchen floor. Scheuer hid in the deep, narrow dugout for about 17 months, until the liberation of the area, in March 1944. Throughout his time in hiding, Scheuer’s only source of light and air was a small hole above his head, through which the Melnichuks passed his food and took his waste. No one knew that the Melnichuks were hiding a Jew, not even their young daughter who lived with them. After the war, Scheuer left the Soviet Union and eventually settled in Berlin, from where he corresponded with the Melnichuks. On May 3, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Mikhail and Yelizaveta Melnichuk as Righteous Among the Nations.