Duda Nikita & Daria

DUDA, Nikita DUDA, Daria Meir (b. 1913) and Rachel (b. 1913) Perlmutter lived with their two daughter Chesia (b. 1935) and Rivka (b. 1940) in the village of Schehedrogor, in the Wohlyn district of Ukraine. In June 1941, their village was occupied by the Germans. They managed to stay in their home until the end of August 1942, when the nearby Ratno ghetto was liquidated. As part of the same roundup local police searched the villages for Jews. The Perlmutter family fled into the forest. As she fled the Germans fired at them; Rachel was wounded and several members of their extended family were killed. The family stayed in the forest for days or weeks, the exact duration is unclear. One day Meir and Rachel returned from an attempt to acquire food to discover the bodies of their daughters, who had been brutally murdered. After burying their children, the parents resolved to leave the forest and return to their village. Without notifying anyone they hid in the granary of the Dudas, a Baptist farming family who were respected as reasonable people. The next morning when they were discovered, Nikita Duda did not denounce them. On the contrary, he allowed them to stay there for as long as they needed; they ended up spending an entire year there. Nikita and Daria Duda, as well as the older of their ten children, managed to keep the Perlmutter’s presence a secret the entire time. One evening while hiding, the Perlmutters encountered a familiar face. Yaakov Garbow was an acquaintance of theirs from before the war. Needing a place to spend the night, he happened upon the Dudas’ granary as well. In the fall of 1943, the Perlmutters left their hiding place to join the Soviet partisans. They merited seeing their town liberated from the Germans in March 1944. Meir joined the Red Army and was killed at the front, he never knew his daughter Natalia, born in June of that year. After the war Rachel married Avraham Weiner, a survivor who lost his wife and six children inthe war; Avraham’s murdered wife was Rachel’s sister. They settled in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk and together had two children. They remained in close contact with the Duda family until emigrating to Poland in 1975 and to Israel three years later, after which time they exchanged letters periodically. On 3 May, 2011, Nikita and Daria Duda were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.