Romaniuk Daniil & Maria

ROMANIUK, Daniil ROMANIUK, Maria In late 1942 two Ukrainian girls found a three-year-old child in a field near the khutor of Malyi Gai. She had sugar and a slice of bread in her pocket, and was crying for her mother. One of the girls, Anna, brought her home to her parents, Daniil and Maria Romaniuk. From her dark complexion and speech (she spoke only Yiddish), the family immediately realized she was Jewish. Anna begged her parents, who already had five children, to let the girl stay with them. They agreed, and the girl, who they named Vera, quickly became part of the household. She became attached to her new parents, learned to speak Ukrainian, and knew to hide whenever strangers came to the door. The Romaniuks’ neighbors and extended family knew that the girl they were hiding was Jewish, but they all kept the secret. On a visit, a relative of the Romaniuks, Aleksandra Kukharuk, saw the girl and recognized her as Bronia, the daughter of Avraham and Chaya-Leah Rudman, who had lived in nearby Radziwillow, where the Jewish ghetto had been liquidated in October 1942. Vera/Bronia stayed with the Romaniuks until the Soviet liberation in March 1944 and for at least a year afterward. Meanwhile, the fortunes of the Romaniuks took a tragic turn; a land mine exploded, seriously wounding the family’s two oldest sons, Mikhail and Vasili. Mikhail passed away the following day, and Vasili was incapacitated. Without the boys, the farm’s upkeep became difficult, and the family was on brink of starvation. During this period, on a trip to Radziwillow to buy medicine, Maria Romaniuk mentioned the story of her Jewish child to two Jewish women who she met at the pharmacy. When the women heard who the child’s parents were, they told her that she had a surviving uncle who would certainly want to meet her and that she should bring the child to them. Maria left her in the care of one of the women, Zelda Skurko, and frequently visited Bronia, and at one point nearly took her backbecause Bronia cried so bitterly whenever they parted. At the end of 1945 Radziwillow’s remaining Jewish population, some 50 people, emigrated to Poland. Zelda informed Maria that due to Bronia’s poor health, she would not be able to return to the Ukraine. There are conflicting accounts of who brought Bronia to Poland, but regardless, due to her poor health she ended up in a Krakow orphanage. She made aliyah in the late 1950s, and remembered very little of her war years. In recent years, Bronia’s son searched for details about his mother’s experience, a search which led to the Romaniuk family. In September 2011, Bronia, accompanied by her children, returned to Radziwillow to reunite with Anna Kukharuk, who had been the first recognize her true identity. On 8 November, 2011, Daniil and Maria Romaniuk were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.