Khmeliuk Nadiia

Nadiia Khmeliuk lived in the village of Sadkivtsi in Vinnytsia region. She worked in a local collective farm, raised twin children. During the German-Soviet war, the village came under Romanian rule. Jews from Bessarabia were brought to the collective farm for forced fieldwork, and Nadiia befriended Rakhil Bortnyk. The Jewish woman said that she is here with her eight-year-old daughter Bella and sister Ryvka, and her husband died during deportation from the Moldavian city of Yedyntsi. Nadiia sympathized with her friend: she too had not heard from her husband from the front for a long time. Sometimes she took little Bella to her house to bathe and feed her. In mid-March 1944, during the retreat of the German and Romanian troops, the Jews were brutally persecuted. Looking for salvation, Rakhil ran to her Ukrainian friend. Nadiia mourned the loss of one of her twin sons: the boy died unexpectedly. The hostess hid all three Jewish women in the closet and pressed the table against the door, on which she placed the coffin with the child's body. The occupants, breaking into the house and looking around the room, refused to search. Therefore, Nadiia, mourning the death of her son, saved the lives of three Jews.

After the war, Rakhil and her family returned to Yedyntsa. And a few years later, Nadiia with her husband, son and daughter moved there to live and looked for the Bortnyk family. The rescuers and the rescued maintained friendly ties throughout their lives. In the 1990s, Bella Schwartsman (Bortnyk) emigrated to Israel.

In 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Nadiia Khmeliuk as the Righteous Among the Nations.

/