Korneliuk Ivan, Hanna and Heorhii, Radaieva (Korneliuk) Halyna

Ivan and Hanna Korneliuk lived in the town of Izyaslav in the Khmelnytskyi region with their teenage children, Heorhii and Halyna. The man worked at the railway station. On July 5, 1941, the settlement was occupied by German troops. The next day, during his shift, Ivan met Olena Heidelberh. The woman with her two-year-old son Volodymyr did not have time to evacuate and wandered around the station confused. Ivan invited her and the child to his home in the hope that in a few days the trains would resume. However, the situation only got more complicated. The occupiers killed several hundred local Jews already at the beginning of August; the rest ones were placed in a ghetto organized in the old part of the city. Roundups began, and the Korneliuk family were forced to hide Olena and her son in the attic and in the cellar.

After the first mass extermination of Jews at the end of August, Ivan's neighbor Maksym Bondarenko asked him to shelter his Jewish wife Frida Sverdlyk, who was well known in the city, in his house. For several weeks, Frida and her son Zhora were hiding with the Korneliuk family. Hanna agreed with the local priest and organized the christening for the baby, becoming his godmother. At the end of the year, Frida, together with her husband and son, was able to leave the city and settle in a safe place. Olena Heidelberh together with Volodia remained under the care of a Ukrainian family until the end of the occupation.

In 1943, the Korneliuks' son, 18-year-old Heorhii, joined the partisan unit, learned and passed on information about possible roundups to the family. With the approach of the front to Khmelnytskyi region, he convinced his relatives to leave home and wait out active hostilities outside the city. After the expulsion of the Nazis from the town of Iziaslav, Olena Heidelberh and her son remained to live in the Korneliuk family for a few months, because her home was completely destroyed. Later, she emigrated to Israel with her son.

In 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Ivan and Hanna Korneliuk and their children Heorhii Korneliuk and Halyna Radaieva (Korneliuk) as Righteous Among the Nations.

/