Kozak Ivan and Paulina, Kaprotska Anelia

Ivan and Paulina Kozak and their three children lived in the village of Trybukhivtsi in Ternopil region. The family was not very wealthy, but during the German occupation of the region, it provided shelter to the persecuted Jews from the town of Buchach.

The Jewish family of Hersh and Pnina Hriffel with their daughters Dvora and Aliza and Pnina's mother, Hinda Shvarts, lived in Buchach before the war. She had a small grocery store. With the arrival of Hitler's authorities, the Hriffel family stayed in their house, and from 1942, it was within the ghetto. Having survived several mass shootings of Buchach Jews in February and April 1943, they fled to the nearby town of Chortkiv, where Hersh's relatives lived. However, even there, being settled in the ghetto, found its liquidation in June 1943. Hersh had small savings and bribed a guard. Therefore, the family with children managed to escape. Tired and hungry, the Jews wandered from village to village, slept in the fields and begged the peasants for food. A Jewish woman named Drescher and her daughter wandered along with the Hriffel family, so there were seven of them together.

In desperation, Pnina knocked on the door of a small house on the outskirts of the village and asked: “Who is there?” – answered: “Unfortunate souls”. Paulina Kozak opened the door; she let the whole group of visitors into the house. The mistress first fed the fugitives, and then they asked to hide them. The members of Kozak family were pious people, so they decided not to leave their neighbors and children to fend for themselves and set about setting up a hiding place.

However, within a few months, roundups of Jews began in the village. The couple was worried, because three children of their own who could have suffered. Ivan suggested that the Jews be separated: Pnina with little Aliza and grandmother Hinda were sent to one of Ivan's brothers, and Hersh and her eldest daughter were sent to Paulina's brother Mykhailo. The Jewish woman Drescher and her daughter went to seek shelter in the village, but soon the Kozak family learned that she had been captured and shot. The Hriffel family stayed in village of Trybuhivtsi until December 1943, and then decided to return to Buchach. There they found shelter with a local resident, Anelia Kaprotska and stayed with her until the end of the occupation of the region in March 1944.

Over the next few years, the Hriffel family maintained ties with the Kozak family. Dvora and Aliza often visited the Ukrainian family, because they managed to make friends with the children of Paulina and Ivan. Later, the Jews learned that the Soviet authorities had deported the Kozak family to Siberia and no one heard from them again. In 1948, the Hriffel family emigrated to Israel, but always remembered their saviors.

In 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Anelia Kaprotska as the Righteous Among the Nations, and in 2012, Ivan and Paulina Kozak were also awarded this title.