Levchuk Yuzefa, Pareniuk (Levchuk) Mariia

Yuzefa Levchuk lived with her 17-year-old daughter Mariia in the village of Vrublivka in the vicinity of the village of Romaniv (at that time – Dzerzhynsk township), Zhytomyr region. She was a widow, earned a living by cleaning and washing clothes. Sometimes she took care of babies and young children in the families of Jews. Among her pupils were the three children of Fania and Mekhla Sherman.

At the beginning of July 1941, the region was occupied by German troops. The Nazis began to persecute the local Jewish community. The first action of destruction took place a month after the arrival of Wehrmacht units. On August 25, 1941, the Nazis shot more than 600 people. The search for surviving Jewish families continued. Rumors about the murder of Jews reached Yuzefa more and more often. After some time, a woman with a little girl in her arms appeared in the village of Vrublivka and knocked on her house. The hostess barely recognized her as Fania Sherman. An acquaintance said that she miraculously escaped from the district center a day before the second extermination campaign (it was carried out on October 25). According to the fugitive, husband and daughter Hisia were killed even earlier – in August. Brukha, the eldest daughter, was in Kyiv when the Germans invaded Ukraine, so Fania does not know anything about her fate. The fugitive asked Yuzefa to look after two-year-old Adelia while she herself found a more reliable hiding place with someone she knew, but she never returned. The next day, Yuzefa took the girl and went to the village in search of Fania. She met Jewish artisans with whom she had spoken before; and who still lived there with their families. They cried when they heard Yuzefa's story and begged her to take the child to her, which the woman did.

Throughout the entire German occupation, Yuzefa Levchuk and her daughter hid the girl and forbade her to leave the house. However, Adelia was a lively child, and soon the neighbors learned about her presence. When the occupiers began to wonder who this child was, Mariia spread rumors that it was her illegitimate daughter. The birth of an illegitimate child was perceived among the villagers as a great shame for a girl, and the Levchuk family saw no other way to protect their little ward.

Adelia stayed with them for a long time after the war, because no one from her family survived. The Levchuk family loved their ward as their own, but they never hid the truth from her. After finishing school, Adelia moved to Vinnytsia, got married, and in the 1990s emigrated with her family to Israel. However, even while there, she continued communicating with rescuers. At her request, in 2002, Yuzefa Levchuk and her daughter Mariia Pareniuk (Levchuk) were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

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