Melnyk Oleksandra, Kharchenko (Melnyk) Taisiia, Melnyk Viktor

Oleksandra Melnyk lived in the village of Vydoshnia in Khmelnytskyi region. In the 1930s, her husband was deported to Siberia. She was left with four small children. Personal troubles in life taught her to be compassionate and help those who are in trouble.

In December 1941, after hearing from acquaintances about the extermination of Jews in one of the ghettos of Proskuriv (current Khmelnytskyi), the woman went to the city together with her older children to find out about the fate of her daughter's school friend Sonia Bershtein and her mother Faina. The Melnyk family offered the Jews women to move to their village as long as the situation remained so tense.

During the next 11 months, mother and daughter hid in Oleksandra's house. In order to feed her wards, she took orders for sewing and mending clothes, and Faina helped her with that work.

At the beginning of 1942, Faina's sister Pola Kraizman turned to the Melnyky family for help. She and her three children escaped from the ghetto of Zinkiv and sought refuge. Oleksandra helped a Jewish woman get documents for a Ukrainian surname, with which she got a job on a collective farm.

In Proskuriv, the ghetto was liquidated on November 30, 1942. On that day, the occupiers shot about 5 thousand Jews. Jews from the city's labor camp were also shot on December 7 and 8. Raids and searches among the local population became more frequent. Oleksandra negotiated with two reliable people who agreed to ferry Faina and Sonia to Romanian-controlled territory. Everything planned was successful, and the Berstein family settled in the ghetto of Mohyliv-Podilskyi, where they waited for the expulsion of the occupying forces in the spring of 1944. In addition, the Melnyk family helped the Jewish families of Lakhman, Hroisberh, Dytynskyi and Lopatyn to reach Transnistria.

In 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Oleksandra Melnyk and her children Taisiia Kharchenko and Victor Melnyk as Righteous Among the Nations.