Tsven Taras and Vasylyna

Taras Tsven with his wife Vasylyuna lived in the village Сanava, Vinnytsia region.

Since the XIXth century, there were manufactures in the village and Jews held a dam on the Buh River. So Ukrainians and Jews lived here for a long time before the disasters of the XXth century.

In 1930s Taras Tsven met Yudko Urman. Yudko was a glazier from the city of Nemyriv and he was traveling local villages in search of a job. He used to stay in Tsven’s house then. Taras and Vasylyna used to stay in Yudko house visiting Nemyriv.  

In the summer of 1941 German forces occupied Nemyriv. The family of Urman went to the ghetto. Yudko managed to escape from there only in November of 1941, after the first Nazi action of massive extermination. He also got to the Tsven’s house, where they made a plan for rescuing the Urman’s family.

According to that plan, in December of 1941, Taras Tsven went to the city of Nemyriv on the cart filled with hay. He managed to hide Yudko, his wife, and their three children under the hay. Taras removed them from the ghetto to his house. Taras and Vasylyna were hiding them for more than two years. For all this time, Yudko and his family used the shelters on the attic or in the cellar.

Taras and Vasylyna were deeply believing Christians, so they always shared their food and clothes with Urmans. Tsvens got huge support from their older son Ivan.  Also, after the days of hard labor on the local fields, Ivan was returning home with books and games for the Urman’s children. In this way, he tried to encourage them.

In 1943 Soviet partisans become more active than before, so Germans were checking and searching peasant’s houses more often. Because of this fact, Taras decided to remove the family of Urman to the territories under the Romanian control 15 kilometers away from their village.

In the spring of 1944 German and Romanian forces abandoned this region. Now Urmans got a chance to return to their native city of Nemyriv. Families of Urmans and Tsvens were friendly for decades after the end of the war.

In October of 1996, Yad Vashem gave the Righteous Among the Nations award for Vasylyna and Taras Tsvens.