Tyshkovets Semen, Zinaida, Pylyp, Andrii, Maksym, Hanna and Ustyna

Semen Tyshkovets (born in 1899) with his wife Zinaida (born in 1897) and children Pylyp (born in 1926), Andrii (born in 1928), Maksym (born in 1930), Hanna (born in 1931) and Ustyna (born in 1923) lived in the village of Karasyn (current Rivne Region) near the forest. They sheltered five Jews and helped them survive – Yudka (Yehuda), Miriam and Isaak (Petro) Kratsman-Bodniuk, Hitl (Tova) Kratsman-Bodniuk (Belohuski) and Naftali (Tolia) Perelman.

On the eve of the Second World War, the Jewish family of Kratsman-Bodniuk lived in the same village of Karasyn. Miriam was a seamstress, so she knew most of the villagers including the families of Tyshkovets and Kuryshko.

After the occupation of the Rivne Region (and Volhynia before this), the Germans gathered all the Jews from Karasyn village and the area to the Dubrovytsia ghetto. In August of 1942 the extermination of the prisoners started.

Yehuda Kratsman-Bodniuk with his wife Miriam, two daughters – 11-year-old Hitl and 8-year-old Nekhama, and 6-months-old son Isaak, born in the ghetto, ran to the forest. During escape Nekhama was killed. Others managed to hid. After long wandering around the forest and the nearby villages, the Kratsman-Bodniuk family got to the Tyshkovets house.

Semen Tyshkovets agreed to help Yehuda and his family survive in the forest near his farm. Zinaida Tyshkovets with her daughters Hanna and Ustyna cooked the food for the escapees, and sons Pylyp, Andrii and Maksym brought it to the wood.

The former neighbors in the Karasyn village – Ivan and Ulyta Kuryshko with four of their children – also helped the Kratsman-Bodniuk family. In the fall of 1943, another Jew came to the Tyshkovets house from the Dubrovytsia ghetto – Naftali (Tolia) Perelman, the smith’s son. They helped the boy as well.

In the fall and winter the two families harboured the Jews in their houses despite the danger of the regular raids of the Germans and their auxiliaries. The Jewish escapees helped their rescuers with housekeeping. Miriam made the clothes for everyone.

All they stayed alive until the expulsion of the Wehrmacht by the Red Army from the Rivne Region in January 1944. Then the Jews went to live in the town of Sarny. There was no danger of extermination by the Nazis anymore. However, their rescuers got in danger. The Tyshkovets family had to move to the town to save their lives. They found shelter in the Kratsman-Bodniuk family, while Ustyna’s husband Talymon was killed by the bandits.

In 1947 the Kratsman-Bodniuk family moved to Poland, then to Palestine under the British mandate. The saviors and the rescued people stayed in contact for many years.

On January 15, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Semen and Zinaida Tyshkovets, their children Pylyp, Hanna, Ustyna, Andrii and Maksym as the Righteous Among the Nations.