Vashchyshyn Mykhailo, Hanna and Stepan

Mykhailo Vashchyshyn lived with his wife Hanna and children in the village of Chistyliv near Ternopil. At the beginning of July 1941, German troops occupied the region and immediately began to implement the "new order", the main focus of which was on the Jewish population. Already in September 1941, the Ternopil ghetto was created, the prisoners of which were Jews from the regional center and surrounding villages. Later, a forced labor camp was organized on the outskirts of the city, where all able-bodied men of Jewish nationality were taken. One of the tasks his prisoners were sent to was to dismantle the tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery and pave the road with them. Later, the Nazis began to liquidate the camps and ghettos and exterminate the slaves.

Sometime in the fall of 1943, while harvesting, Mykhailo Vashchyshyn and his eldest son Stepan met an unfamiliar Jewish young man in the field. Calling himself Martsel Ravych, he said that on the eve of the war, he and his parents had moved from Poland to Ternopil. The years of German occupation were tragic for his family. In the Nazi ghetto, the boy lost both his parents and many relatives, and he himself survived only because, along with some others Jews, was transferred to a labor camp near the village of Chistyliv. A few days before this meeting, Martsel and several of his tribesmen learned that soon the camp would be liquidated with all the prisoners, and decided to escape.

At first, the fugitives hid in the forests, but hunger forced them to go to the village in search of food. Mykhailo Vashchyshyn and his son Stepan saw that Martsel was on the verge of physical exhaustion, so they first fed him and gave him food for the road. However, due to the heavy rain that fell that evening, Mykhailo and Stepan did not say goodbye to their new acquaintance – instead, they took him to their home. The men prepared a shelter for Martsel under a haystack. Inconspicuous to the prying eyes, the hiding place became the young man's home for more than half a year. He left the shelter only after the German troops retreated from that territory in mid-April 1944. Mykhailo and Stepan Vashchyshyn brought food to their ward and tried to provide him with everything he needed. At first, they did not want to tell Hanna about it, but when she found Martsel in the barn, she supported her husband and son in their intention to save the Jewish young man and began to help them.

After the expulsion of Hitler's troops, Martsel Ravych returned to the city of Ternopil, in 1946 he moved to Poland and from there to Venezuela. For many post-war years, he and the Vashchyshyn family kept in touch and corresponded. In 1997, Mykhailo, Hanna Vashchyshyn and their son Stepan were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

/