Ivan and Seraphyma Yatsuk

The story of the couple Ivan and Seraphyma Yatsuk is an example of the fact that among Ukrainians, regardless of religion, during the war were ready to help the persecuted. Ivan and Seraphyma lived in the village of Pidhaytsi, Lutsk district, Volyn region.

Since the Middle Ages, this region has been distinguished by its confessional diversity. In the city of Lutsk and its environs lived believers of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, there was a large Jewish community, and from the end of the XIX century, representatives of evangelical and baptist denominations began to move to Volyn.

The city was occupied by Wehrmacht units in the evening of June 25, 1941, and the first anti-Jewish actions began almost immediately after the occupation. Soon a pogrom organized by the German administration swept through the city. The reason for this was the accusation of Jews of mass shootings of prisoners in the city prison, carried out by NKVD forces shortly before German troops entered the city. At the beginning of July, Sonderkommando 4a organized shooting rallies, as a result of which about 1,500 Jews were killed in Lubart's castle.

By the end of 1941, the Nazis organized a labor camp and ghetto, where Jews were taken from the city. The liquidation of the Lutsk ghetto took place on August 19-23, 1942: about 17,000 Jewish prisoners were shot near the former sugar factory, near the village of Horodyshche. Only a few members of the large Jewish community managed to escape to the surrounding forests and villages. Among them was Davyd Prinzental. In 1943  Ivan Yatsuk met him in the village of  Pidhaytsi and, learning that the young man in front of him was a Jew, invited him home. Ivan and his wife Seraphyma belonged to the Baptist community of the village, which the rest of the population, mostly Orthodox, distrusted.

 As consistent adherents of their denomination, the Yatsuks considered it an honor to hide a Jew or otherwise help him, and they often mentioned him in their prayers and prayed to God for the salvation of the Jews. Until the liberation of the region from Nazi occupation, Davyd Prinzental and some other Jews found temporary shelter with the Yatsuk family or their neighbors.

During the postwar years, Davyd moved to Israel, later headed the editorial board of the annual publication "Jews of the USSR" and continued correspondence with Ivan and Seraphyma Yatsuk for a long time.

Ivan Yatsuk died at the age of  102. On September 13, 1983, he and his wife were awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations."