Yermochenko Mariia, Pavlenko Khrystyna

Mariia and Hryhorii Yermochenko lived in the village of Tryfonivka (now within the Kherson region) in the Mykolaiv region. The couple had six children: Hanna, Mariia, Ahafiia, Olha, Ivan, and Volodymyr. In June 1941. Hryhorii was drafted into the army. He fell in action in 1942 in the Kharkiv region.

Once in the evening at the end of October 1941, Mariia's neighbor, the widow Sekleta Shyaniuk, knocked on her door and asked for help. She had four sons at the front, and the other day her daughter Valentyna unexpectedly returned from Kryvyi Rih with her children, seven-year-old Liusia and four-year-old Shuryk. Before the war, Valentyna married a Jewish man, Khaim Schneiderman. Her husband was in the army, while the persecution of Jews began in their town. Therefore, to save her children, she moved to her mother's house. As almost everyone in the village knew that Valentyna's daughter and son were half-Jewish, Seleta was afraid to leave her grandchildren at home and asked her neighbor for help.

Mariia agreed to take in Liusia, and the youngest Shurik was hidden at the house of another neighbor, Khrystyna Pavlenko, who was also a mother of six. Valentyna herself stayed with her mother Sekleta, as she was about to give birth.

Mariia and Khrystyna's children looked after their new brother and sister, and they were warned that the children must not go outside the gate and that their presence should be kept in secret from the village elder and especially from the local policeman Afanasii, who was known for his hostility toward Jews.

On November 8, 1941, Valentyna Schneiderman gave birth to a girl in the basement of her parents' house, and named her Svitlana. The woman was so overwhelmed with the circumstances in which she found herself that the Selekta did not dare to send her and her baby to strangers. Until the Nazis were expelled from the village in March 1944, Valentyna lived with her mother, keeping her daughter's birth secret.

After the war, Khaim Schneiderman returned from the front, and the family moved to Kryvyi Rih. They stayed friends with their rescuers throughout their lives. In the 1990s, Oleksandr Schneiderman (Shuryk) emigrated with his family to Israel.

In 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Mariia Yermochenko and Khrystyna Pavlenko as Righteous Among the Nations.