JURIJ DAREWYCH

Date of birth – 17 February, 1939

Place of birth – Sukhorichchya village, Lviv oblast, Ukraine 

Place of interview – Toronto, Canada

Date of interview - 30 March, 2017

Video interview

Lanquage - Ukrainian

(Excerpt):

JD - Many Jews guessed what was waiting for them from the Germans. One of them came to my aunt's husband, Father Davydovych, and to her. They knew each other, although not well. He asked them if they could hide his daughter. She was a teenager and my uncle and aunt had no children. They discussed it, and agreed that they will try to hide her.

Interviewer - Do you know what her name was? Or her family name?

JD- That is a problem. I was a very small child then. I only found out about this after the war, when I was 6-10 years old. I know that they called her Orysia, or Rysia for short. She did not know how to speak Ukrainian well, but she was learning. They tried their best to make sure that she wasn't seen around the village because the villagers knew that they did not have children. The situation posed a great danger for them. Because in most cases, those who hid Jews were shot. It was not an easy thing to do. (In any case, I will tell you more about this later.) The girl was successfully hidden in the home of my aunt and her husband until the second arrival of the Red Army - in mid of August, 1944. The girl survived. When the Red Army, which moved fast, occupied the area the  Germans were  pushed  back to the German border while they [Soviets] took over Poland. The girl  left and went through Poland to Israel, where she lived in the city of Haifa.