Dardalevych Yosyp and Antonina

Yosyp and Antonina Dardalevych lived in the village of Romaniv (until 2003, Dzerzhynsk) in the Zhytomyr region. The couple had eight sons and daughters of their own, and during the German-Soviet war, they did not hesitate to shelter a ninth, Jewish, child.

The village was occupied by the Nazis on July 6, 1941. Mass executions of Jews took place outside it, in particular in the Piskovnia tract, near the village of Holubyn, where there is now a mass grave and a memorial stele, erected in 1998.

The first mass shooting took place on August 25, 1941, and the next one on October 25. It was after that the Dardalevychs' eldest son, Yosyp, brought home a little boy he had found in the brick factory. Antonina, unwrapping the baby, discovered that he had undergone a circumcision ceremony. She immediately told her husband, because she knew what the punishment for the family could be. At the family council, they decided to save the child. It was very difficult to hide a new member of the family, sometimes the baby's crying could be heard on the street, so soon bad rumors spread through the village. Antonina was summoned for questioning and ordered to bring the child with her. The situation was unexpectedly saved by local doctor Ivan Trushkin. After the examination, he confirmed that there had been no circumcision, the boy simply had a congenital defect – a rare case, but known in medicine. Antonina and the baby were allowed to go home, although people continued to talk about his Jewish origin.

After the war, Semen and Zinaida Potashnyk unexpectedly came to the Dardalevych family, claiming that the boy, who was almost three years old at the time, was their only son, Sheilyk. The Potashnyk’s survived the Nazi occupation by hiding in the forests, and later joined a Soviet partisan detachment. They knew about their son’s fate from Ukrainian acquaintances from the village and were very grateful to the Ukrainian family for saving him.

In 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Yosyp and Antonina Dardalevych as Righteous Among the Nations.

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