Kuznetsov Fedir, Hanna and Viktor

Fedir and Hanna Kuznetsov and their son Viktor lived in Kharkiv. On the eve of the German-Soviet war, the boy graduated from high school. He was not subject to mobilization because he had a disability.

The Nazis entered the regional center on October 23, 1941, and on December 14, the city commandant issued an appeal to the Jews of Kharkiv. They were all ordered to move to the barracks of the tractor and machine-tool factories by December 16. It was then that Viktor was approached by his classmate Aron Hendelman. With the outbreak of the war, he went to the front, but in the battles near Smolensk he was wounded and found himself surrounded. Miraculously avoiding capture, he reached his hometown, but his parents and younger brother had already been evacuated to Central Asia. Aron began to think about his own safety, because as a Jew and a Red Army soldier, a mortal threat loomed over him.

The Kuznetsov family hid Aron for three winter months. The situation in the city was extremely tense. The ghetto into which the occupation authorities drove the Jews did not last long: from mid-December 1941 to early January 1942, the entire Jewish population of the city was exterminated.

In the spring, Aron decided not to endanger his rescuers any longer, so he left the shelter. He managed to reach the Poltava region and join the partisans, and after the Nazis were expelled in 1943, he mobilized for the second time into the Red Army.

Fedir Kuznetsov died in 1942, his wife Hanna in 1944. Victor moved to another city after the war, and the connection between him and Aron was broken for a very long time. The former classmates met only 55 years later.

In 2002, Yad Vashem recognized Fedir and Hanna Kuznetsov and their son Viktor as Righteous Among the Nations.