Savchuk Stepan and Nadiya, Tartakovska (Savchuk) Lidiya

In a small one-story building in 69 Pershotravneva street (now Magistratska St.), almost in the center of Vinnytsia, lived the Savchuk family - Stepan with his wife Nadiya and their children Lidiya and Valentyn. When war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941, Valentyn went to the front. The Savchuk family could not be evacuated to the rear: Stepan had disability, Nadiya had difficulty moving around the room due to sore legs, and the 80-year-old mother of the head of the family lamented that she could not endure the long journey.

One night, Lev Manis, a former classmate and friend of Valentyn, knocked on the Savchuks' house. He was tired, hungry and barely able to stay on his feet. He said that he went to the front as a volunteer and was surrounded near Vinnytsia. He managed to escape, but it is dangerous to return home: he knows that the Jews are being persecuted and that his father has already been taken away - supposedly for work. The Savchuks fed  Lev and hid him in the attic of their house.

The next day, Stepan decided to visit the Manis family, to inform Lev's mother that the boy was alive and safe. After learning about her son, she begged to save her and her sister with her 10-year-old daughter. Stepan could not refuse the frightened women. He arranged a hiding place for Lev and the girl in the shed behind the firewood, and for them in the attic.

When constant raids began and it became dangerous to hide Jews in the house, the Savchuks agreed with their neighbors, who lived across the street in an ancient long house with deep basements, that they would hide Lev's mother and her sister. The daily duty of the 16-year-old daughter of the Savchuks, Lida, was to visit the women and bring them food. And Lev's cousin, whom the Savchuks named Olenka, managed to get an assistant to an old couple who lived in the village of Stryzhavka, near Vinnytsia. Stepan said that the girl is Ukrainian, an orphan, her parents were killed during the bombings, and there are no relatives left.

 Stepan managed to get a certificate for Lev on the form of the Odessa Artillery named after Leonid Maslov.

"...Together with Lev, we repeatedly went to the local market with hope of establishing connections with the underground or partisans. Once we met a German teacher from our school. She was Volksdeutsche. Maybe, she reported on us, because the next day Germans rushed to our house. By the time my mother understood what they wanted from her, Lev miraculously managed to jump out into the street. I explained that Leonid is Ukrainian, came from Odesa and lives with us. I showed them the certificate that dad had made for Lev. The German got very angry and hit me in the face. After this incident, in order not to expose us to danger, Lev hid in the attic of the Shevchenko family's house on January 9th Street. I visited him several times, and then I learned that he had joined the partisans. And after the war, I was told that Lev had died... His mother and sister went to the stadium in March 1942 by order of the occupation authorities, hoping to get a job in the ghetto, but they were shot..." From the memories of Lydiya Savchuk

The Savchuk family also opened its doors to former Soviet prisoner of war Isaak Tartakovskyi. This soldier did not know anyone in Vinnytsia, introduced himself as Ivan Vetrov and preferred not to tell anything about himself. Later, he realized that the Ukrainian family was helping Jews, and decided to tell the truth about himself.

He is a Jew from Kyiv. His mother died when he was five years old. They and their sister were grown up by their father. He did not like to study very much, but he had drawing and manual labor skills since childhood. He studied at the Kyiv Film Institute, worked as an assistant to the production designer of the Kyiv Film Factory (the future Dovzhenko Film Studio). With the beginning of the German-Soviet war, he was mobilized. Junior lieutenant, platoon commander of the communications company of the 295th airfield service battalion of the Air Force of the South-Western Front. Took part in defensive battles. On September 18, 1941, during a breakthrough from the enemy encirclement in the area of Orzhytsa, Poltava region, he was captured. During the staging to the transfer camp for prisoners of war in the city of Kirovohrad (today - the city of Kropyvnytskyi), exhausted, hungry prisoners were driven 30 km per day.

"...Due to the density of the crowd in the camp, they slept standing up, those who did not have the strength to stand and squatted down were trampled... I constantly looked at the sky, begged for the bombardment to begin, when in a panic it would be possible to escape from this impasse... We were fed terribly. Once a day they gave balanda, where a few grains of grain floated, and then balanda did not reach everyone. Many did not have a kettle or an empty tin can, they collected the balanda in their caps or simply in their folded palms... Thousands of prisoners with indifferent faces without a hint of hope... I especially remembered the square with the captured servicemen of Jewish origin. They were constantly mocked, humiliated, forbidden to wear shoes in November weather..." From the memoirs of Isaac Tartakovskyi

Once, in the queue for the balanda, Isaak accidentally heard that Ukrainians from the Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia regions were being let go to their homes. He dared to join the people of Vinnytsia, because as a teenager, before the war, he lived for a month in the city of Vinnytsia on 20, Sverdlova Street at my uncle's. During the inspection, he gave himself the fictitious name of Ivan Vasyliovych Vetrov, received a certificate of release from captivity and was released "to work for the needs of great Germany."

In December 1941, he reached Vinnytsia and knocked on the door of the Savchuk family. Stepan was forced to help the unknown and provide him with shelter because of his concern for the fate of his son Valentyn, who went to the front with the beginning of the war and was no longer heard of.

In April 1943, the Savchuks were forced to vacate their home for Nazi soldiers. Together with Tartakovskyi, they moved to the outskirts of the city and introduced Isaac as their relative. Until March 1944, until the end of the Nazi occupation of the city, he worked as a carpenter in a workshop. After the liberation of Vinnytsia, he returned to Kyiv, worked at the regional police station. Demobilized in December 1945. Contact with the family of rescuers was interrupted.

In 1951, Isaak Tartakovskyi graduated from the Kyiv Art Institute, and in the same year in Kyiv, he accidentally met Lidiya Savchuk. Feelings flared up between the young people. Three years later, two children were born to the Tartakovskyi couple: son Anatoliy and daughter Olena.

In 1995, Stepan and Nadiya Savchuks and their daughter Lidiya Tartakovska (Savchuk) were awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations."