The Israeli ambassador awarded a family from Lviv the title of Righteous Among the Nations
Today, April 14, the world observed the Day of Remembrance and Heroism of European Jewry. On this day, people around the world honor the memory of the six million members of the Jewish people who were killed by Hitler’s Nazis during World War II.
The memorial event was organized by the Israeli Embassy in Ukraine, during which another Ukrainian family received the “Righteous Among the Nations” award—Israel’s highest honor, awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute to representatives of various nations who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
This time, the award went to the family of Yosyp Panasevych, who lived in the city of Włodzimierz in eastern Poland and was a political prisoner for fighting for Ukraine’s independence, receiving a 15-year sentence of hard labor. His family currently lives in Lviv.
“My father didn’t particularly boast about saving a neighbor and her children during the German occupation. But I was a curious child and kept asking him about those years. He told me: ‘When the war was on, my neighbors lived in a hiding place in my house.’ Since the Nazis were killing Jews, they were in danger. Even before the war, he had built a secret room in the house under a huge window. I don’t know why he built such a room, but it came in handy. You moved the wardrobe aside, then lifted a section of the floor, and there was a secret room, and he hid them there,” Panashevich’s daughter Taisiya told UA.News.
Taisiya brought a photograph to Kyiv of the house that served as a lifesaving refuge for the wife and two daughters of the jeweler Goldman.
“The police came, searched the house, but found nothing. I asked, ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ He said, ‘I was. If they had found us, they would have shot me first, then them. But I couldn’t just let them kill my neighbors, whom we were friends with,’ recalls Taisiya Panasevich.
For about 18 months, Yosyp Panasevych managed to keep his secret. After the liberation of this territory from the German invaders in the spring of 1944, the rescued family moved to the Middle East, and for a long time they corresponded with Yosyp, inviting him to visit.
“As a sign of deep gratitude for the assistance provided to the Jewish people during World War II, the title of Righteous Among the Nations has been posthumously awarded to Yosyp Panasevych,” said Michael Brodsky, Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine, during the award ceremony.
To date, over 2,600 people in Ukraine have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations—this honorary title is awarded by Yad Vashem to representatives of various nations who saved Jews during World War II, risking their own lives.
By this measure, Ukraine ranks among the countries with the highest number of such individuals. Among the Ukrainian Righteous are representatives of various professions and social groups: farmers, teachers, priests, doctors, as well as entire families who hid people from the Nazis, provided them with food and documents, or helped them escape from the ghettos.
It is important to note that many instances of assistance remain unknown or insufficiently documented, so the number of recognized Righteous is gradually growing—new names are added after a thorough examination of testimonies and archives.
In total, there are already more than 28,000 such people worldwide, and Ukrainians constitute one of the largest groups among them.
We recall that 89-year-old Nina Kravtsova—a Ukrainian emigrant who survived the Holocaust as a child—was killed in a nursing home in New York.
The Wiener Library in London recently made one of the world’s largest collections dedicated to the Holocaust available online. The new online platform, which was launched on Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, comprises over 150,000 documents collected over the course of 90 years.
In 2024, the Hamburg District Court found 95-year-old Ursula Haverbeck, who had repeatedly and publicly denied the Holocaust, guilty of inciting hatred and sentenced her to one year and four months in prison.
