Sim Yeryomin, one of the “righteous gentiles” who saved Jews during the Holocaust, died last weekend at his home in Beit She’an. Yeryomin, the son of farmers from the Kursk region of Russia, was 10 in April 1942 when he came upon Victor Feinstein, 13, who had collapsed as a result of malnutrition. Feinstein had escaped from the Cracow region after his mother and younger sisters were murdered by the Germans. Feinstein survived through the winter, wandering hundreds of kilometers, from village to village, until reaching the Kursk region. Yeryomin took care of Feinstein for several days on his own, bringing him bread and water, before telling his parents about the Jewish teen. His parents brought Feinstein into their home, bathing and caring for him until he recovered his strength. Despite knowing that Feinstein was Jewish, the family sheltered him until the area was liberated, in April 1943. Shortly after Feinstein immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, he asked Yad Vashem to recognize Yeryomin and his parents as “righteous among the nations.” Yeryomin married a Jewish woman, Zina Shimnovsky, in 1959. In 1996, after he was widowed, he immigrated to Israel with his remaining family.
' } });