57 Years Underground in the Garret

On the morning of September 18, a certain Stepan Kovalchuk appeared in the yard of his home village Monchyntsy, Khmelnytsky oblast. Fellow villagers met him as if he were an extraterrestrial. For he was thought to have vanished 57 years ago. “As it became known, he had not vanished at all. He had lived all these long years in the attic of his village home,” Leonid Horenko, chairman of the Krasylivka district administration, told The Day .

This incredible event occurred on the tenth day after the death of Melanka Kovalchuk, the underground hermit's sister. This is the kind of existence the deceased woman willed him in her last moments. She said he would otherwise die of starvation.

“Long ago in 1942, Kovalchuk and his pious mother were going to the Pochayiv Monastery to pray. On their way, they saw many grave markers somewhere and heard that people were dying en masse . He feared death. When they came back home, the Germans “were recruiting young workers to go to the Reich.” So he hid in the attic, while his mother explained to the villagers and the village head that he had stayed behind in Pochayiv,” continues Mr. Horenko. Then the Germans retreated, the Soviets advanced and “began front-line mobilization.” But Kovalchuk was thought to be still there, in Pochayiv.

The district administration chairman says the 76-year-old Kovalchuk, who has spent a lifetime in seclusion without knowing the pleasures and sorrows of love and human communication, does not complain of poor health. “We have to give him documents to grant him some kind of pension,” Mr. Horenko said.

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