Omeljan Kovč, Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest killed in a gas chamber on 25 March 1944 and cremated in the ovens of Majdanek.
Omeljan Kovč, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest from 1922, was parish priest of Peremyshliany, a small town in western Ukraine where, in addition to the Ukrainian population, there was a significant presence of Poles and Jews. Father Omeljan worked to animate the social and cultural life of the town in order to foster relations between these three communities. During the German occupation of western Ukraine, he tried to save numerous Jews from extermination. In total, he distributed between 600 and 2000 baptism certificates, knowing that he was risking his own life. In order to condemn the mass extermination of Jews, he wrote a letter to Hitler, in which he also asked permission to visit Jews locked up in ghettos. For these activities, he was arrested by the Nazi police in 1942. He was initially imprisoned in the prison in Lviv, then in 1943 transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp. In Lviv, he was faced with the choice of whether to stop helping Jews or be deported, and despite having six children, he decided not to deny what he had done. In the Majdanek camp, he secretly continued to exercise his priestly ministry, in parallel with forced labour with the other prisoners. Officially, he died of illness (so the family was told). More probably he was killed in a gas chamber on 25 March 1944 and cremated in the Majdanek ovens.
