In September 1942, German and Ukrainian police appeared at dawn in the village of Siedliszcze Male, near the townlet of Kostopol in the Wolyn district. They assembled the local Jews and murdered them, together with the rest of the Jews from the surrounding area. Two brothers, Szmuel and Josef Liderman, succeeded in escaping the slaughter, however, and slipped away across the fields to the village of Antonowka, near the town of Rowne, where there were still Jews living. Shortly thereafter, the Jews of Antonowka were also murdered in a nearby forest, after being forced to dig their own mass grave.
While the grave was being dug, the Liderman brothers took to their heels and escaped. Shots were fired after them and Szmuel was injured in the hand. Naked and in a state of exhaustion, the two reached the house of Stanislaw Jasinksi, a former acquaintance of their murdered father. Jasinski lived on an isolated farm in the middle of a forest together with his daughter Emilia, her husband, and their three children. Although the prewar relationship between Jasinski, who was elderly and blind, and the brothers' father had not been good, Jasinski nevertheless took in the two Jewish escapees and reassured them, saying, "The past is forgotten." The brothers were taken care of by Emilia, who bandanged Szmuel's hand and clothed and fed them. Without expecting any recompense, Jasinski ordered that the two be bedded down on a straw mattress in the barn, and when they had recovered he permitted them to dig a bunker for themselves beneath the cowshed. A few days later, two more Jews who had escaped the massacre in the forest knocked at Jasinski's door.
They were Szaje Odler and Akiba Kremer, who were also given shelter and assistance. After the hideout had been in use for two months, a rumor spread in the vicinity that Jews were hiding on Jasinski's farm. The four fugitives were forced to leave and penetrate even deeper into the forest, where they remained until their liberation by the Soviet army in July 1944. A month later, Akiba Kremer, Szaje Odler and Josef Liderman were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists. After her father died Emilia Sladkowska immigrated to the United States, and many years later, when Szmuel Liderman had succeeded in locating her address, the two began a regular correspondence.
On February 28, 1985, Yad Vashem decided to award the title of Righteous Among the Nations to Stanislaw Jasinski and his daughter, Emilia Slodkowska (née Jasinska).
