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Ivan and Pelageya Yeremin, Baptist farmers, lived with their eight children in the Kauchuk Sovkhoz, an agricultural settlement in the county of Lgov, Kursk district. The area was occupied by the German troops in late October 1941.
In April 1942, when ten-year-old Sim Yeremin went into the workers’ rest area in the settlement, he found a child lying on the floor, unconscious. This was 13-year-old Viktor Fainshtein who had escaped from the district of Kharkov in after his mother, Rozalia Fainshtein, was murdered by the Germans in December 1941.
Fainshtein had survived the winter wandering round the villages in the area of Kharkov, Belgorod, and Kursk, and he had tried, unsuccessfully, to Ukraine cross the front lines. Eventually, Fainshtein found work as a farm hand in the Kauchuk Sovkhoz but as a result of severe malnutrition, he had collapsed.
Sim took care of Fainshtein for a few days, providing him with bread and water. When Sim told his parents, they brought Fainshtein into their home, bathed him, and gave him food to help him recover. Although they knew that Fainshtein was Jewish, he stayed in their home until the end of the occupation, in March 1943.
Despite their poverty, they took care of all his needs. After the war, Fainshtein found his elder sister Zina who was evacuated to the east prior to the occupation of the Kharkov district. Fainshtein settled in Kharkov, established a family, and in the 1990s immigrated to Israel. Sim Yeremin married a Jewish woman in 1959, and eventually also moved to Israel.
On August 5, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Ivan Yeremin, his wife, Pelageya Yeremina, and their son, Sim Yeremin, as Righteous Among the Nations.