plan to eliminate the Ukrainian intellectual elites and church. At the time they did not arrest the Metropolitan himself, fearing his great authority among the nation, but went after his family attempting to capture Sheptytsky and murdering their brother Leon along with his family. During that time the Metropolitan divided the Soviet union into four exarchates and named Sheptytsky the exarch of Russia. World War II In 1941 the persecution of Christians was interrupted with the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war and the German occupation of Ukraine, however the situation did not improve much. During that time Sheptytsky helped his brother Andrey Sheptytsky rescue Jews, harboring them in Studite monasteries and organizing groups that would aid them in escaping to Hungarian controlled Governorate of Subcarpathia. From 1941 to 1944, when the region was occupied by Nazi Germany, Jewish boys were hidden at the monastery in Univ, home to monks of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Univ was particularly important because it was the main Studite monastery; with its large community of monks, younger boys would go unnoticed by authorities. Along with the handful of holy men who were the children's daily caretakers, three figures were instrumental in their safekeeping: Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, his brother Klymentiy, and Omelyan Kovch, a priest from the nearby town of Peremyshliany. Kurt I. Lewin, whose father was Lviv's last rabbi and who would later become a renowned businessman, and David Kahane, later chief rabbi in the Israeli Air Force, were both harbored by Sheptytsky in Lviv. Later in their lives, both men would write about their experiences, Lewin in A Journey Through Illusions and Kahane in the Lvov Ghetto Diary. Sheptytsky was recognized as one of the Righteous among the Nations by the State of Israel in 1995. Soviet persecution With the return of the Soviets in 1944 a coordinated action to destroy the church and subject it to the Moscow Patriarchate was implemented. After the death of the Metropolitan, his successor, Joseph Slipyj, named Sheptytsky the Archimandrite of the Studite Order. This meant that at the time of the mass arrest of church hierarchs carried out by the NKVD in 1945 he was one of the highest ranking clergymen left. As such he became an informal leader of the church, meeting with monks and priests and strengthening them in their resolve. On 5 June 1947 he