Irina Gumenyuk

Holy Martyr Irina Gumenyuk was a peasant woman of Podolia, sentenced to a camp and then shot in 1942 for her faith. She belongs to the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church.

Irina Lavrentievna Gumenyuk was born in 1885 in the Felshtin district, Proskurov county of Podolia province, into a peasant family, and worked her own holding. In 1940, under article 127 of the criminal code, she was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and served her term in the Karaganda labour camp.

In 1942 she was taken into custody in the camp, accused of "counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the prisoners", as an "organizer of anti-⁠Soviet agitation" who, "under cover of religious convictions", did not go out to work "with counter-⁠revolutionary aims". She did not admit guilt, but she did not deny taking part in religious services. She was tried in the group case "The Case of Evdokia (Andrianova) and eleven prisoners, Akmolinsk, 1942". On 20 April 1942 the judicial board of the Karaganda regional court sentenced her to death, together with Venerable Martyr Evdokia (Andrianova) and the martyrs Alexandra Smolyakova, Natalia Kopytina, Natalia Karikh, Akilina Dubovskaya, Anna Volodanova, Xenia Radun, Martha Dudarenko, Domna Vasilkova and Tatiana Kushnir. She was shot in 1942 at the Akmolinsk branch of the Karlag camp, in the city of Akmolinsk (today Astana). The place of burial is unknown.

On 14 April 1993 she was rehabilitated, according to the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan. On 20 August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered her among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, on the proposal of the Diocese of Alma-⁠Ata. She is commemorated on 7 February (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in new style.