Mikołaj Charłamow came from Chełm. Due to the War, he found himself in Łuck, in the former Tarnopolski Province which, in 1939, was in the Soviet zone of occupation. The city's population was 70% Jewish and, in the first weeks of the War, Jewish escaping from central Poland also found their way there. Mikołaj met many friends amongst them.
In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Łuck ended up in the hands of the Nazis who, immediately, proceeded to create a ghetto in the city. Then, Mikołaj, who was active in the underground, contacted a printworks. There, he obtained the materials needed to create false identity papers for the Jews.
Dr.Mieczysław Zamenhoff and Szaja Kobyliński, who Mikołaj helped to escape from the ghetto, received such false papers from him. . Dr.Bronisław Frenkel and Melich Fajersztajn were also supplied with false documents and Charłamow helped them to get to Warsaw. He supplied "Aryan" papers to Sara Pojas and her husband, as well as to Leon Schaff, who later made contact with a division of the partisans in the Kowal region.
He found a hiding-place in Łuck for Rai Eskin and her daughter and helped them materially.
The majority of Jews, whom he helped, survived and emigrated after the War.
Sara Pojas settled in Łódż and worked as a dental surgeon. Leon Schaff become one of the teaching staff at Łódż University.
