Olga Balytska

Is it possible to entrust the most valuable thing - the life of your relatives - to a stranger? In conditions of total distrust and death, Lyubov Andreyeva asks her neighbor Olga Balytska to take care of her little nephews - Zhanna and Leonid Milmanov.

The children miraculously survived the massacre at the end of August 1941. Then all the Jews were ordered to gather and leave the borders of Kamyanets-Podilsky for deportation. However, instead of being evicted, they were forced to leave valuables and documents and enter the funnels outside the city where they were shot. In a few days, the Nazis killed about 23,600 people. It was the bloodiest episode of the Holocaust at the time: it happened more than a month before the mass shootings in Babyn Yar. It is considered a decisive step toward the beginning of the extermination of the Jews. Among the dead was the father of the children.

Zhanna and Leonid's mother was Ukrainian, but she could not leave them at home, because many people knew about her husband's ethnicity, so she gave them to her sister Lyubov. The children lived in safety for a year - until June 1942.

In the same year, the German administration began deporting Ukrainians to the Third Reich for forced labor. Lyubov Andreyeva appeared on the lists for departure. And how could she leave Leonid and Zhanna alone?

However, neighbor Olga Balytska agreed to risk her life and hide the children: Zhanna was five years old then, and Leonid was only two. She took them to her house in the Pidzamche district, but warned them to behave very quietly, because people would suspect something if they saw the children of a single widow.

The hiding place was well protected by area: rocks towered around, a river flowed nearby. Every night Olga told children fairy tales, reassured them. A serious problem arose with the money for the maintenance of a girl and a boy. Olga had to start selling her own things to buy food for the kids and herself.

On March 26, 1944, Zhanna and Leonid finally met their mother. But they did not forget about Olga Balytska, who protected them all these years, becoming their second mother.

57 years after those days, Yad Vashem recognized Olga Balytska as the Righteous Among the Nations.