Sukhynskyi Anton

Among the residents of the town of Zboriv Anton Sukhynskyi was known as an eccentric, many people even considered him a holy fool. Unmarried, he lived very poorly. The neighbors often laughed at him for his kindness and tenderness to everything alive. However, during the war and the Holocaust, when the total moral degradation of thousands of people happened, the “holy fool” Anton remained loyal to the high human values and saved lives of 6 doomed people without anyone’s assistance or support.

The Holocaust in the Ternopil region began immediately after the arrival of the Nazi occupiers and took on shocking scales. In the region, almost the entire Jewish population died in 1941–1944 – 130,000 people.

The Jewish Zeiger family was familiar to Anton Sukhynskyi yet before the war. Nevertheless, Isaak Zeiger listened to his offer to help with distrust at the beginning. Only in June 1943, when the rumors began about the extermination of the last Jews in Zboriv, he trusted Anton with the lives of his family. Isaak, his wife Sonia and their sons, 6-year-old Munia and 8-year-old Milek, together with the elder woman (Sonia’s friend) and girl named Eva Halperin, who lost her entire family, came to Sukhynskyi. It found out that the 11-year-old Tsipora Stock had been already living with Anton. The house owner hid all 7 persons in the cellar.

Shortly after that, the neighbors learned about Anton harboring the Jews. They started to intimidate him and those poor people, demanding money for their silence. When Isaak Zeiger decided to stop paying, one of the neighbors came with a pistol and began to shoot – the elder friend of the Zeiger family died.

Fearing that the neighbors could attract the attention of the Germans and other neighbors, the Jews fled. However, suffering from cold and the hostile attitude of other locals, they came back to Anton. He met him in tears of happiness and soon furnished the new safer shelter with the help of Isaak.

They spent 9 months in the narrow and dark pit, where they could hardly turn around. The only source of light all this time was a little gas lamp. They never left this shelter, even at night. Sukhynskyi brought them food and cleaned the bucket used as a toilet. It was difficult for Anton to get food for 6 people. Moreover, he felt permanent fear of the Germans and neighbors. The police and the German gendarmerie searched the house of Sukhynskyi and interrogated him several times. Once, the Germans went to the cellar, where the hideout was. The Jews gapped their mouths with rags so that their breathing could not be heard. If they were found, they would be murdered alongside their savior.

“We suffered a lot. There was unbearable thirst and we drank our own urine. Children were not able to withstand this and it was the worst to see their suffering. Was it possible to survive so much and die right before liberation? Children asked to go and surrender to the Germans, but my husband kept us and we remained alive until the Red Army arrived”, from the memories of Sonia Zeiger

On July 29, 1944, the Red Army expelled the Nazis from Zboriv.

Shortly after that, the saved people left Ukraine: the Zeiger family went to the USA, Eva Halperin to Uruguay and Tsypora Stock to Israel. After the emigration they stayed in touch with Anton, never forgetting his feat.

In 1974, Anton Sukhynskyi was honored as the Righteous Among the Nations.

20 years later, in Jerusalem, at the ceremony of awarding him the medal and diploma of the Righteous Among the Nations, he met the people whom we rescued for the first time since the end of the war.