Tsybulko Kindrat, Sofia and Hryhorii 

Before the Second World War the Jewish family of Leontii and Fania Oiberman with their children Yurii and Raisa lived in Mala Boghachivka village in the Mykolaiv region. In August 1941, when the Nazi troops approached the settlement, Leontii took part in relocation of the collective farm property to the East. Soon the violence against the Jewish people started. Trying to avoid persecution from the new power, Fania Oiberman took children and left their home. She asked the Ukrainian family in the nearby village, their acquaintance, to help them. That was Tsybulko family - Kindrat and Sofia. They sheltered Fania and Yurii and asked their neighbors Josyp and Khivronia Ozerniuk to hide Raisa.

Their son, Hryhorii Tsybulko, became responsible for Yurii, hid him in the barn or attic. When the police came to the village, he took the boy to the field.

The Ozerniuk family took care of Raisa Oiberman. Having acquaintance in the local administration, Josyp recorded Raisa as his niece. Until 1945, Josyp and his wife Khivronia raised the girl together with their daughter Polina.

Leontii Oiberman found his family in December 1941. In the spring of 1942, when the massive shootings of the Jews ended, the survivors were forced to work for occupiers. Leontii and Fania worked in the labor camp in Domanivka village. Fania died there.

 

After the war Leontii and his children left to Odesa, then migrated abroad.

During the occupation Hryhorii Tsybulko saved his friend of the same age Oleksandr Viknyanskyi.

“That was difficult time, people in the village knew that many residents sheltered the Jews, but nobody said it out loud. Some of them had been sheltering [the Jews] for one or two days, others - longer, but all of them were equally afraid. My father and me herded cows and mowed hay, putting it to sheaves. The sheaves were shelters for that poor people. In one of the sheaves I hid Sashko [pet name for Oleksandr], people in the village called him Hershko. He was from large Jewish family, part of whom were shot by occupiers. I regularly brought food for him. In winter he lived in our house...”

 

On December 27, 2008 Yad Vashem recognized Kindrat and Sofia Tsybulko and their son Hryhorii as well as Josyp and Khivronia Ozerniuk as the Righteous Among the Nations. In the 1950s Hryhorii Tsybulko married Polina Ozerniuk.