Zbarakh Zinaida

Before the war, Zinaida Zbarakh lived in the village of Lyubymivka, Dnipropetrovsk region. During the war, she was a cleaner in the local police department.

In January 1942 Leonid Taslytskiy, age of 12, knocked on her door. He was a son of Zinaida’s friends from Dnipropetrovsk (today’s Dnipro). With tears on his face boy told her, what happened to him since August of 1941, when his family was preparing for evacuation.

«During the German airstrike in Dnipropetrovsk Leonid got lost. Later, when Germans forced all Jews to go to the place of extermination little Leonid managed to escape. During few months he was hiding with families of his non-Jewish classmates». From memoirs of Zinaida Zbarakh

Later, Germans were searching for Jewish survivors more persistently, so Leonid escaped from Dnipropetrovsk and reached the house of Zinaida. She was hiding Leonid till the liberation of the region from Nazi forces and no one, not even her neighbors, knew about that.  

«I lived in a tiny basement with a secret entrance. Zinaida was opening it only at night to air the room. Sometimes, I was permitted to warm-up at night» From memoirs of Leonid Taslytskiy

After the liberation of Dnipropetrovsk from Nazi on October 25, 1943, Zinaida brought the boy to his house in the city. A few days after he received a letter from Uzbekistan, which said that his parents survived the airstrike and managed to escape to the east. Soon they returned to Dnipropetrovsk.

Leonid and whole his family were really grateful to Zinaida for his salvation.  They were friends for many years.  Later, Leonid and his family immigrated to the United States of America.

On August 8, 1999 Yad Vashem awarded Zinaida Zbarakh with Righteous Among the Nations award.