Belyi Vasily

Belyi, Vasiliy Vasiliy Belyi lived in Olevsk, in the district of Zhitomir (today Olevs’k, Zhytomyr District), where he worked as a photographer. For many years, he had been friendly with Ilya Fishman, a Jew, and, when the Soviet authorities convicted the latter of being “an enemy of the people” and sent him to Siberia, Belyi concerned himself with Fishman’s wife Liza and their two sons, Semyon (b. 1928) and Arkadiy (b. 1932). When the Germans conquered Olevsk on July 9, 1941, all the local Jews were concentrated on one street. Belyi regularly brought the Fishmans food packages and, in November 1941, when he discovered that the authorities planned to murder all the Jews, he invited the Fishmans to take shelter in his home. Fishman and her children hid in Belyi’s home, which was located in the town center and also served as his photo shop. The shop was always busy and subsequently he earned enough money to take care of the Fishmans as well as the two Jewish Reitblat sisters also hidden in his home. The income from the shop enabled him to provide for his wards until April 1942, when Belyi’s brother’s wife discovered that he was hiding Jews. This woman threatened to turn them all over to the authorities if Belyi did not remove them from his home and so he decided to flee with his charges to the forest. Belyi took the Fishman family to a secret location, hid them in a grove and told them that he would return a few days later with the Reitblat sisters. However, on the night he returned home to fetch the Reitblats, his house was searched. He managed to escape but the sisters were caught. Belyi returned to the Fishmans’ hideaway, but he could not find them there. In 1945, the Fishman siblings returned to Olevsk. After waiting for Belyi to return to the grove, the Fishmans had left the hidaway in search of food. Their mother had been caught and executed. Semyon and Arkadiy had survived in the villages using assumed identities, and thanks to their fluency in theUkrainian language. They maintained their friendship with Belyi for many years after the war. Semyon later immigrated to Israel and Arkadiy moved to Kiev. On May 6, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Vasiliy Belyi as Righteous Among the Nation