Leskiv Maria

Leskiv, Mariya Mariya Leskiv lived with her three young children in the town of Przemyślany, Tarnopol District (today Peremyshlyany, L’viv District). Next door lived the family of a Jewish barber, David Brandwein, and Leskiv was friendly with the barber’s wife, Sofya. On June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded the USSR, David Brandwein and his older son left town and never came back, apparently they perished trying to flee east. Ten days after their departure, Sofya Brandwein and her five younger children found themselves under Nazi rule. From the beginning of the occupation until the final liquidation of the Przemyślany ghetto, Leskiv helped her Jewish friend with food, despite her own difficult financial situation. She also periodically sheltered Sofya’s daughters, 17-year-old Lucia and 12-year-old Sala in her home, where they could bathe and rest. One day Leskiv confronted a Ukrainian policeman who had caught Sala on the street and bribed him to release her. Lucia and Sala were the only survivors of their family after the ghetto liquidation, in late May 1943. They did not remain in town, proclaimed “Judenrein” by the Germans, but fled to the nearby villages and wandered the area until the arrival of the Red Army, in July 1944. Returning to Przemyślany, the Brandwein sisters found their home in ruins and were again welcomed by Leskiv, until Lucia found work and Sala was accepted into an orphanage. In time, Lucia married and moved to Moscow, Russia. Her younger sister settled in L’viv. In the 1990s Lucia (Lyusya Vaynshteyn) and Sala (Sonya Voychek) immigrated to the United States. On June 17, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Mariya Leskiv as Righteous Among the Nations.