Kizimishin Mikhail & Kizimishina Yekaterina

Kizimishin, Mikhail Kizimishin, Yekaterina Mikhail Kizimishin and his wife, Yekaterina, lived with their seven children in the village of Czertez, Stanisławów District (today Chertizh, L’viv District). Elias Geller, his wife, Roza, and their two children, as well as Geller’s sister, her family, and their elderly mother had lived in the same village for many years. In late September 1942, local police and German soldiers came to the village to arrest the Gellers but during the commotion, Geller and his wife managed to escape through a window. Their children and the rest of their family were murdered. A few weeks later, the Gellers went into hiding in a bunker in the forest nearby and Kizimishin and several other farmers provided them with food. When the Gellers learned that there was a ghetto for Jews in the town of Żurawno (Zhuravne), they moved there and then they relocated to the Stryj ghetto. In 1943, when the Stryj ghetto was liquidated, the Gellers hid and later returned to Czertez, where they found shelter with the Kizimishins. The Kizimishins hid the Jews in the loft of their granary until the liberation, in August 1944. On October 25, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Mikhail and Yekaterina Kizimishin as Righteous Among the Nations.