Mykitka Stefan & Kasia

Mykitka, Stefan Mykitka, Kasia Stefan Mykitka and his wife, Kasia, were farmers living in the village of Kalinow, in the Lwów District (today Kalyniv, L’viv District). Mykitka had business connections with Leizer Bittner, who had a store for fruit and sweets in Sambor (Sambir). The connections between the two continued even after the Germans occupied the area on June 29, 1941, and interned all the Jews in ghettos. In the first weeks of the occupation, Mykitka promised his friend Bittner that he would care for his children if the need arose. In May 1943, when Mykitka learned that Bittner and his wife had been deported from the town, he sent his 12-year-old daughter Staszka to the ghetto to take the Bittners’ daughter Chaya out of there. Through a hole in the barbed wire fence, behind the hospital building, Chaya and Staszka left the ghetto and arrived safely at the village of Kalinow. The Jewish girl hid in the Mykitkas’ attic for 15 months. At some point, she was joined by her brother Isaac. The brother remained in hiding for about two months, but afterwards returned to Sambor where he perished. For a short time in the winter of 1943, Chaya hid with the Mykitkas’ friends in the neighboring village of Kornalowice (Kornalovychi), and again returned to the Mykitka family. In the meantime, her rescuers obtained a baptismal certificate for her in the name of Eugenia Mykitka. Nonetheless, Chaya continued to hide in the attic, and her link with the outside world was through Staszka and her younger sister who brought her food, tried to lift her spirits, and played with her. When the Red Army approached the area, in early August 1944, the Mykitka family left their home and moved westward and Chaya walked to Sambor. Chaya (later Weissbart) lost contact with her rescuers, and Staszka found her only in the early 1990s, through the American HIAS organization. On March 18, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Stefan and Kasia Mykitka as Righteous Among the Nations.