Sarabun Stepan ; Mother: Anastasia ; Father: Vasily

Sarabun, Stepan Sarabun, Vasiliy Sarabun, Anastasiya Stepan Sarabun lived with his parents on a khutor close to the village of Krzywcze in the district of Tarnopol (today Kryvche, Ternopil District), and worked with his father, a forester. In July 1943, Sarabun, in his 20s, came across Leonora Zeftel and her son Adolf in the forest. He knew the mother and son well because they had lived in Krzywcze before the war. Sarabun had not seen them since 1942, when the local Jews had been sent to the Borszczów ghetto, but he had heard that Zeftel’s husband and daughter had returned to the village and were hiding there. Zeftel told Sarabun that she and her son had escaped the ghetto after hearing about its imminent liquidation and had wandered round the forest for several days fearful and starving. Sarabun brought the two Jews back to his home and hid them in the barn loft. His parents, Vasiliy and Anastasiya, supported his actions and they themselves were providing food to the Rozenblatts, who were hiding in a bunker in the forest. The Zeftels hid in a haystack for two months and Sarabun and his mother took care of them. When a rumor spread in the area that the forester’s family was harboring Jews, Sarabun took his wards, one night in September 1943, deep into the forest and helped them build a hiding place there. Until the liberation, on March 23, 1944, Zeftel and her son returned to the Sarabuns’ home from time to time to bathe, eat, and receive clean clothes. During this period, Benio Shpindel was afforded shelter in the Sarabuns’ home. He was also a local who knew the Sarabuns. He stayed hidden in the loft of their barn until the liberation. On the day of liberation, Shpindel joined the Red Army and fought the Germans until the end of the war. He immigrated to Israel in the late 1940s. The three members of the Rozenblatt family also immigrated to Israel in due course; Zeftel and her son stayed in Ukraine until the 1990s, and maintained contact with theSarabuns. On April 25, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Stepan Sarabun and his parents, Vasiliy and Anastasiya Sarabun, as Righteous Among the Nations.