Biletskiy Leon & Biletskaya Maria ; Son: Roman ; Daughter: Vasilik Yaroslava (Biletskaya)

Biletskiy, Leon Biletskaya, Mariya Biletskiy, Roman Vasilik (Biletskaya), Yaroslava Biletskiy, Yevgeniy Biletskiy, Yulian Kifor (Biletskaya), Anna Leon Biletskiy lived with his wife, Mariya, and two children Roman and Yaroslava on a khutor shared with his brother Yevgeniy Biletskiy and his children Yulian and Anna near the village of Zawalów, Tarnopol District (today Zavaliv, Ternopil’ District). Leon was a forest warden and the rest of the family worked the farm. The Biletskiys were Sabbatarians, and consequently led a different lifestyle than the other locals. One night in the early autumn of 1943, two Jews, Hershko Grau and Shiko Zisser, arrived at the khutor. Zisser, who knew Leon from before the war, told the Biletskiys about how they had been among the 140 Jews that escaped from the ghetto in Podhajce (Pidhaytsi) on the eve of its liquidation on June 6, 1943, and how they had then wandered around and been attacked by Ukrainian nationalists, who had murdered most of the escapees, among them their leader Israel Zilber. From the original group that fled the ghetto, only 20 were still alive, among them the three Rozman sisters, Ridkis family, Feldberg family, the pharmacist Chaim Weintraub, Izio Loeb, Mina Blumenfeld, Sabina Schnitser and some others. As Leon knew the area very well, he took these Jews to a place in the forest that was suitable for the construction of a bunker and also arranged for the provision of food. Later he found the three Zilber siblings – the sons and daughter of Israel Zilber – and a Jewish woman, Gitla Fink, in the forest and brought them to the hiding place. When the suspicion arose that the bunker had been exposed, all the Jews hidden there moved to the Biletskiys’ home and, in the course of one night, they were transferred to a different part of the forest, where a new hideout was built. In December 1943, the locals also detected this place, and the Biletskiys made a third bunker closer to their home. Every day, childrenfrom the two Biletskiy families took food to their wards and cared for their other needs until the first liberation of the area in April 1, 1944. Following the German counter attack the Jewish survivors left with the retreating Soviet troops and some of them joined the Red Army. After the war, the majority of the rescued left the area and migrated to Israel or the United States, from where their ties with the Biletskiy families were continued. On January 3, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Leon Biletskiy, Mariya Biletskaya, their son, Roman Biletskiy, Yevgeniy Biletskiy, and his son, Yulian Biletskiy, as Righteous Among the Nations. On January 14, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Yaroslava Vasilik (née Biletskaya) and Anna Kifor (née Biletskaya) as Righteous Among the Nations.