Parasiun Mikhail & Anna (Yavorskaya)

Parasiun, Mikhail Parasiun, Anna Garatym, Iosif Garatym, Olga Mikhail and Anna Parasiun were a young couple active in the Evangelist Church that lived in the village of Stężyca Nadwieprzańska (Lublin District, Poland). Together with both their parents they cultivated tobacco, which they would then sell in Łódż. One late evening, in early April 1942, on their way back from Łódż, the Parasiuns found themselves at the railway station in Warsaw, awaiting a train which was due to arrive in the morning. Suddenly they were approached by a stranger who started up a conversation. He introduced himself as Josek Sandomir, a Jew, something, which took Anna by surprise for she would have never guessed by his looks that he was a Jew. Discovering in the course of the conversation that the Parasiuns lived in a remote village together with others of similar faith as theirs, Josek pleaded that they take his children with them. Together they drew near to the fence surrounding the Warsaw ghetto. There Josek left the Parasiuns and climbed into the ghetto. After about thirty minutes, he returned with three teen-aged children – Chaja, Icek, and Sara. The children apparently knew about their father’s intentions and so they did not ask any questions. At the railway station, Josek suddenly changed his mind and took Chaja back to the ghetto with him. Icek and Sara, however, remained with the Parasiuns. The next evening, when they had arrived at Stężyca Nadwieprzańska, Michail and Anna hid the children in the barn and provided for their needs for a week. By the end of the week, Josek came to visit. He said that he would take Icek to a nearby village, where they needed a shepherd. Sara, with Josek’s agreement, was transferred to the home of the Parasiuns’ friends, Iosif and Olga Garatym. They lived on the outskirts of the village and rarely received any visitors. The Garatyms were childless. The day Sara came to live with them was the last time she saw either her father or brother, oranyone else from her family for that matter. The Garatyms changed Sara’s name to Olena and she started to get used to her new life. Her hosts taught her about their religion and about their farm work. After a year, Sara was dressing and behaving like any other 12-year-old in the village. After the liberation, nobody came to get Sara, so the Garatyms concluded that none of her family had survived. In November 1944, the Ukrainian inhabitants of the village of Stężyca Nadwieprzańska were transferred east, as part of a population exchange between Poland and the USSR. Together with her foster parents, Sara first settled in Zaporizhzhya, then in Rivne. All her attempts to find her biological parents, siblings, or other relatives proved unsuccessful. On October 31, 2002, Yad Vashem recognized Mikhail and Anna Parasiun, and Iosif and Olga Garatym, as Righteous Among the Nations.