Kiselev Nikolai

Kiselev, Nikolay Nikolay Kiselev was born in 1913 in the village of Bogorodskoye (Blagoveshchensk County) in the Autonomous Republic of Bashkiria. As a young man he left for Moscow to study at the Institute for Foreign Trade from which he graduated in 1941. Nikolay was a member of the Communist Party who believed in the Revolution’s ideals. Because he was at the Institute of Foreign Trade, he was not conscripted into the army following the German invasion of Russia. He nonetheless volunteered and was assigned to a political affairs position in one of its units. He participated in the battles in the Vyazma region and in the defense of Moscow until he was wounded and captured by the Germans, in October 1941. A few days later, he managed to escape from the train that was transporting captives to Germany and came to the little town of Ilja, Wilno District (today Il’ya, Minsk District). There he became a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground. He helped organize underground cells and made contact with the first partisan groups that were forming in the forests. In 1942, he joined the Vengeance battalion under the command of Vasiliy Voronianskii. His function was to organize partisan units composed of Jews who had escaped the German murder operations in Dołhinów and other towns of the area, and of Soviet soldiers who had escaped from POW camps. At the outset, the Victory civil camp, called held about 300 people, most of them Jews. In August 1942, because of the large number of elderly, women and children in the camp, Nikolay was ordered to transfer the Jews beyond the front lines. The success of such a venture seemed doubtful due to the distance and severe conditions, and most of the unit’s officers rejected the assignment. Nikolay, however, agreed. He had always shown warm feelings towards Jews even before the war, and together with five Jewish partisans left to escort a group of Jewish fugitives eastward. They set out at the end of August, with two thirds of thesurvivors of German persecution then living in the forest. The way was dangerous and hard, especially when the villagers who were asked to "donate" food found out that the recipients were Jews. Nikolay was therefore occasionally obliged to use force. Another difficulty was dealing with the complaints of the hungry and exhausted marchers. Nikolay's devotion to the Jews in his trust can best be illustrated by the case of 13-year-old Shimon Khevlin, who became ill and suffered from dysentery. Because of him, the whole group had to slow down and there were some who demanded that the boy be left behind in the forest. Shimon's mother said that she would not leave him and asked that both be killed. Nikolay heard about this, took Shimon in his arms and carried him until the lad recovered. Another case concerned the three-year-old daughter of the Kremer couple who constantly cried at night from hunger. Again there were those who demanded she be drowned because she was endangering everyone with her cries. Nikolay took the toddler in his arms, carried her and fed her with his own bread. Under Nikolay Kiselev's command, the group finally reached the area under Soviet control near the town of Velikiye Luki on November 25, 1942. The younger members of the group were drafted into the Red Army, and the others transported deep into the USSR to the town of Ufa. After passing interrogation, Nikolay went eastward with the remainder of the group, and then sent to Moscow for medical treatment. Because of his bad health, he was discharged from the military. When he recovered, Nikolay renewed his studies at the Institute for Foreign Trade. After the war, he worked in international trade at various Soviet legations in Europe. Nikolay lived in Moscow until his death in 1974 and continued to correspond with several of the Jews he had rescued. On September 28, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Nikolay Kiselev as Righteous Among the Nations.