Valentyna Galkina (Stanislavova)

Valentyna Galkina (Stanislavova) was born in the village of Zhabelivka in the Vinnytsia region, and she remembers well that before the war all the families living around them were Jewish. “We all lived together,” Valentyna recalls.

In the spring of 1943, when Vinnytsia was already occupied and all Jews were exterminated, a ten-year-old boy, Aaron Bronstein, suddenly knocked our door. ”

Little Aaron had survived real hell. He was wounded in the face while fleeing from the police. One of the residents of the village of Zhabelivka brought him to the local doctor Hryhoriy Bilichenko, who gave him first aid, but it was obvious that he could not do without the intervention of a surgeon.

Risking his own life, Hryhoriy went to the hospital on a cart, disguising the boy with rags. There, Aaron was rescued by surgeon Volodymyr Misevych and his wife, who later left the boy with them for ten months, until one of the patients realized that doctors were hiding a Jew. This was in the spring of 1943. One night Aaron escaped and moved to his native Vinnytsia, where he was sheltered by the Stanislav family.

Mikhail and Elizabeth Stanislavov and their daughters Valentyna and Nina hid him in the house. When summer came, Aaron began to take the horse to pasture. He went out at night so that no one could see him. But once he was noticed and had to flee. As a beggar, he traveled through the Vinnytsia region until the expulsion of the Nazis from the area in March 1944. After that he returned to the Stanislavovs and learnt that Elizabeth had been executed by the Nazis in February of that year on suspicion of collaborating with partisans.

Після війни Аарону зробили пластичну операцію, видаливши на обличчі шрами. Пізніше він емігрував до Ізраїлю і продовжував підтримувати зв’язок зі своїми рятівниками.

After the war, Aaron underwent plastic surgery to remove scars on his face. Later he immigrated to Israel but stayed in touch with his rescuers.

On May 5, 2002 Yad Vashem recognized Mykhailo and Elizaveta Stanislavov and their daughters Nina Brind (Stanislavov) and Valentiya Galkina (Stanislavov) as Righteous Among the Nations.