Tatyana Kobets

Kateryna Kobets and her daughters Olga and Tanya, and a Czech couple, Josip and Józef Gozak, with their son Witold, lived next door to Sviatoshyn, a district of Kyiv.  In 1935, the Jewish family of Nahum and Maria Mittelman also settled there.

At the beginning of the war, the older children of the Mittelmans: Leo, David and Nehama, went to the front.   The parents and younger sons Boris and Ilya, remained in Kyiv, which was occupied by the Germans on September 19th in 1941.  On September 25th, deaf-mute Boris Mitelman was raided in the street and shot.  On September 29th, the rest of the family set off for a collection depot in the Babyn Yar area.

As only Maria’s mother was a Jewish,it was written ‘Ukrainian’ in the column ‘nationality’ in her passport.   Maria approached the German officer who was standing in the area to find out whether the order for the compulsory resettlement of the mixed families applied to her.

The officer ordered Maria and seven-year-old Iliya to return home for further consideration.  They lost their father in the crowd and never saw him again.  Maria and her son returned to the flat where they lived till May 1942.  The landlady, Lyudmila Shchegoleva, did not inform anyone about the presence of a Jewish boy in the flat. Maria Mittelman, thanks to the entry in her passport, lived legally.

Soon the local police found out about Iliya and started searching for him.  The boy was not at home at that time.  Maria assured them that she had sent her son to his relatives in the village a long time ago and had no information about him.  Since that day Iliya no longer lived at home, he hid for weeks in the Kobets family, then in the Gozak family.

Unlike his friends Olga Kobets and Vitold Gozak, he never went outside, and sometimes, when the city was restless, he was in hiding for several days.  The rescuers’ children despite their young age, were very cautious and together with their parents saved Jewish boy.

At the end of the war the survivor Neham’s sister, returned from the front, but Lev and David died. The family of the rescued  Iliya for many years retained a sense of  gratitude to the rescuers for many years.

On August 15th, 2004 Yad Vashem awarded Katerina Kobets as well as Joseph and Josefe Gozak, with the honorary title of  ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.