Four non-Jews named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem were honored in Belarus.
The ceremony was held Tuesday, two days before Holocaust Memorial Day, in the cultural and information center of the Israeli Embassy. Alexey Denisov was awarded posthumously. He saved the the life of a ghetto prisoner, Sarra Utevska, by obtaining documents showing Utevska was Belarusian. Utevska lived in the Denisov home, posing as Alexey’s sister. Utevska was forced to leave the house after being denounced by neighbors, but survived World War II.
Denisov, his wife and young daughter were shot by fascists. Tasilia and Stanislav Pozniak and their daughter Janina Lihorad, saved a Jewish child, Ester Levin, who lived in the Ivie ghetto. Ester’s uncle managed to pass the girl to his friend, Pozniak, and he and his family sheltered her until the end of the war.
In 1946, at the age of 8, Ester left for Israel with a group of Jewish children. Today she lives on kibbutz Ein Curim.
Tasilia and Stanislav Pozniak were awarded posthumously.
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