POLISCHUK, Viktor (1929 – 2009)
Viktor Polischuck and his wife, Elvira
Viktor Polischuk lived in his uncle’s household in Ukraine. When the Germans liquidated the Gaysin ghetto in 1943, it was clear that the Jews’ days were numbered. One night in the summer of 1943, Viktor’s uncle brought home a Jewish father and son, Lev and Arkadiy Burshtein, from the ghetto. Viktor’s family took them into their home, providing food and shelter and caring for all of their needs.
In October 1943, when the retreating Germans intensified their atrocities against the Jews still living in occupied territories, Viktor’s family found a way to move Burshtein and his son to a safer hiding place in Transnistria, which was under Romanian control. They found shelter there until the liberation. In 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Viktor Polishchuk as Righteous Among the Nations and shortly afterwards he moved to Israel.
In 2009, Viktor turned to ATZUM for help to save the life of his grandson Anton, who was critically ill with leukemia in the Ukraine. Despite ATZUM’s best efforts to facilitate five months of hospitalization at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem and the hospital’s valiant attempts to save his life, Anton sadly succumbed to his illness In July 2009. ATZUM arranged for the return home to the Ukraine of Anton’s mother and fiance together with his body. It was ATZUM’s privledge to pay tribute, in this way, to a grandfather who risked all to save a Jewish family and allow future generations to come to life.
