Mikhail Petrovich Sidko

Mikhail Petrovich Sidko was born in 1936 in Kyiv

Mikhail Sidko was born in Kyiv in 1936. His family was due to leave the city by train, but his brother Grisha got off to free the family's pigeons. His mother Bertha left the train with her three other children to find him, and only his father stayed aboard.

In September 1941 the family's housekeeper reported them to the Germans, and they were marched toward Babi Yar. A policeman pulled Mikhail, his brother and other children out of the column and fired shots, and the rest of the column fled. Later a neighbor, Sofia Krivorot-Baklanova, hid the boys by claiming they were her children, and in 2004 she and her daughter Galina were named Righteous Among the Nations.

Mikhail and his brother were caught stealing coal and sent to the Syrets camp, where medical experiments were performed on them. Grisha escaped in the winter of 1942-1943 and took Mikhail out in 1943.

After the war Sidko finished school and worked as a shoemaker from the age of 13. He served in the army and settled in Cherkasy, where he worked at a chemical plant and was named an honored innovator of the Ukrainian SSR. After retiring he immigrated to Israel in 2000.