The headman greeted the Jews warmly. For two days, the Sandelboims, who fled from the SS men, hid with the headman, but as soon as he realized that Yudel and Rachel had no money with them, he immediately demanded to leave his house.

Somehow having reached the neighboring forest, exhausted adults and children fell to the frozen ground. Their position seemed completely hopeless. Yudel decided to return to Kusnishcha, hide in some shed and let the children sleep. And so they did – waited for the night and wandered into the village. They noticed from afar in some courtyard a cowshed with open doors. Trying not to make noise, they climbed under the roof, where the hay is stored, and fell asleep. The owner of the barn was Anisim Sulik. The elder Vasily Sulik was a distant relative of him.

Anisim Yakovlevich Sulik was from a family of indigenous Kusnischans. “A great miracle happened to us, – Rachel Sandelboim later recalled. – It was this Ukrainian that hid us for 22 months”.

On the very first day, Anisim Sulik brought the Sandelboims a bottle of water and a loaf of bread. For the starving fugitives from the ghetto, this simple meal was truly a royal treat. The Sandelboims, already accustomed to the fact that there were few disinterested saviors in the district, asked the peasant why he was helping them, the Jews. Anisim looked carefully and surprised the fugitives with his answer: "I read the Bible at night, and it says that some of the Jews will definitely be saved”.

In the hiding place Sulik had equipped for the Jewish family on the “towers” of the cowshed, it was pitch black. The distance between the ceiling and the roof is just over a meter. The entire area of the shelter is no more than 10 meters.

For many months, Anisim had not only to beware of neighbors and Germans, but also to persuade his wife to leave the Jews at home. Hristya Sulik empathized with the tragedy of the Sandelboims, but was terribly afraid for the lives of her own children, husband and 90-year-old father. For sheltering fugitive Jews, all Suliks, young and old, were threatened with execution. But the head of the family did not listen to his wife. Being himself in very cramped conditions, living from hand to mouth, he shared the latter with the Sandelboims, bringing them once a week a loaf of bread and some boiled potatoes.

It was very dangerous to leave the shelter or somehow indicate their presence, so the Sandelboims for all months have never been able not only to go to the bathhouse, but simply to speak in a full voice. They had to hide not only from neighbors or patrols, but also from Anisim's children, who knew nothing about the Jews hiding in their courtyard. If they uncovered the secret to peers – everyone would have died. Just in case, there was a large lock on the barn, the key to which was only in the owner's possession.

The most difficult times came in March 1944, when the front line approached Kovel. The German part entered the village. Anisim was hijacked to work, and the Germans themselves stood at his place. The hostess, who was so terribly afraid for the life of her family, flatly refused to bring the Jews food. But on the other hand, she was able to persuade the German warriors to stay in a hut, and not in a cowshed.

The Sandelboims were preparing for death: even if the Germans did not find them, they would die of hunger. But again a miracle happened: their savior escaped from forced labor, rushed home and straight into the barn. For thirteen days of the hunger strike, the fugitives were so exhausted that they could not say a couple of phrases in response. The kids, Mendel and Raya, practically did not move and looked little like living people. Sulik quickly left and brought from home a crumb of bread and a jug of sour milk. While the Sandelboims eagerly devoured food, the peasant said that the Germans began to retreat westward, burning everything in their path.

“You can slowly get out of your hiding place and hide in the field, in the rye, – Anisim suggested. – It will be a shame to burn in a barn after almost two years of the battle for life”. But exhausted, with small children, the Sandelboims could not walk and decided to take the risk, remaining in the barn.

All the villagers, including Suliks, quickly packed up their belongings and went into the forest surrounding the village. Soon there was a fight in the streets. Shells exploded near the Sandelboim hideout, bullets ripping through the wooden walls of the barn. Everything was clouded with a black veil of smoke – the neighboring houses and the village church were burning. Fate showed mercy to the Jewish family one more time – their hideout remained intact and almost unscathed in the middle of the ashes.

Finally, on July 25, 1944, Soviet troops entered Kusnishcha. Two days later, Rachel, Yudel, Raya and Mendel, for the first time in many months of “playing hide and seek with death”, came out into the world. During the motionless sitting in the shelter, Raya began to have problems with the musculoskeletal system, and ten-year-old Mendel seemed hoarse – he could not speak normally, only whispered.

Ardently saying goodbye to their savior and his wife, on the first Sunday after their miraculous liberation, the Jews returned to their native Lyuboml. Some of the houses were destroyed to the ground, while others were left only with boxes that frightened them with the blackness of broken windows. Not having met a single neighbor or acquaintance, not seeing a single Jewish face, the survivors realized that a real catastrophe had occurred. In the surviving buildings of the once completely Jewish Lyuboml, different people lived.

The first thing the Sandelboims did was to bury their relatives in the Jewish cemetery.

After the war, the Sandelboim family left for Poland and later immigrated to Israel.

In 1963, Anisim Sulik had an accident on the way from the regional center to Kusnishcha. Having received serious injuries, he soon died, without getting the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Five years later, his wife also passed away. But his feat was not forgotten, and today he is remembered both in Ukraine and in Israel, where the descendants of the Jews he saved live.