Michael Mytnik 85 died Wednesday January 7 2009 at Halifax Medical Center in Port Orange. Michael's family was by his side. A Memorial Service will be held at noon on Friday at the funeral home. He moved to Florida from upstate New York in 1976 to retire with his wife Lydia. For over twenty years they lived in a house which he built on S. Glencoe Road.
Michael was born in 1923 near Borisov Belarus. His early life was a struggle for survival first against the hardships of life under Stalin then against the brutality of WWII. He was attending agricultural college in Minsk when the Germans invaded Belarus in 1941. During the war he did what he could to survive. He became a translator for the Nazi occupiers and at the same time worked with partisans against the Germans. When the Germans were driven out of Belarus he was forced to leave with them never to return home. Mytnik fought with a Russian liberation army against Stalinism until the end of the war brought him to Germany where he met Lydia. Together they moved to Belgium where he worked as a coal miner. It was there that his son and two daughters were born. In 1956 the Mytniks moved to the United States. Two years later Michael had earned enough to buy a 260 acre dairy farm. He loved the land and after moving to Florida kept a garden and an orange grove.
Michael's wife Lydia passed away in 1999. He is survived by two brothers Anton of Moscow and Vasily of Siberia; a son Vasil Mytnik of Machipongo VA; two daughters Astrid Toland of New Smyrna Beach FL and Tania Byers of Virginia Beach VA; four grandchildren and one great grandchild; Since 2002 he has been cared for by a great friend who became his wife Raisa Mytnik.