Rescuers of Jews

      Juozas and Sofija Ramanauskas, along with their three children – Konstantinas, Jonas, and Lidija – lived on their farm in the village of Bralinskai near Raseiniai before the war. In August 1941, two months after the Nazi occupation of Lithuania began, Juozas Ramanauskas saw a young man, around 20 years old, trying to enter their yard. It was Nachum Zolin, a Jewish man from Raseiniai who had managed to escape the mass killings of Jews in Raseiniai and was seeking refuge in the surrounding villages. Juozas Ramanauskas knew the Zolin family, as he had often purchased goods from their store before the war. Juozas offered Nachum shelter on their farm. A hiding place was set up in the Ramanauskas’ farm building, where Nachum was later joined by Shimon and Mejer Levner, also from Raseiniai.
     After a few weeks, the Levner brothers left the hiding place, hoping to find work with local farmers, but they were caught and killed. Meanwhile, another man from Raseiniai, Shmerel Milner, found refuge with the Ramanauskas family. Initially, Shmerel mostly hid in the forests, receiving food and assistance from local farmers he knew. In 1944, other Jews who had escaped from the Kaunas Ghetto joined Nachum and Milner, hiding with the Ramanauskas family.
     Residents of Raseiniai, Aleksandra and Leonas Gyliai, organized the escape of eleven Jews from the Kaunas Ghetto at the request of their former neighbor, Cipora Vinik-Horozhnitsky. The group included Cipora and Mejer Horozhnitsky, Cipora’s sisters Chana Judelevičienė and Sara Britienė, their mother Mina Vinik, Sara’s husband Tuvia Brit, Sonia-Jaffa Ceikinskytė (later married to Nachum Zolin), Becalel Smejatsky, Mejer and Dina Faktorovsky, and Chanoch Glikman.
     Initially, the Gyliai family provided temporary shelter for the fugitives in their home in Raseiniai. However, hiding Jews in the city was extremely dangerous, so Leonas and Aleksandra Gyliai quickly found trustworthy people willing to take in the fugitives. Juozas and Sofija Ramanauskas, living in Bralinskai village near Raseiniai, were among those who offered refuge. Some of the Kaunas Ghetto escapees later found shelter with Anelė Tarapienė in Beržtai village in the Raseiniai district.
     The Ramanauskas and Gyliai families maintained contact throughout the Nazi occupation. At one point, Juozas and Sofija Ramanauskas were sheltering as many as 16 Jews on their farm in Bralinskai village. Aleksandra and Leonas Gyliai regularly provided them with food. When the front line approached Raseiniai, the Gyliai family retreated westward and later settled in the United States.
     As a wealthy farmer, Juozas Ramanauskas endured the repercussions of post-war Soviet occupation, including land confiscation, persecution, and deportation to Soviet labor camps. Juozas never received letters or thanks from the Jews he saved, as he died in 1955, shortly after returning to Lithuania from the labor camps. However, during the Soviet era, letters from the rescued Jews, scattered around the world, reached Juozas’ widow, Sofija. Until her death in 1978, she corresponded with the saved Jews, celebrating their successful lives and those of their children.
     After the war, Nachum and Sonia Zolin emigrated to South Africa, while other rescued Jews settled in Israel. They never forgot their rescuers, and in 1983, at Nachum Zolin’s initiative, the survivors applied to Yad Vashem to recognize Juozas and Sofija Ramanauskas, Aleksandra and Leonas Gyliai, and Anelė Tarapienė and her adult children as Righteous Among the Nations.
     After Lithuania regained independence, Nachum Zolin’s daughter Ester Gur and her husband visited Juozas and Sofija Ramanauskas’ relatives in Vilnius. Together, they visited Nachum Zolin’s childhood home, his parents’ birthplace, and the sites of the Zolin family’s tragic deaths in Raseiniai.