Rescuers of Jews
Žemaitis Vladas
Account of Vladas Žemaitis
“At the beginning of the war,” started Vladas Žemaitis, emeritus teacher of LSSR, “I was put in Lukiškės prison. I remember how our section (about 280 people) was lined up in the yard and told: “We could shoot you, but we won’t. We believe that you can be rehabilitated...” A German, still a fledgling, was reading paragraph after paragraph that we were to follow: we had to be loyal, we had to inform about every hostile step we saw, and we were not to participate in any underground activities. The camp were we had to be rehabilitated was located on Filaretų Street. Military discipline was maintained. We had to pray in the morning and before bed. Even a doctor came once to give a lecture about venereal diseases. Everybody had to work – some of us sewed caps, others were distributed among various institutions. I was appointed to the archive. Of course, this was achieved though another person’s endeavour. When my wife found out that the head of the archive, priest Juozas Stakauskas, was from my hometown of Švenčionys and that we had gone to the same primary school together, she asked him to have me appointed to the archive. I received a certificate and started working. At night, everybody had to return to the camp.
“There was loads of work. Archives captured by the invaders flowed one after another. We realised that we could not cope with the workload by ourselves so the director asked the invaders to give us more assistants. A group of Jews, educated people from the ghetto, were appointed. I remember that two of them were famous radiologists (A. Libo and Epšteinas). We also got additional premises – cold rooms with broken windows. My duty was to do all household work – board the windows with plywood, make shelves for books, hew poles for tomatoes, which we planted in the courtyard of the archive in spring. We received paintings from Smolensk. Those were huge canvases, stacked and framed with unseasoned boards. The canvases were mildewed from the damp timber. We were ordered to dry them and crate them into boxes made of dry boards. We used to put archive material on the floor leaving narrow passages to barred windows. Those were uneasy times. Once our assistants said they wanted to stay there. I advised them to speak to the director. I do not know what they talked about, but the director once said to me that we should save those people.
“Will you report that they want to stay here?” I asked.
“No”, the director shook his head.
“Neither will I,” I said.
Thus, we signed a verdict for ourselves. We started thinking what we could do. We decided to build a partition wall. Fortunately, there was a stack of wood that belonged to the coffin maker’s workshop in the courtyard. One warm day of July, Juozas stood on guard and I carried the balks one by one and passed them to him through a window. The next day, the head of the coffin makers expressed his concerns that someone was stealing their timber, but we pretended we did not hear him. Then we constructed the partition wall and submitted – according to E. Kantorovič – a false draft of the premises. The Nazis came, inspected everything and left. Of course, had they counted the windows indoors and from the outside, they would have seen that the numbers in the plan did not match…
“Unreliable watchmen were another major concern. Director used to put one of them on leave all the time, so he could help his family with the farm works. He would get a leave for a couple of months as soon as he came back... Eventually we employed a reliable keeper – the said Ms. Marija Mikulska. It was she who told me about the old woman’s death. It was horrible news, which gravely aggravated our situation. I put the body on a plank and sent Marija to the Central Archive to inform the director. We tried to figure it out what to do with the body. Obviously, we could not carry it down the street. So we decided to bury it there in the premises of the monastery. We put the body in the bathroom. As mischance would have it, we had just received the Hrodna archive. Each day, a German officer would come to the room where the documents were stored, just beside my room. He would leave in the afternoon, but I would freeze each time listening to his steps while he was walking to the lavatory – what if he steps into the bathroom behind the partition and sees the body? The officer visited me in the workshop several times when I was making a coffin. His father happened to be a woodworker so he enjoyed sitting in my workshop and sometimes would even treat me to some tobacco. When I finished the casket, I used his friendliness and hid the coffin behind scrap paper in the room where he was working, of course, unaware to him. It was Saturday. When the officer and other Nazis, who were working in the archive at that time, had already left, I dug a pit in the middle of the corridor on the ground floor. Director came. We lowered the coffin into the pit, I covered it with soil and put the tiles in their places. The whole next day, I carried the remaining soil to the attic and spread it there. I invited the director to inspect the corridor, but he could not tell where the coffin was...
“Food was supplied by the director. I also carried a sack of beetroots on a sledge once. I carried them boldly; I thought I would say I was taking them to the officers’ club if asked. Everything went smoothly. But nosy neighbours who were all around were another concern.
“What are you carrying? Where are you taking it?” they crowded around me like crows around a bone.
“Director’s request. They are going to cook soup for the staff.”
They believed me. I warned the director about this, and from then on soup for our residents was openly cooked in the kitchen.
“Why does the second chimney smoke at day time? Maybe something is on fire?” Marija was once attacked by a neighbour. She could not invent anything straight away. Then, I came in. The neighbour disappeared through the door and I and Marija conceived and answer.
“Tell her, I fire it up sometimes to keep the stacked paintings dry. Take her upstairs when she comes and show her,” I advised.
We managed to convince the woman.
But the curiosity of other neighbours was endless. They got concerned about an open window on the first floor, and once one of them hurried into the room and said to Marija:
“Who is in there? I saw someone’s face through the bars...”
We discussed this with the director. Then he went outside to the garden where the women were working and started speaking to them. In the mean time, I went to the hideout, opened the window and said something to the director.
“Is that you, Mister?” one of the women came closer upon seeing my face in the window.
“Yes, it’s me, as you can see,” I replied. “The rooms need to be aired and dusted, you know…”
This is how our fugitives lived right until the coming of the Soviet Army to Vilnius. Fortune smiled upon them and us: a bomb fell on the house during the battle, but the part where they lived was not damaged.
I think that it was my duty to do what I did – to oppose the horrible order of the invaders as hard as I could. I escaped death and I wanted others to live too. Of course, I could not have done anything without the consent, help and dedication of the director. He is a wonderful man. We are still friends. World War I had separated us for a long time. Later, Juozas studied abroad, in Vienna. He came back with a doctoral degree. Before the Great Patriotic War, he was the director of Kaunas Archive and later was transferred to Vilnius. But he should tell his story himself. Let’s head for Žasliai...
“As for me, I worked as a senior research assistant in the archive for three years after the war. Later, I switched to teaching. I am retired now,” finished the old man. The fire was already low in the fireplace.
J. Šinkūnaitė, Tiesa, 9 April 1967
“At the beginning of the war,” started Vladas Žemaitis, emeritus teacher of LSSR, “I was put in Lukiškės prison. I remember how our section (about 280 people) was lined up in the yard and told: “We could shoot you, but we won’t. We believe that you can be rehabilitated...” A German, still a fledgling, was reading paragraph after paragraph that we were to follow: we had to be loyal, we had to inform about every hostile step we saw, and we were not to participate in any underground activities. The camp were we had to be rehabilitated was located on Filaretų Street. Military discipline was maintained. We had to pray in the morning and before bed. Even a doctor came once to give a lecture about venereal diseases. Everybody had to work – some of us sewed caps, others were distributed among various institutions. I was appointed to the archive. Of course, this was achieved though another person’s endeavour. When my wife found out that the head of the archive, priest Juozas Stakauskas, was from my hometown of Švenčionys and that we had gone to the same primary school together, she asked him to have me appointed to the archive. I received a certificate and started working. At night, everybody had to return to the camp.
“There was loads of work. Archives captured by the invaders flowed one after another. We realised that we could not cope with the workload by ourselves so the director asked the invaders to give us more assistants. A group of Jews, educated people from the ghetto, were appointed. I remember that two of them were famous radiologists (A. Libo and Epšteinas). We also got additional premises – cold rooms with broken windows. My duty was to do all household work – board the windows with plywood, make shelves for books, hew poles for tomatoes, which we planted in the courtyard of the archive in spring. We received paintings from Smolensk. Those were huge canvases, stacked and framed with unseasoned boards. The canvases were mildewed from the damp timber. We were ordered to dry them and crate them into boxes made of dry boards. We used to put archive material on the floor leaving narrow passages to barred windows. Those were uneasy times. Once our assistants said they wanted to stay there. I advised them to speak to the director. I do not know what they talked about, but the director once said to me that we should save those people.
“Will you report that they want to stay here?” I asked.
“No”, the director shook his head.
“Neither will I,” I said.
Thus, we signed a verdict for ourselves. We started thinking what we could do. We decided to build a partition wall. Fortunately, there was a stack of wood that belonged to the coffin maker’s workshop in the courtyard. One warm day of July, Juozas stood on guard and I carried the balks one by one and passed them to him through a window. The next day, the head of the coffin makers expressed his concerns that someone was stealing their timber, but we pretended we did not hear him. Then we constructed the partition wall and submitted – according to E. Kantorovič – a false draft of the premises. The Nazis came, inspected everything and left. Of course, had they counted the windows indoors and from the outside, they would have seen that the numbers in the plan did not match…
“Unreliable watchmen were another major concern. Director used to put one of them on leave all the time, so he could help his family with the farm works. He would get a leave for a couple of months as soon as he came back... Eventually we employed a reliable keeper – the said Ms. Marija Mikulska. It was she who told me about the old woman’s death. It was horrible news, which gravely aggravated our situation. I put the body on a plank and sent Marija to the Central Archive to inform the director. We tried to figure it out what to do with the body. Obviously, we could not carry it down the street. So we decided to bury it there in the premises of the monastery. We put the body in the bathroom. As mischance would have it, we had just received the Hrodna archive. Each day, a German officer would come to the room where the documents were stored, just beside my room. He would leave in the afternoon, but I would freeze each time listening to his steps while he was walking to the lavatory – what if he steps into the bathroom behind the partition and sees the body? The officer visited me in the workshop several times when I was making a coffin. His father happened to be a woodworker so he enjoyed sitting in my workshop and sometimes would even treat me to some tobacco. When I finished the casket, I used his friendliness and hid the coffin behind scrap paper in the room where he was working, of course, unaware to him. It was Saturday. When the officer and other Nazis, who were working in the archive at that time, had already left, I dug a pit in the middle of the corridor on the ground floor. Director came. We lowered the coffin into the pit, I covered it with soil and put the tiles in their places. The whole next day, I carried the remaining soil to the attic and spread it there. I invited the director to inspect the corridor, but he could not tell where the coffin was...
“Food was supplied by the director. I also carried a sack of beetroots on a sledge once. I carried them boldly; I thought I would say I was taking them to the officers’ club if asked. Everything went smoothly. But nosy neighbours who were all around were another concern.
“What are you carrying? Where are you taking it?” they crowded around me like crows around a bone.
“Director’s request. They are going to cook soup for the staff.”
They believed me. I warned the director about this, and from then on soup for our residents was openly cooked in the kitchen.
“Why does the second chimney smoke at day time? Maybe something is on fire?” Marija was once attacked by a neighbour. She could not invent anything straight away. Then, I came in. The neighbour disappeared through the door and I and Marija conceived and answer.
“Tell her, I fire it up sometimes to keep the stacked paintings dry. Take her upstairs when she comes and show her,” I advised.
We managed to convince the woman.
But the curiosity of other neighbours was endless. They got concerned about an open window on the first floor, and once one of them hurried into the room and said to Marija:
“Who is in there? I saw someone’s face through the bars...”
We discussed this with the director. Then he went outside to the garden where the women were working and started speaking to them. In the mean time, I went to the hideout, opened the window and said something to the director.
“Is that you, Mister?” one of the women came closer upon seeing my face in the window.
“Yes, it’s me, as you can see,” I replied. “The rooms need to be aired and dusted, you know…”
This is how our fugitives lived right until the coming of the Soviet Army to Vilnius. Fortune smiled upon them and us: a bomb fell on the house during the battle, but the part where they lived was not damaged.
I think that it was my duty to do what I did – to oppose the horrible order of the invaders as hard as I could. I escaped death and I wanted others to live too. Of course, I could not have done anything without the consent, help and dedication of the director. He is a wonderful man. We are still friends. World War I had separated us for a long time. Later, Juozas studied abroad, in Vienna. He came back with a doctoral degree. Before the Great Patriotic War, he was the director of Kaunas Archive and later was transferred to Vilnius. But he should tell his story himself. Let’s head for Žasliai...
“As for me, I worked as a senior research assistant in the archive for three years after the war. Later, I switched to teaching. I am retired now,” finished the old man. The fire was already low in the fireplace.
J. Šinkūnaitė, Tiesa, 9 April 1967