Rescuers of Jews

     During the war, Ona and Petras Tarnauskas lived in the village of Vytėnai (now the villages of Pilis I and Pilis II, Jurbarkas District) together with their daughter Ona Tarnauskaitė, born in 1924.
     The Tarnauskas family's elder daughter, Marytė Andrijonienė (née Tarnauskaitė), born in 1916, was married during the war and lived in her husband's native village of Kartupėnai, Jurbarkas District. In the first days of the Nazi occupation, in June 1941, another daughter of the Tarnauskas family, Verutė, was killed together with her husband and their young child during the bombing of Kaunas.
     In June 1941, the German army occupied the Jurbarkas district. The persecution of the Jews began immediately. They were driven from their homes and, at different times, executed in various locations throughout the district. Among one such group of Jews being marched to their execution was Hendal Frankytė (Frankaitė)-Smolienė. As testified by Angelė Žičkuvienė, granddaughter of Ona and Petras Tarnauskas, the Frank family was well known to the local people. They lived in the village of Žvyriai, in a long house on what is now Nemuno Street, opposite the so-called Skirsnemunė Evangelical Lutheran Church. The family kept a shop in their home. Many neighbours, especially after church services, would stop by the little shop. The family was known as decent and friendly people.
     From the testimony of Salomėja Klimavičienė, daughter of Ona Šipailienė (née Tarnauskaitė): By some miracle, Frankaitė managed to escape from the group of people condemned to death. She hid among the logs on the bank of the Nemunas River and remained there until nightfall. That night, she came to Vytėnai and asked my grandparents, Ona and Petras Tarnauskas, to take her in. They agreed because they knew her. My grandmother was also a deeply religious woman, and I believe that the grief she still carried over the recent death of her daughter in Kaunas also moved her to save another human life. At the same time, my grandparents understood the enormous risk of hiding a Jewish woman in their home, so they decided to take her temporarily to the abandoned cemetery of a former manor estate, about a kilometre away on a hill overlooking the Nemunas. The cemetery had long been overgrown and deserted, and no one visited it anymore. There were several abandoned chapels there with underground vaults where it was possible to hide. That is where Frankaitė took refuge. As my mother used to say, she hid in a bunker. Under the cover of darkness, my mother secretly brought her food every night.
     After the front and the main German forces had moved eastward and the cold weather began to set in, Frankaitė-Smolienė became increasingly afraid of remaining alone in the cemetery. The Tarnauskas family therefore decided to hide her in their own home. Everyone in the household called her Ona. She spent her days indoors and never went out into the yard. Whenever the family's dog began barking, she would retreat to the back of the house to make sure that no one could see her.
     From the testimony of Salomėja Klimavičienė: Towards the end of the war, Frankaitė no longer lived with my grandparents for a time because she became pregnant. On 10 July 1944, she gave birth to a son, who was later named Antanas. After giving birth, Frankaitė returned to my grandparents' home and to my mother. She had nothing with her. Once again, my grandparents took her and the baby into their home.<...>
     <...> The front was moving westward. On 9 October 1944, the Soviet army occupied Jurbarkas and the surrounding area. Under Soviet rule, Frankaitė no longer had to remain in hiding. She travelled to Kaunas, where she sold chickens and ducks and brought back soap and other goods. She made the journey about three times. After one such trip, however, she never returned. Only later did my grandparents and my mother learn that the lorry carrying potatoes in which she had been travelling had been involved in an accident on the hill near Vilkija, and that she had been killed. She was crushed beneath the sacks of potatoes. It happened at the beginning of 1945. She was identified by the clothes she had been given.
     Frankaitė's little son, Antanas, remained with the Tarnauskas family. At first, they considered entrusting him to a childless Jewish family, but the boy was very frail. He suffered from rickets and was unable to walk, so they decided to raise him themselves. Following her mother's advice, Onutė Tarnauskaitė gathered various medicinal herbs in which she bathed the child and also prepared herbal remedies for him to drink. Thanks to her care, the boy survived. Salomėja Klimavičienė recalled that her mother, Ona Šipailienė (née Tarnauskaitė), used to say that they had been through hell together. Later, little Antaniukas, as we called him, would tell her, “When I grow up, I'll buy you a golden dress.” He was devoted to my mother and always helped her with everything. As an adult, he really did give her a gold ring...
     In 1946, Ona Tarnauskaitė married Albinas Šipaila. Albinas and Ona Šipaila raised Antanas as their own child and cared for him. According to his documents, he became Antanas Gedeminas Frankaitis (in later documents, Gediminas Frankaitis), the son of Albinas. In 1949, the Soviet authorities deported Albinas Šipaila to Siberia as a political prisoner. Ona Šipailienė was left with her two young children, born in 1947 and 1948, and together with her mother, Ona Tarnauskienė, also continued to care for little Antanas.
     In 1956, Albinas returned home from exile in Magadan. In 1957, Albinas and Ona's third child, Salomėja Šipailaitė (now Klimavičienė), was born.
     Antanas Frankaitis completed training as an electrician in Vievis, where he met his future wife, Veronika. They later settled in Vilnius. Antanas died in 2004, and Veronika Frankaitienė in 2006. Antanas and Veronika Frankaitis had two daughters, Neringa and Birutė.
     From the testimony of Neringa Rapkauskienė (née Frankaitytė): I am able and wish to testify to the circumstances described below, which I know personally and from the stories told by my father, Antanas Gediminas Frankaitis, and my mother, Veronika Frankaitienė.
     My father, Antanas Gediminas Frankaitis, born on 10 July 1944, told me that he was Jewish, an orphan, and a very sickly child. He often said that he had survived only because of the woman he called his grandmother, who took him in, treated him, and nursed him back to health. He was referring to Ona Tarnauskienė, who lived in the village of Vytėnai, Jurbarkas District. She cared for him together with her daughter, Ona Šipailienė. My father survived only because of their care. I know nothing about my father's biological parents, my true grandparents. My mother, Veronika Frankaitienė, also told me that my father was of Jewish origin.
     I know that during the Soviet period my parents received a letter from abroad – from people with the surname Frank who wished to re-establish family ties. However, because of the circumstances at the time, my parents did not reply to the letter.<...>
     As a child, I spent my summers in the village of Vytėnai mentioned above (now the villages of Pilis I and Pilis II), with the family of Ona Šipailienė. Her husband, Albinas Šipaila, taught me how to drive a horse-drawn cart and many other useful things. Grandmother Ona taught me how to milk a cow. They took very good care of me.
     Hendal Frankaitė's relatives were murdered in the Jurbarkas district in the summer of 1941. Her husband, Elijas Aronas Smolis, whom she had married in Skirsnemunė in 1939, was, according to the available information, arrested and beaten by the local police at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. Somehow, he later ended up in the Kaunas Ghetto. During the liquidation of the Kaunas Ghetto in 1944, he was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp and subsequently transferred to the Natzweiler concentration camp, where he is believed to have perished.
     In 2026, Ona and Petras Tarnauskas and their daughter Ona Šipailienė (née Tarnauskaitė) were awarded the Life Saving Cross.