Rescuers of Jews

Marija DAGILIENĖ Antanas DAGILIS Before the war, Elena Bermanaitė (Lena Berman) was a student at the Aušros gymnasium for girls in Kaunas. Religion here was taught by the gymnasium chaplain canon Stankevičius. Elena's parents were shot in the Kaunas Ghetto, she managed to escape. Canon Stankevičius, who took care of the girl, sent her to the nuns in Pažaislis. Later he asked priest Pranciškus Leonas, the dean of Garliava, to settle her at a home of reliable parishioners, In autumn 1943, priest P.Leonas took her to the Dagiliai. The farmstead of the Dagiliai was in Jonučiai village, quite close to Garliava. Marija Dagilienė, an ordinary farmer, never went to school, and learned to read and write all by herself. Before the war she took part in the activities of the Society of the Catholic Women of Lithuania, personally knew Vaižgantas. Marija Dagilienė was a deeply religious woman and took wholehearted care of the girl who succeeded in escaping from the ghetto. When their closest neighbours began harboring a suspicion that “the Dagiliai are hiding a Jew”, Marija Dagilienė found another place for Elena. Later Elena Bermanaitė went to the partisans in the woods of Kazlų Rūda and met the end of the war there. From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 1,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1997