Rescuers of Jews

    Jonas and Marcelė Labanauskas, who lived in the village of Dubiniai in the Luokė district during the war years, sheltered a young Jewish girl named Sara until the autumn of 1944.
    As recalled by the youngest daughter of the Labanauskas family, Teodora, who witnessed those events, Sara arrived at their home in the summer of 1943 carrying only a small bundle in her hands. On the very day Sara came to the Labanauskas household, government officials had arrived to inspect grain quotas. Fortunately, the girl immediately entered the room where only Marcelė Labanauskienė was at a time. Marcelė quickly led her to a small barn and told about her to her husband and older children only several days later. The younger children were told that the girl’s name was Stasė.
    Jonas and Marcelė Labanauskas had six children in total: three daughters – Jadvyga, Uršulė, and Teodora – and three sons – Aloyzas, Kazys, and Jonas. Jonas and Jadvyga worked on the farm, Kazys was already a student at the Agricultural Academy, Uršulė had graduated from the Telšiai Vocational School and qualified as a seamstress, while the younger children herded cows and geese. All of the Labanauskas children contributed to the farm work as much as they could. Although Sara was carefully hidden from public view, for safety reasons the Labanauskas son Kazys temporarily took her to trusted neighbors – Mrs. Šiukštienė and the Padvalskis family.
    After the war, when Soviet rule was established, the family of the prosperous farmers Jonas and Marcelė Labanauskas suffered the fate shared by many Lithuanians. In 1948, Jonas, Marcelė, and their son Aloyzas were deported to Siberia. Two of the Labanauskas sons, Jonas and Kazys, along with their daughter Uršulė, fled to the West. Jadvyga Dapšienė (née Labanauskaitė) was already married, and together with the youngest daughter Teodora remained in Lithuania.
    In a Lithuanian refugee camp in Wiesbaden, the children of Jonas and Marcelė Labanauskas were found by the Sara they had rescued. After the war, Sara married and became Sara Abramovich. Together with her husband, she fled through Poland – first to Germany and later to the United States. Sara Abramovich spoke very warmly about Marcelė and Jonas Labanauskas, who had saved her life, and for some time corresponded with the Labanauskas daughter Uršulė Ilgūnas, who lived in the United States.
    Marcelė and Jonas Labanauskas returned from exile in 1958 and lived in Utena with their daughter Teodora Sukarevičienė until the end of their lives.