Rescuers of Jews
Palčinskas Alfonsas
Marija PALČINSKIENĖ and Antanas PALČINSKAS,
Stasys PALČINSKAS
Alfonsas PALČINSKAS
“...I had not the right to be born. It was then that my fair-haired granny, with her roots in a Lithuanian village, told my mother, a Jew, the following: “Don't kill. The war will soon be over and we shall have a grandchild...”
However, the war did not come to an end so soon. I was hidden in a wardrobe and in a linen basket, because my weakest cry could end in the execution of our whole family. It was that extremely rare case when the mother-in-law tried to save her daughter-in-law putting the lives of her own children at risk... My uncle, the youngest of Palčinskai sons, was twenty-one then. However, he, like the rest of the family, chose the path of a saver. It is strange, but my father seldom mentioned those terrible days. Only that last time, lying on his deathbed exhausted by illness, he seized my mother's hand and cried out: “Take our child and run”. Then, in post-war Kaunas, maybe he saw in his dream the ghetto sentry, whom he managed to bribe with fifty cigarettes to be able to pass some food to his acquaintances and strangers, there, behind the barbed wire...”
Violeta Palčinskaitė
From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 1,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1997
Stasys PALČINSKAS
Alfonsas PALČINSKAS
“...I had not the right to be born. It was then that my fair-haired granny, with her roots in a Lithuanian village, told my mother, a Jew, the following: “Don't kill. The war will soon be over and we shall have a grandchild...”
However, the war did not come to an end so soon. I was hidden in a wardrobe and in a linen basket, because my weakest cry could end in the execution of our whole family. It was that extremely rare case when the mother-in-law tried to save her daughter-in-law putting the lives of her own children at risk... My uncle, the youngest of Palčinskai sons, was twenty-one then. However, he, like the rest of the family, chose the path of a saver. It is strange, but my father seldom mentioned those terrible days. Only that last time, lying on his deathbed exhausted by illness, he seized my mother's hand and cried out: “Take our child and run”. Then, in post-war Kaunas, maybe he saw in his dream the ghetto sentry, whom he managed to bribe with fifty cigarettes to be able to pass some food to his acquaintances and strangers, there, behind the barbed wire...”
Violeta Palčinskaitė
From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 1,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1997