Brothers Hirsh and Gedalia Schneider and their friend Shlomo Lemelman (later Saul Leyman), having been warned by a Christian woman in the autumn of 1941, just before the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashanah, about the planned massacre of the Jews, fled their native village of Šalčininkėliai to the village of Žlaugtai near Akmenynė, where they sought refuge with their old acquaintances, the Voronecki family. The head of the family, Josif (Józef) Voronecki, his wife Marija, and their four children – Viktoras, Jelena, Bronislava, and Sofija, aged between 13 and 22 – did not hesitate to take in the fugitives. The Voroneckis lived on the edge of the village, beside a forest. Every member of the family worked on their 12-hectare farm, tending livestock and living off what they cultivated themselves.
     Two hiding places were prepared for the refugees: one in the attic and another beneath the barn floor, from which a tunnel had been dug leading to the nearby forest so that those in hiding could escape if necessary. A few days later, another Schneider brother, Gershon, arrived. He had escaped from the forest, where the Nazis and their local collaborators had forced him and other Jewish men to dig a pit in preparation for the execution of the Jews.
     Soon the young men learned that all of their closest relatives had been murdered. The modest farmstead of Josif and Marija Voronecki became home to brothers Hirsh, Gershon, and Gedalia Schneider, as well as Shlomo Lemelman, for three years – until the summer of 1944. To prevent the neighbours from suspecting that the Voronecki were hiding Jews, Josif bought food in other villages. The family owned only one cow, but knowing that those they were sheltering kept kosher, they gave all of the dairy products to them.
     On one occasion, the Nazis, suspecting that the Voroneckis were hiding Jews, arrested the eldest son, Viktoras, and tortured him in an attempt to force him to reveal their whereabouts. They beat him with rifle butts in the very same barn beneath whose floor the young Jewish men were hiding, but Viktoras did not betray them.
     After the war, the Schneider brothers and Shlomo Lemelman emigrated to Canada and the United States, but they remained in contact with the Voronecki family. In 2000, Sofija Prokopovič (née Voroneckaja), accompanied by her granddaughter Olga, visited the United States, where she met Saul Leyman, Nechama Schneider, the widow of Gedalia Schneider, and the descendants of those who had been rescued.
     In 2000, Josif Voronecki, Marija Voroneckaja, Bronislava Voroneckaja-Labul, Sofija Voroneckaja-Prokopovič, Jelena Voroneckaja-Sinkevič, and Viktoras Voroneckis were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. By decision of the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute, their names are included in the list of Polish Righteous Among the Nations.