rescuers of jews
Smilgevičienė Domicelė
Baltramiejus PAGOJUS (1897–1992)
Domicėlė SMILGEVIČIENĖ (1904–1958)
Zenonas SMILGEVIČIUS (1906–1973)
Domicėlė Pagojutė took care of the little Jehoshua and Chaim Shochot from Telšiai throughout the war. Eight year–old Jehoshua-Stasiukas was taken to Domicėlė and Zenonas Smilgevičius who lived together with Domicėlė’s brother Baltramiejus Pagojus in Vilkai village in the Telšiai District.
Jehoshua Shochot remembers:
I felt great in that family, I was treated as if I was their own child... Soon I became friends with Vytautas, the son of Zenonas Smilgevičius, he was a few years younger than me. Zenonas’s wife who was actually the head of the farm, was especially nice to me. I remember well how she used to give me freshly milked milk. She would give me that kind of milk and say that it is very healthy to drink it...
Like in all families, in the village everybody did what they could. I also worked. One of my jobs was to collect the stones from the fields after the field was sowed and harrowed but the crops were still not sprouted. After the war when I lived in Telšiai and we were sometimes visited by Baltramiejus, he would always say when meeting me that the pile of stones I collected was still there and when he sees it, he remembers me…