rescuers of jews

Juozas Zabielavičius was born and spent his childhood in the small town of Virbalis (Vilkaviškis District), near the border with Germany. Among his childhood friends was Liza (later Lifshitz), the daughter of a Jewish family living in the town. The two remained friends even after they each married and had children. In the fall of 1941, a few months after the German occupation of Lithuania, Juozas moved to Kaunas and searched for Liza. He found her and her family confined in the Kaunas ghetto. He gave Liza his address in Kaunas and offered his help whenever she'll need it. Liza and her husband, Yakov Lifshitz, had already wanted to entrust their six-year-old daughter, Pesia (Pepa) to Juozas but the child refused to separate from her parents. Pesia remained in the ghetto until the end of the "children action" (Kinderaktion) on March 27, 1944, which she survived. At the end of that Aktion, the child asked her parents to send her to Juozas. In that period, Juozas was working at the dairy factory “Pienocentras“ in Kaunas, while his wife and, he brought the child to his familiar the Pajaujis family, who lived in Kaunas, Donelaicio Str. The Pajaujis family sheltered the girl for some time. When it became dangerous to keep the girl in this place Juozas Zabielavičius took her and transfered her to Virbalis where his wife with children and his parents lived at that time.
When the Soviet advance drew near the area, the Zabielavičius family was forced to move to Germany, and took Pepa with them. Until the end of the war, she had no information about the fate of her family.
When the Zabielavičius family returned to Lithuania, Pepa was reunited with her mother. Her father had not survived. In the 1970s, Pepa (later Sharon) and her mother Liza (later Rozen) emigrated to Israel.