Testimony of Leopoldas Girbudas:
I write to you my memoirs about my father doctor Petras Girbudas (Veblauskas). My father’s activities concerning saving the people of Jewish nationality were described by Šlioma Kurliandčikas in the book “Unarmed Fighters” in great detail and accuracy. I knew all the people who have contributed to the rescuing of the Jews. Everything is true. The main organisers of the rescuing of the Jews were my father doctor Petras Girbudas (Veblauskas) and Kolainiai priest Polikarpas Macijauskas. The most dangerous work was done by Alfonsas Songaila, resident of Labūnavėlė. Everybody used to call him Alfa. He would take a carriage pulled by horses to Šiauliai and secretly take the Jews from the Šiauliai Ghetto to Užventis, to our home or to Kolainiai parsonage.
From here, Alfonsas Songaila or other people would take the fugitives to their farmsteads. Those were mostly remote places overgrown with bushes and forests, located further from the main roads. Those good people, who were not afraid to risk their lives and the lives of their children, were chosen by my father or Polikarpas Macijauskas. They would be warned in advance that the Jews were coming. The fugitives would be taken to those farmsteads by Alfa or the steward of the dean, whose name I can not recall. I only know that he was Polish and had escaped from the captivity of Germans. Alfonsas Songaila himself could tell more about those trips. Those hard times and trials damaged the good man’s health. I remember how one late summer he came to our home to see my father – his face was all bruised, blue, swollen and bloody.
Father gave him first aid and treated him. I was born on 19 July 1932. I was only 10 years old in 1942 when those events took place. Therefore, I was not able to offer any considerable help to the fugitives. The only thing I could do was to keep silent and not to tell my peers what I saw, what I knew and what was happening in our home. The only ‘heroic deed’ that I did was taking urgent messages from my father to the priest when Alfa was not around. Those were short messages written in Latin in big capital letters with no address or signature. I would hide the notes in my sock. Then I would take my bike, my fishing rod, a linen bag with earthworms and a little sandwich, and go “fishing” to Lake Kolainiai. Thus, it was always obvious to all passers-by were I was going. I would go to the parsonage kitchen and say I came to see the priest. The maid knew me. The priest would show up and take me to a small room with a bed, a cross and a musical instrument resembling a piano. Then I would take the note out of my sock and give it to the priest. He would read it, burn it in an ashtray, write a new one, bless me and let me go home.
This was all the “help” I could offer. There were two such visits. Alfa was the main contact between my father and the priest. This is all I can say about that period.
From Leopoldas Girbudas’ letter to the museum dated 16 November 2004
