rescuers of jews

Galina JACKEVIČIŪTĖ “Rachilė was the daughter of the actor Izraelis Segalis. “Liolka” Segalis worked in the Šiauliai drama theatre and had many Lithuanian friends. My mother told me that on a pay day each actor would drop by the receptionist's room and everybody would put as much money as they could in a cardboard shoe box. Later Segalis found ways to take it. Once having met my mother in Pohulianka, he asked her to shelter his daughter. It was becoming dangerous in the ghetto. Mother rented a room near the theatre, in Vivulskio Street. That was where the teenaged girl moved. She stayed there for about half a year – could not bear it any longer. The landlords of the flat, Poles, were involved in active conspiratory activities, and the Gestapo might knock on the door any day or night – which eventually happened. The girl was sheltered by other people, and later hidden by still others. In 1961, Izraelis Segalis wrote in a letter to Galina Jackevičiūtė:
“I will never forget your help to Rachilė in rescuing her from death; you were risking so much there and then.' Monika Mironaitė has not forgotten Izraelis Segalis either. “Yes,” she said, “I often met him in the street, I would stop, step down from the pavement on the cobble and we would chat for a while.” There are so many ways man can save his and strengthen the other's soul. At that time Izraelis Segalis was deprived of the right to walk on the pavements of Vilnius. Our great actress would make a step down, and this meant being in the same line with the despised and the persecuted; at the same moment she would reach the same height like the King of Denmark, who fastened the David's star on his jacket.” Pranas Morkus

From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 1,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1997