rescuers of jews

Antanas RAGAUSKAS Ona RAGAUSKIENĖ Ruth Kron was born into the family of Meyer Kron and Gita Shifman in Šiauliai in 1936. At the start of the war, in August, the Kron family were jailed in the ghetto together with other Šiauliai Jews. On 5 November 1943, children up to the age of 13 and all disabled adults were transported to Auschwitz and massacred. That time 733 children and 92 adults perished. The four-year-old Tamara Kron was among them. Ruth was quiet and silent in the conditions of the ghetto, unlike her sister Tamara who had been restless and nervous. She had often woken up in the night and cried loudly. The seven-year-old Ruth was successfully hidden during the action. In that situation the parents did not have much choice, since already before the action they had found out that their old acquaintance Jonas Jocas could only hide one child. Nevertheless, they had a sense of foreboding that Tamara’s death was not yet all. Therefore, the following morning Gita Kron and Ruth pushed their way into the column which was being sent to work. There were several adults surrounding them on all sides, and the guards did not notice the girl. Mrs. Kron and Ruth hid in the factory behind some sacks of glue and chemicals. They had to spend several days there, the stench was unbearable, and rats raced around their feet. One night Jocas came and took the girl, while her mother returned to the ghetto. The following morning Jocas led the girl to Doctor Jasaitis. Then Ruth was taken in by Ona Ragauskienė as her daughter. The woman brought her to the village of Amaliai where her husband Antanas was a teacher. Ruth spoke good Lithuanian, but nevertheless it was evident that it was not her native tongue. For a month or two she was hidden from strangers. Afterwards, they invented a sorrowful story about the serious illness of Ona’s sister in Kaunas, whose daughter they had to take in. Early one morning, Ruth secretly left home, and returned in the evening. Thus one more girl turned up in the Ragauskas’ home; they already had a daughter, Regina, of the same age. Ruth was quick to learn: ghetto children matured quickly. If a stranger addressed her, she answered only when encouraged to by the Ragauskas. The girl spent a year at the farm. On 16 October 1944 the Nazis were driven out of the city and her parents came to collect her. From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 3,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 2005