Rescuers of Jews

       Kazys Pališkis, a lawyer, originally from a peasant family in Narkūnai village, Gelgaudiškis parish, Šakiai county, and Stefanija Stančikaitė, who was born and raised in Kudirkos Naumiestis in the family of feldsher-midwife Teklė Stančikienė, were married in 1928 in Kudirkos Naumiestis. In 1929 their son Leonas was born, and in 1932, their son Kazimieras. Before the war, the Pališkis family moved to Vilkaviškis, where Kazys Pališkis worked continuously at the Vilkaviškis Court, while his wife Stefanija engaged in charitable activities and was the chairwoman of the Children’s Shelter Committee. As their son Kazimieras later wrote in his memoirs, mother was compassionate; an orphan girl, Bronė Lukoševičiūtė, was taken into our family, and when in 1948 our parents were deported to Igarka, she was taken in by another family.
       In Vilkaviškis, the family of Kazys and Stefanija Pališkis lived at 3 Sodų Street, in the old gymnasium complex, which during Tsarist Russia period served as barracks. Near the town, in Varpininkai village, Kazys Pališkis, as a volunteer freedom fighter, had been granted 5 hectares of land. From the memoirs of Kazimieras Pališkis:
       In the first months of the German occupation, a tiny fair-haired girl, born on December 19, 1939, not yet speaking, appeared in our family. She was secretly baptized Danutė and given the surname Pališkytė. To my parents she became a daughter, and to my brother and me a little sister.
       During those terrible years, as the repressions went on, my parents also sheltered a Jewish woman from Vilkaviškis. In the winter she lived in a darkened room. She was elderly, grey-haired, timid, and depressed. When the weather warmed, she hid in the barn, where a well-camouflaged hiding place had been arranged among the hay.
       But one day my father’s colleagues warned him that the security police had received a denunciation, and we had to expect a search. That very night, my father took the woman we were sheltering to a trusted farmer in the countryside. A few days later, Gestapo men, accompanied by soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets and German shepherd dogs, found her after she had secretly returned from the countryside, terrified to death. All three – her and my parents – were forced into a truck under the barking of dogs and taken away.
       At the time when my parents were arrested, I was at school. Since our house was in the school complex, everyone saw the armed soldiers with dogs. Although I was hiding, I too saw how my parents and that woman were taken away. Later, in Vilkaviškis, Gestapo men interrogated me twice, threatened me with a pistol for false information, and demanded that I tell them about the Jews we were hiding in our home. I told them we were hiding no one.
       Kazys and Stefanija Pališkis were imprisoned in Marijampolė prison. After 6 or 7 months they were released, both returning to Vilkaviškis grey-haired and frail. Colleagues of lawyer Kazys Pališkis, other notable residents of Vilkaviškis, and the Pališkis relatives made great efforts for their release, insisting that the woman arrested in the Pališkis’ outbuilding had ended up there accidentally. It is believed that the Jewish woman arrested together with the Pališkis couple met the same tragic fate as most of her people – she was never seen again.
       Fortunately, just before these fateful events, the Pališkis’ son Kazimieras managed to save little Danutė. At that time, Stefanija Pališkienė’s sister, Marija Stančikaitė, had come from Kaunas to visit the family. Harnessing a horse, Kazimieras Pališkis took his aunt Marija by carriage to the Vilkaviškis train station, and together with her he smuggled out little Danutė hidden in a suitcase. Both fugitives reached Kaunas, and the next day Kudirkos Naumiestis, where Danutė was cared for by Kazimieras’ grandmother, feldsher-midwife Teklė Stančikienė, and her daughter Janina Regina Stančikaitė (later Kremerienė). Under the care of Teklė Stančikienė and her daughter Janina Regina Stančikaitė, Danutė Pališkytė remained in Kudirkos Naumiestis until the end of the Nazi occupation.
       As the front approached, Kazys and Stefanija Pališkis retreated with their children to the countryside, where they awaited the return of the Soviets – and with them new misfortunes. In 1947, their elder son Leonas was sentenced for resistance activities. Then the parents again sent their younger son Kazimieras with Danutė to his grandmother Teklė Stančikienė. A year later, in 1948, Kazys and Stefanija Pališkis were arrested and deported to Igarka. For a while Danutė stayed with her grandmother, and Kazimieras went to live with his aunt Marija Stančikaitė in Kaunas, where in 1951 he graduated from the “Aušra” Gymnasium. After several unsuccessful attempts, Kazimieras was finally admitted to the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, but before the first exams he was expelled. In 1952 he and his little sister Danutė left for Igarka to join their parents. In 1954 the Pališkis family was relocated to Krasnoyarsk Krai, and in 1956 to Dzhezkazgan, where their son Leonas was living. In the words of Kazimieras Pališkis, in this city of copper mines and camps, cruel people mercilessly revealed to Danutė her true origins. She suffered deeply, but continued to regard us as her family for the rest of her life.
       The biological parents of Danutė Pališkytė – Efrat Sobolevičiūtė were murdered in the first days of the Nazi occupation in Vilkaviškis. In 2025, Kazys and Stefanija Pališkis, their son Kazimieras, together with Teklė Stančikienė, Marija Stančikaitė, and Janina Regina Kremerienė (Stančikaitė), were honored with the Life Saviour’s Cross for rescuing Efrat Sobolevičiūtė – Danutė Pališkytė from certain death during the Nazi occupation.