Rescuers of Jews

     Vincas and Ona Janušauskas lived in the city of Šiauliai. In 1938, their son fell in love and wanted to marry a Jewish girl, Bela Zelinski. Bela’s parents opposed the marriage but gave their daughter permission when Vincas converted to Judaism. In 1939, the young couple had a daughter, Chana, who was deeply loved by her grandparents on both the Jewish and Lithuanian sides.
     When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Bela’s husband was conscripted into the Red Army and later died in combat. Bela, her little daughter, her parents, and other relatives were forced to move to the ghetto. Ona and Vincas Janušauskas supported them in the ghetto, throwing food parcels over the ghetto fence, despite the strict prohibition.
     Seeing the dire conditions of life in the ghetto, the Janušauskas family urged Bela to entrust little Chanele to their care. The girl was handed over before the Germans carried out their first operation to murder Jewish children ("Kinderaktion") on November 5, 1943. After this operation, Bela was approached by her acquaintance, Frida Kirkelienė, who knew about Bela’s family ties to non-Jews and assumed her daughter might be safe. Frida begged Bela to help save her two-year-old daughter, Reizel, the youngest of her three children. It was agreed that Reizel would be hidden under Bela’s coat and handed over to Ona Janušauskienė as Bela went to work outside the ghetto.
     This plan was carried out successfully, and little Reizel was entrusted to the care of Ona’s sister, Elena Jokubaitienė. Together with her husband Vincas, Elena sheltered the girl until 1945. Despite their attachment to the child, they eventually had to give her up when her father, who had survived Dachau concentration camp, returned to claim her.
     In July 1944, on the eve of the Šiauliai ghetto’s liquidation, Bela and her future husband, Menashe Galperin, escaped the ghetto and found refuge with the Janušauskas family, thus surviving the war. For a time after the war, Bela, her daughter Chana (later Anna Zlotak), and Menashe Galperin lived in Lithuania. In 1972, the family repatriated to Israel and later emigrated to the United States.
     On January 2, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Vincas and Ona Janušauskas as Righteous Among the Nations.

From Jecheckel Galperin’s letter, August 17, 2004:

     I was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, and went through all the circles of Nazi hell: the Šiauliai ghetto (first in Kaukazas, later in Ežeras-Trakai), deportation to Stutthof in 1944, and later to Dachau. In 1945, I was liberated by the Americans.

     I want to say that the Janušauskas couple truly deserve the title of Righteous Among the Nations. They did much good for the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto. I remember how Ona risked her life to throw food parcels over the fence—I saw this many times because we lived in the Kaukazas ghetto near the fence and the main Vilnius Street, and it was visible from our window.

     I also know (from my brother and his wife) that the Janušauskas family saved two babies, Chana and Reizel, during the 1943 Aktion when all children, the elderly, and the sick were taken to their deaths.

     During that Aktion, my father, Pinchas Galperin, who was blind but otherwise healthy, was murdered. When we, the youth, returned to the ghetto from work at the Frenkel factory that evening, we found a note from my father, written in large letters (since he was blind), describing his fate. I have diverged from the topic, forgive me, but this memory lives within me...

     The Janušauskas family also saved my brother and his wife—Menashe and Bela Galperin—when they escaped the ghetto on the eve of its liquidation.