| THE RIGHTEOUS OF LITHUANIA | | People who do good deeds don't blow trumpets or pound on drums about the fact. Such people are the Righteous. Thus it is said about them in the part of the Talmud called the "Mishna".
"Legend has it that thirty-six Righteous persons hold up the world. They in no way differ from ordinary mortals, and they often don't suspect that they are Righteous. But if even one of them was missing from any generation, then human pain would be the undoing even of the souls of the newborn, and people would suffocate in the sea of despair. The Righteous are the heart of humanity, into which, like into a bottomless well, our sufferings gather."
In Lithuania, the Righteous are the people who helped the Jews who faced unavoidable death during the period of the Nazi occupation, simply because they had been born Jewish. In 1953, the State of Israel founded Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Victims' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, and instructed it, in the name of all Jewish people, to grant the title Righteous Among the Nations to the rescuers.
On April 21, another sixteen names from Lithuania were added to the list of Righteous Among the Nations. They are names that Lithuanians can be proud of. The names of the Righteous were officially announced, as per tradition, on Yom a-Shoah (April 21), this time at the Great Aula at Vilnius University. Medals and diplomas were presented to the Righteous by Israeli minister of Social Affairs Isaac Herzog, and ambassador to Lithuania and Latvia Chen Ivri.
It is known that 200,000 (circa 90%) of the Jews living in Lithuania were exterminated during the Second World War. It is unlikely that the killing of the Jews would have reached such a horrendous scale, if local Lithuanian security police and self-defence groups had not assisted the Nazis so zealously and faithfully. The responsibility also lies with Lithuanian public organisations that collaborated with the Nazis and incited anti-Jewish hysteria, thereby affecting people's attitudes and minds. Private individuals willingly betrayed neighbours who sheltered Jewish people. Death awaited those who hid the Jews, as it did those to whom they gave refuge. Official Lithuanian historiography manages to evade such facts.
In Lithuania, the Nazi occupation lasted not a month and not a year, but three years. Each day, the rescuers had to worry about the safety of the people they were helping, share their food, live under constant tension, and be ready any minute to move them to another hiding-place. It lasted for approximately 1,200 days. Sometimes the efforts of many people were needed in order to save even one persecuted victim..
Only highly moral and spiritual people were able to reach out a hand to the dying, and, at great risk to their own lives, save them from inevitable death. The rescuers were truly doing a righteous job, and the ceremony of awarding Yad Vashem medals and diplomas always involves meeting noble representatives of the nation, people whose conscience, honour, and honesty were more precious to them than life itself. It's not likely that they had such thoughts, but they acted according to these principles because they could not do otherwise.
The following is a story of one such rescue. Blacksmith Itzik Gordimer, his wife Sonia, and two young sons ended up in the Šiauliai ghetto. During the "children's aktion" that took place on December 5, 1943, Itzik and Sonia managed to save their children by hiding them in a cellar. But it was clear that they would be killed in the ghetto. Itzik Gordimer therefore turned to Andriejus Kalendra, a farmer, whom, as a blacksmith, he had known, and been friendly with, for many years. The Gordimers were helped by Kalendra's entire family, including his wife Monika, and their five daughters. Gordimer's son Sholom (Simas at the time) lived with the family from November 1943 until the summer of 1945.
Itzik, Sonia, and their other son, Jonas, were taken into the home of Kalendra's friend Antanas Plekavičius, who later took them to Steponas and Marijona Garbačiauskas, who also had five children. Three weeks later the Gordimers were taken to the Vaškis family, where Itzik and Sonia lved until the end of the war. Jonas went to live with Zelma Vaškytė towards the end of the war, and stayed with her until September 1944, when he went back again to the Plekavičius family. Antanas Plekavičius returned their son to Itzik and Sonia when the war ended in 1945.
After the war, the Gordimers emigrated to the USA.
In the mid-1990s, George (Jonas) Gordimer found three of Andriejus Kalendra's daughters, a son of Steponas Garbačiauskas, and the daughter of Antanas Plekavičius. He began to exchange letters with them. According to G.Gordimer, if it hadn't been for the families Kalendra, Plekavičius and Vaškis (including Zelma Vaškytė), it would be hard to imagine how the entire Gordimer family would have survived in 1941-1945.
A fine tradition of involving students as active participants at the ceremony announcing the names of the Righteous has emerged in recent years. This is extremely important in the process of fostering the morality of the younger generations. In the past years, the ceremony has been held at the Kaunas Veršviai Secondary School and at the J.Jablonskis Gymnasium, at the Vilnius Žvėrynas and Užupis gymnasiums, and at the Didždvaris Gymnasium in iauliai. This year, the award ceremony on April 21 was attended by students from a gymnasium in the Vilnius Viršuliškiai region; a concert performed by the school ensemble was well received.
It's strange that the heads of the country do not attend the ceremonies honouring the Righteous Among the Nations. Even Emanuelis Zingeris, chairman of the Commission for the Evaluation of Crimes Committed by Nazi and Soviet Regimes, which organises these ceremonies, does not come to congratulate the Righteous. The Commission's executive director, Ronaldas Račinskas, extends good wishes to the Righteous Among the Nations, on behalf of the Lithuanian state, instead.
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