About the rescuer and the rescue story

Elena Umbrasienė, born in 1897, resided in the village of Keršeniškiai, Molėtai County, and managed a big farm. She became widowed in 1931 and was raising her sons, Algirdas and Stasys, alone. In the summer of 1942 Elena’s brother Klemensas Kaušinis came with his children from Kaunas for summer holidays. The kids’ nanny came with them. That was a young Jewish woman Raya Judelevich, who pretended to be a Lithuanian. Raya’s family members ran away from the Kaunas ghetto and all lived with false documents, supported by their non-Jewish friends. Klemensas told his sister the truth about the nanny’s origin. Elena treated the Jewish woman with warmth and respect throughout the summer, until Raya and Klemensas’s sons moved to their other aunt, Ona. Next summer Klemensas visited Keršeniškiai again, this time together with Isaak Judelevich, Raya’s husband. Isaak needed shelter and Elena welcomed him to stay with her family. He was settled in a guest room, which became his home until January 1944. Isaak was hardly ever seen outside his room and the Umbrases assumed no one knows about his existence. But apparently someone spotted Isaak during his night walks in the garden and rumors spread that Elena was hosting a stranger. In order to secure Isaak and herself Elena transferred him to her friends, the Vitkauskases, residents of the village of Mindunai. Rachelė Vitkauskienė was a widow and had children. Together they owned a farmstead situated on the Birutes Island, in the eastern part of the Siesartis Lake. Rachelė’s grown-up sons Povilas and Juozas built a hideout in a lumber room and cared for Isaak’s needs in the months that followed. In June 1944 they were denounced: a group of policemen headed by a German officer searched the farmstead and arrested Povilas and Juozas together with Isaak. The Jewish man was sent to Panevėžys prison, while his rescuers were beaten and imprisoned in Utena, waiting to be publicly executed. They both managed to flee and were hidden by friends and relatives until the day the Red Army entered the area. Isaak Judelevich also survived.