List of Lithuanian Righteous Among the Nations

Notable Lithuanian righteous

• Petras Baublys, pediatrician. He rescued children from the Kovno Ghetto and housed them in an orphanage.
• Kazys Binkis, writer and his wife Sofija Binkienė. They hid Jews in their house in Kaunas and looked for other hiding places for them. During the German occupation, the Binkis house was informally known as the "Jewish Hotel". After the war, Sofija Binkienė compiled the first more comprehensive book on Jewish rescuers in Lithuania, Ir be ginklo kariai published in 1967.
• Marija and Jeronimas Bukontas, peasants. They saved and adopted Alfonsas Bukontas, the future poet.
• Dainauskas family. They saved Icchokas Meras, the future writer, and his sister. He was helped by multiple people, six of whom were recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations.
• Kazys Grinius, President of Lithuania. In 1942, he submitted a letter of protest against the killing of Lithuanian Jews to the German General Commissariat in Kaunas. In 1941–1942, Grinius sheltered in his home. None of the visitors, who came to see the former president, betrayed Gelpernas.
• Steponas Kairys, signatory of the Act of Independence of Lithuania. Together with his wife Ona, he sheltered a Jewish girl from the Vilnius Ghetto. Eleven-year-old Anusė Keilsonaitė lived with them for almost a year.
• , actress, and her three daughters. They sheltered Ija Taubman as well as several Jewish children.
• Elena Kutorgienė, ophthalmologist. She rescued children from the Kovno Ghetto, hid them, and found more permanent housing for them.
• Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, writer and widow of the painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis with her daughter writer and son-in-law architect. They helped rescue Esther, one-year old daughter of the writer. They worked with Petras Baublys and saved children and others from the Kovno Ghetto.
• Stefanija Ladigienė, member of the Seimas and widow of General Kazys Ladiga. She sheltered Irena Veisaitė, the future theatre scholar.
• Petronėlė Lastienė, teacher and university professor. She helped hide Tamara Lazerson and other students.
• Elena Lukauskienė, chess master. Together with her husband, she helped three Jewish children.
• , doctor, mother of politician Vytautas Landsbergis. She helped 16-year old Bella Gurvich.
• Antanas Macenavičius and his wife Marija. They sheltered Aleksandras Štromas, the future political scientists, for about nine months.
• , physician. He smuggled minors out of the ghetto and arranged their further protection and care.
• Bronislovas Paukštys, priest. He forged birth and baptismal records and helped Jews find a safe hiding place. He saved some 120 Jewish children.
• Kipras Petrauskas, operatic tenor and his wife Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė, actress and writer. They saved Dana Pomeranz-Mazurkevich, the future violinist and professor at Boston University College of Fine Arts.
• Antanas Poška, traveler and anthropologist. During the war, he was a director of a public library in Vilnius and refused to destroy books in Hebrew and Yiddish. He helped Akiva Gerszater, a fellow Esperantist, first by employing him in the library and then hiding him in his home for about ten months.
• , Mayor of Šiauliai. He saved the now famous theater critic,, and his mother.'
• Juozas Rutkauskas, office worker. He got a job in a passport department and helped forge documents saving some 150 Jews. He was executed by the Gestapo in 1944.
• Ona Šimaitė, librarian. She used her professional position of a librarian at Vilnius University to enter the Vilnius Ghetto claiming that she had to collect Jewish books from students. She smuggled food, medicine, documents, letters, money and other necessities into the ghetto and carried out documents and literary work thus helping to preserve Jewish cultural heritage. She became a regular liaison between the two worlds and received help from the writer Kazys Jakubėnas and colleagues at the university. Šimaitė rescued people by looking for shelter for them, and carrying small children in baskets. She managed to hide a young Jew, Tanya Wachsman, in the Vilnius University Library.
• Stasys Sviderskis, leader of a youth camp in Druskininkai. At the start of the Operation Barbarossa, he evacuated about 70 Jewish children to Russia.
• , actress and widow of Kazimieras Venclauskis, and her two daughters. She established a sewing workshop which employed nearly 50 Jewish women. Venclauskienė also hid several Jews.

Non-Lithuanian righteous in Lithuania

• Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda), Polish nun. She hid members of Hashomer Hatzair, a local Zionist group, including Abba Kovner and Abraham Sutzkever.
• Karl Plagge, German engineer, major with the German Army. As a leader of the HKP 562 forced labor camp, he issued work permits to non-essential workers.
• Anton Schmid, Austrian Wehrmacht soldier. He hid Jews in his apartment, obtained work permits to save Jews from the Ponary massacre, transferred Jews in Wehrmacht trucks to safer locations. It is estimated that he saved as many as 300 Jews before his arrest and execution in early 1942.
• Chiune Sugihara, vice consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas. He issued multiple transit visas to Jews. He is the only Japanese person recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations.
• Jan Zwartendijk, Dutch businessman and diplomat. He issued more than 2,000 visas to Curaçao and Dependencies in the West Indies.

Research

Commemoration