Ona Šimaitė

Memorial plaque in Vilnius

Ona Šimaitė ( January 6, 1894 in Akmenė - January 17, 1970 in Paris ) was a Lithuanian librarian from Vilnius University who used her position to help and save Jews during the Holocaust .

She was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations on March 15, 1966 .

life and work

After completing her education in Moscow, Šimaitė became a librarian at Vilnius University in 1940. After the invasion of the Nazi troops, the start of the mass shootings and the establishment of the Vilnius ghetto in 1941, she began to go into the ghetto and smuggle food into it for the starving residents under the pretext of securing library books from Jewish students. In addition, she did not hesitate to bring in small arms and remove important documents. She was later assisted by the Lithuanian writer Kazys Boruta . Over the next three years she became an important postman for the ghetto inmates, often their only means of contact with the outside world. She also organized the creation of false identities, temporary refuges for Jews who had escaped, and hiding places for Jewish children in the countryside.

In April 1944 she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. She was deported to the Dachau concentration camp and later to an internment camp in France. After the liberation by the Allies, Šimaitė remained in France, except for the period from 1953 to 1956, when she lived in Israel. She also worked as a librarian in France.

Web link

• Rescue Story - Šimaitė, Ona on the Yad Vashem website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yad Vashem: http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/righteousName.html?language=en&itemId=4017488. Retrieved September 29, 2018 .