spot 1

This empty spot  is a prelude of the sad event which would take place in 1941 in the forest of Ukmerge, called: Pivonijas forest.( I will tell you about this forest later). This empty  spot  is still to be seen  in Kurkliai at the Anyksciai road. After the entrance of the Germans in Kurkliai in 1941, very soon  the Jewish families were taken from their houses and were kept here as a prisoner. They  were imprisoned in a very big and large house, which doesn't exist anymore. After the war it served as a real prison. Nowadays,  it is not to be found anymore, just the spot where the house stood.

spot 2

There was a Jewish young  man, called Srolis, Srolka who found shelter against the Germans in the house of  the parents of Emilija Dudiene, ( the mother-in-law of Angele). He stayed there for four days, but finally he decided to give himself to the Germans. He was taken away and nobody knows what happened to him afterwards.

Emilija told us he prayed a lot and she remembers very well his tefillins (either of two small square leather boxes containing slips inscribed with scriptural passages and traditionally worn on the left arm and on the head by Jewish men during morning weekday prayers ).

He didn’t want to stay, because he didn’t want to endanger the lives of  Emilija’s  parents and her siblings and herself. Once you were caught  ( hiding a Jewish human being), you were shot by the Germans, right away.

house 8

This house reveals an exciting story:

Here at the boundary of Kurkliai, in 1941,  lived an elderly Lithuanian lady whose name was Ona Sniuikaite.

She saw what was happening to the Jews of Kurkliai and decided to act.

She visited family in Kaunas and went to the ghetto in Kaunas. She went to the  factory  where the Germans forced  the Jews to work for them.  She took one of the Jewish youngsters, gave him women’s clothes to wear and distracted the guardians. As a miracle she could get the youngster out of the factory and they went to her house ( the house on the photo) near Kurkliai. She gave him a Lithuanian name, took care of him  and he survived.