Jonaitis Henrikas

Jonaitis, Henrikas On the eve of the German invasion of Lithuania, Henrikas Jonaitis (b. 1913) lived in Wilno (Vilnius) and taught physics in one of the city’s schools. In the past, Jonaitis had gone to medical school in Kaunas, where he met and made friends with a Jewish student named Gutman. Several weeks after the German-Soviet war broke out, when Jonaitis became aware of the harsh situation of the Jews of Lithuania, he located Gutman who, in the meantime, had managed to escape from the Kaunas ghetto. Gutman was in a temporary hiding place, and when Jonaitis saw that the hiding place was not safe, he moved his friend to the home of his sister’s family in a remote village. From that time onward, Jonaitis looked after Gutman, and whenever danger threatened, he moved him to a different hiding place. At the same time, Jonaitis was helping the families of his Jewish students who had been interned in the Wilno ghetto. Disguised as a health inspector, Jonaitis would enter the ghetto and give the people he knew food and clothing, helping them as much as he could. After the war, Jonaitis became a professor of mathematics and physics in Vilnius University, and provided material assistance to the Jewish students whose parents or relatives had perished in the Holocaust. On November 25, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Henrikas Jonaitis as Righteous Among the Nations.