Matulevičienė Ona

Matulevičienė, Ona Ona Matulevičienė lived in the village of Saulėnai near the town of Simnas, Alytus County, with her four children, Sebestinas, Juozas, Vladas and Petronėlė. On the cold evening of October 11, 1941, Matulevičienė came across the brothers Abel and Joseph Weinstein near her barn. These two young men had been wandering for a time among the villages searching for shelter. Matulevičienė, a very poor woman, offered the two to stay in her barn. She let them bathe, exchanging their filthy clothes for clean ones. During the severe winter frosts, Abel and Joseph found refuge in the house, even though the Germans were conducting searches for Jews hiding in the village. To make sure their presence would not be discovered, Matulevičienė enlisted the help of her children, who warned the Jews whenever they saw suspicious characters approaching the farmyard. Nine months later, because of a rumor that spread in the village about Jews in hiding, the Weinstein brothers were forced to leave the Matulevičius family. They continued to wander from place to place and occasionally came back to the Matulevičiuses. After the war, the rescued immigrated to Israel, where Abel Weinstein (later Aba Gefen) published his wartime diary, Hope in Darkness. Many warm words of that diary were dedicated to Ona Matulevičienė. On July 4, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Ona Matulevičienė as Righteous Among the Nations.