Anužis Ignas & Anužienė Elena

Anužis, Ignas Anužienė, Elena Anužis, Česlovas Anužienė, Elena Ignas and Elena Anužis were residents of Kaunas who went to live in Wilno (today, Vilnius) after the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR in mid-1940. Before the 1917 revolution, Ignas had served as an officer in the Czarist army of the Russian Empire. Subsequently he dealt in trade and under the German occupation, he worked as a cashier. His wife Elena gave private music lessons. In 1943, the couple gave shelter to Hasya Grin (later, Geselevich), a young Jewish woman from the town of Širvintai (Ukmergė District). Hasya had been hiding under a false identity with Polish nuns. The nuns feared that her true identity had been discovered and for this reason they sent her to the Anužis family. Hasya hid for several months in their two-room apartment in the old city of Wilno. Even though she had identity papers with a Lithuanian name, she left the house only in cases of emergency such as, for instance, when she learned of impending searches. In such cases, Hasya would travel to Kaunas to Česlovas Anužis, her benefactors' son, and would stay with him and his wife Elena for a few weeks. Česlovas and Elena had a baby and Hasya played the role of a "cousin" who had come to help the young parents take care of the infant. Once the danger was past, Hasya would return to Wilno. Hasya learned that Ignas and Elena had helped two more Jewish girls who had escaped from the Vilna ghetto by obtaining forged identity cards and sending them to an acquaintance in Lida, Belarus. When the front drew near to Wilno, the rescuers decided to leave Lithuania because they feared that the Soviets would take revenge on Ignas who was identified with the White Russians who had fought in the past against the Bolsheviks. Hasya also left the city and until its liberation on July 14, 1944, she stayed in a rural area near the border with Latvia under a false identity. When she returned to Wilno, she did not find anybody from herbenefactors' family. In time, Hasya immigrated to Israel and only in the 1990s, on a visit to the U.S.A., did she locate Anužis' descendants in Detroit. On August 7, 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Ignas and Elena Anužis and Česlovas and Elena Anužis as Righteous Among the Nations.