Juškevičius Mikhail & Juškevičienė Anastasija

Juškevičius, Mikhail Juškevičienė, Anastasija The farmers Mikhail and Anastasija Juškevičius and their five daughters lived in the village of Jungiris, near Šiauliai. In the 1930s they were helped by Azriel Abromavich, a Jewish lawyer from Šiauliai, who represented Juškevičius in court. In summer 1941, the Abromavich family was interned in the Šiauliai ghetto, and from that moment on, Juskevičius never stopped trying to persuade them to escape, offering them shelter in his home. They did not escape until the beginning of 1944, after Azriel Abromavich had been killed and his wife, Manya Abromavich (later Blecher), realized that all the ghetto inmates would be killed sooner or later. Then the rest of the family, which included her 13-year-old daughter Mija (later Stein), Manya’s sister, Liuba Gordon and their mother, Feyga Gordon, escaped. Juškevičius took them in his cart to a bunker he had dug for them in a forested area near his village. The four Jews stayed there for only a short time, since Manya’s failing health forced the entire family to move to a shelter in a barn near the Juškevičius home. After someone informed the authorities that Jewish women were hiding there, local bandits, who called themselves “partisans,” set fire to the Juškevičius farm. Mikhail and Anastasija and their children managed to escape to the forest, where they hid until the Red Army arrived. The Jews were marched to the Užventis prison from where they miraculously escaped after two days. Liuba Gordon perished shortly after her escape from the prison. The three others survived until the end of the occupation, in late August 1944, by wandering in the surrounding forests. After the end of the war, the Jewish survivors immigrated to Israel and maintained contact with the Juškevičius family. On May 11, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Mikhail Juškevičius and Anastasija Juškevičienė as Righteous Among the Nations.