Miniotas Leonardas & Miniotienė Ona

Miniotas, Leonardas Miniotienė, Ona Tarvainytė, Rozalija Užemeckas, Antanas Užemeckienė, Veronika Bernikienė, Petrė On July 16, 1941, shortly after the Germans occupied Lithuania, most of the Jewish men in the town of Skaudvilė, Tauragė County, were executed in the Pūžai Forest, including some members of the Fridman family. The Germans gathered all the remaining Jews of the town in a vegetable warehouse, from which some Jewish women managed to escape. Among those who fled were Černa Fridman (later Markevich) and her mother, Pesia Fridman, and they began to wander through the countryside, seeking a safe place of refuge. At first they found shelter in the village of Varlaukio (near Eržvilkas), in the home of Leonardas and Ona Miniotas, but when it turned out that the Germans were intensively searching the area for Jews in hiding, they were forced to leave. Fridman and her daughter came to the home of Rozalija Tarvainytė (b. 1894), a devout Catholic who lived in the village of Gilvičiai, Tauragė County, and regarded it as her religious duty to save Jews. Tarvainytė was helped by her sister and brother-in-law, Veronika and Antanas Užemeckas and their daughter, Petrė (later Bernikienė; b. 1925). When Tarvainytė fell ill and was hospitalized, the Užemeckases hid the Jewish women in their home and provided them with their basic needs until the Red Army arrived, in October 1944. After the war, the mother and daughter immigrated to Israel but maintained contact with their wartime rescuers. On March 24, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Leonardas Miniotas, Ona Miniotienė, Rozalija Tarvainytė, Antanas Užemeckas, Veronika Užemeckienė, and Petrė Bernikienė, as Righteous Among the Nations.