Jurevičius Jonas & Jurevičienė Juzė ; Daughter: Jurevičiūtė Leonija

Jurevičius, Jonas Jurevičienė, Juzė Jurevičiūtė, Leonija The peasant farmers Jonas and Juzė Jurevičius lived in the village of Žemaitkiemis, near Kaunas, with their daughters, Leonija and Birutė. From autumn 1943, the Jurevičius home gradually became a shelter for seven Jews who had escaped from the Kaunas ghetto – Meir and Dvora Jelin, Mrs. Kalmansky and her daughter, Daniel Kaplan, Chaya Shuster and the Kartinger couple. Providing shelter for such a large group of Jews involved much risk, which increased in the winter of 1943-44 when, in December 1943, a large group of Jews escaped from the mass murder site at the Ninth Fort. In the wake of this escape, the Germans launched an intensive search of the city and its surroundings. Jonas and Juzė Jurevičius prepared a hiding place for the Jews in the hayloft, and throughout the winter, provided for all their needs. Owing to the warnings passed on to these Jews in hiding by the ghetto underground at the beginning of spring 1944, some of them decided to leave the Jurevičius home and return to the ghetto. The four Jews that remained in the Jurevičius home were joined by Mrs. Kalmansky’s baby grandson. In April 1944, the Germans broke into the Jurevičius yard and killed the four Jews hiding in the hayloft, along with Jonas, the head of the family. Twenty-year-old Leonija managed to hide Kalmansky’s grandson, and when the Germans left, she covered his head with a kerchief and took him to one of the monasteries in Kaunas that provided shelter for Jews. On December 22, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Jonas Jurevičius, Juzė Jurevičienė and Leonija Jurevičiūtė as Righteous Among the Nations.