Matuzevičius Antanas & Matuzevičienė Elena ; Daughter: Briliuvienė Antanina (Matuzevičiūtė)

Drupas, Vladas Matuzevičius, Antanas Matuzevičienė, Elena Briliuvienė-Matuzevičiūtė, Antanina Kiličiauskienė- Matuzevičiūtė, Veronika Valiukienė- Matuzevičiūtė, Julijona In 1941, Vladas Drupas, a resident of Šiauliai, was only 19 years old and lived with his uncle Dapkus, a tailor by profession. When the Jews of the town were interned in the ghetto, Drupas and his uncle hastened to come to their aid. Dapkus employed a number of Jews, who were not tailors, in his tailor shop, to save them from the Aktionen, and Drupas helped Jews escape from the ghetto and found hiding places for them with his relatives and friends. He was in constant touch with Danutė Venclauskaitė*, a well-known lawyer in Šiauliai, who provided false identity papers and also hid Jews in her family home. With the help of Venclauskaitė, Drupas was able to get a number of Jews out of the ghetto, including six members of Mina Remen’s family, her friend Sofia Kozlovski and her father Josef. After leaving the ghetto at different times, they hid for two or threes days in Dapkus’s house, then Drupas took them to the countryside, where previous arrangements had been made by him for hiding them. In November 1943, following the children’s Aktion in Šiauliai, Drupas also came to the aid of Esther Ziv (later Ton) and her three-year-old daughter Chaviva, and found them shelter for a few days. Then Esther was introduced to Antanas Matuzevičius who was willing to shelter the little girl. He took Chaviva to the house of his sister Veronika Kiličiauskienė (b. 1885), a widow who lived with her stepson in the village of Įsoniai. A few weeks later, a rumor spread among the villagers that Kiličiauskienė was hiding a little Jewish girl. Thus Matuzevičius decided to transfer Chaviva to his sister Julijona Valiukienė (1886) a widow, who lived in the village of Kivyliai. At the time Valiukienė was taking care of the Matuzevičiuses’ young son Ernestas, who was the same age as Chaviva. When Esther Ziv and hersister-in-law Perele (Pnina) Krom managed to escape from the ghetto, in June 1944, they appeared on the doorstep of Kiličiauskienė and asked for shelter. She took in Perele, and Esther went to the home of Antanas and Elena Matuzevičius, in Pašvitinys, Šiauliai County. There she was well cared for by the parents and their elder daughter Antanina (later Briliuvienė). After the war, most of the rescued left Lithuania – some immigrated to Israel and others to the United States. In the 1980s, Vladas Drupas also settled in Israel. On May 27, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Vladas Drupas, Antanas Matuzevičius, Elena Matuzevičienė, and Antanina Briliuvienė, as Righteous Among the Nations. On June 15, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Veronika Kiličiauskienė and Julijona Valiukienė as Righteous Among the Nations.