Tallat Kelpša Stanislovas & Tallat Kelpšienė Antanina ; Son: Jurgis ; Mother: Tallat Kelpšienė Agota

Tallat-Kelpša, Jurgis Tallat-Kelpša, Stanislovas Tallat-Kelpšienė, Antanina Tallat-Kelpšienė, Agota Jurgis Tallat-Kelpša, a medical student, lived in the village of Kalnėnai, about 3 kilometers from Telšiai, with his parents Stanislovas and Antanina Tallat-Kelpša, and his younger brothers. Jurgis met the young Jewish woman, Dora Kagan, a native of Telšiai, in late 1941, through a close friend who had been a classmate of hers at the gymnasium. The friend, while searching for a hiding place for Kagan, who was interned in the Telšiai ghetto, asked Jurgis if his family would agree to shelter her in their village home. Although Hona Mulman, a Jewish soldier of the Red Army from Odessa, was already hiding in the Tallat-Kelpšas home, they agreed to shelter Kagan as well, and she was taken into the home of Agota Tallat-Kelpšienė, Jurgis’s grandmother. The Tallat-Kelpša family treated Kagan very well, and when she learned where her mother and younger sister Mina were hiding, Jurgis, at great risk to his own life, took her there. Kagan did not find a permanent shelter with them, and in January 1943, after experiencing many ordeals, she returned to the home of the Tallat-Kelpša family, who welcomed her warmly. In August 1944, after the Germans left the village, Mulman came out of his hiding place but was murdered by Lithuanian policemen. Two days later, they broke into the home of the Tallat-Kelpša family and demanded that they hand over the Jew hiding in their home. They left only after Agota, the grandmother, swore in the name of Christ that there were no Jews there. After the war, Kagan kept in close touch with the Tallat-Kelpšases, and in 1953, she married Jurgis. On August 4, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Jurgis Tallat-Kelpša, Stanislovas Tallat-Kelpša, Antanina Tallat-Kelpšienė, and Agota Tallat-Kelpšienė as Righteous Among the Nations.