Petkevičius Tadas & Petkevičienė Julija (Jablonskytė)

Petkevičius, Tadas Petkevičienė, Julija Prof. Tadas Petkevičius lived with his wife Julija and their three adult children in Kaunas. Starting in the 1930s, he taught at the law faculty of Kaunas University. His wife was an artist and offspring of the well-known Lithuanian Jablonskis family. Her father Jonas Jablonskis was a philologist and author of the comprehensive dictionary of the Lithuanian language. In the period of the German occupation, the Petkevičius family continued to live in their private home surrounded by trees and close to a municipal park located in a quiet and expensive neighborhood. Their neighbors were supporters of the German occupation regime. In the fall of 1943, Julija's sister, Ona Landsbergienė*, brought seven-year-old Avivit Kissin to their house. Avivit was the daughter of the doctors Avraham and Pesya Kissin and until then had lived with her parents in the Kaunas ghetto. When the residents of the ghetto learned of the children's murder operation (Kinderaktion) in the Šiauliai ghetto, the Kissins asked their friend Ona Landsbergienė for help. Landsbergienė managed to obtain a birth certificate with a Lithuanian name for Avivit and asked her sister Julija to take the girl in. Avivit was a quiet and intelligent girl, who was aware that she did not look Lithuanian. She therefore she kept from having any contact with strangers who visited the Petkevičius family. At the same time, she was not forced to hide and lived there as part of the household. In July 1944, the Kaunas ghetto was liquidated and the surviving Jews, including Avivit's parents, were sent to camps in Germany. Avraham Kissin was murdered in Dachau, whereas Avivit's mother survived. In the fall of 1945, a few months after the Liberation, the child was picked up by her elder sister Miriam. In 1948, the Kissin sisters and their mother Pesya immigrated to Israel. The Petkevičius family and their relatives were persecuted by the Soviet regime: Prof. Tadas Petkevičius wasdismissed from his position and deported to Siberia, where he was employed in forced labor until 1953. In the year of his death, 1964, contact was renewed between his family and Avivit who was living in Jerusalem. On January 15, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Tadas and Julija Petkevičius as Righteous Among the Nations.