Levulis Vladas & Levulienė Albina ; Son: Fulgentas

Žarnauskas, Teofilis Žarnauskienė, Marė Viktoravičienė-Rutkauskaitė, Janina Levulis, Vladas Levulienė, Albina Levulis, Fulgentas Bižys, Juozas Bižienė, Janina The large Jewish Fridkovsky family lived in the town of Kapčiamiestis (Seiniai District). As shopkeepers, they were well known to the town’s residents, as well as to the farmers from the surrounding villages. After the death of the family head, in late 1930s, and the nationalization of the shop by the Soviets with their occupation in 1940, the family left Kapčiamiestis for Kaunas. With the German invasion of the USSR, the elder son, Jehuda, enlisted in the Red Army, his mother and two younger siblings evacuated eastward, while Sara, b.1918, Benas, b.1919, and Lisa, b.1924, found themselves under German occupation. Until the fall of 1943, they were forced to live in the Kaunas ghetto. But they felt that the days of the ghetto were numbered and searched for a safe haven among the non-Jews. With the help of their prewar acquaintances, the three siblings reached the vicinity of Kapčiamiestis where they believed that a certain family that had been very close to the Fridkovskys would help them. But, to their utmost disappointment, it was not so. In fact, they even were not allowed into the house. Frightened and desperate, the Fridkovsky siblings appealed to another former customer of theirs, Teofilis Žarnauskas from the village of Barčiai. Teofilis and his wife Marė pitied the Jewish fugitives and agreed to help them. In the outdoor kitchen, Teofilis prepared a hiding place with two concealed exits that became the Fridkovskys’ accommodation for the next eight months. Also very helpful was Janina Rutkauskaitė, Marė’s 20-year-old daughter from her first marriage: she not only brought food to the hiding place, but kept their presence secret from her five younger siblings. Despite these many precautions, the Žarnauskases’ neighbors still noticed some irregular activities and the Fridkovskys were urgentlytransferred to the Levulis family, residents of nearby Šadžiūnai village. Vladas Levulis, in his forties, was, during the year of Soviet rule, the head of his village council. Considered a Soviet employee, he was imprisoned by the Germans early in the war and even sentenced to death, but released. Then he and his family, consisting of Vladas’s wife, Albina, and their two teenage children Fulgentas and Danutė, were endangering themselves, now by helping Jews. Soon Sara was transferred to Albina’s brother, Juozas Bižys who lived nearby with his wife Janina, where she could live openly, using a false identity card with a Russian name. Working at the Bižyses, Sara was so efficient that a local wealthy family invited her to work for them. Lisa moved in with Juozas and Janina in place of her sister. Benas Fridkovsky remained at the Levulises. Soon, he felt more confident and started leaving his hiding place, traveling to other villages and offering his services in leather processing. In his journeys, 14-year-old Fulgentas often accompanied him. The fair-haired teenager gave a certain protection to Benas, applying to him by his Lithuanian name and calling him “brother”. After the liberation in late July 1944, the circumstances of the Fridkovskys’ survival became widely known, which enraged the local anti-Semites. On December 15, 1945 they set the Levulises’ house on fire and shot the head of the family. On June 13, 1946 a group of so-called “Nationalists” took Teofilis Žarnauskas out of his home and he never came back. The Jewish survivors supported the families in their grief and helped them to settle in Vilnius. In the 1970s, Sara (by then, Dambarus), Lisa (by then, Lea Kurlandchik) and Benas (Ben-Zion) Fridkovsky immigrated to Israel. On November 16, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Teofilis and Marė Žarnauskas, Janina Rutkauskaitė-Viktoravičienė, Vladas and Albina Levulis, their son Fulgentas, and Juozas and Janina Bižys as Righteous Among the Nations.