Rescuers of Jews

Premeneckas Vytautas

Genė Premeneckaitė-Jonušienė
Aleksandra Premeneckienė
Juozas Premeneckas
Vytautas Premeneckas
Stanislovas Jokūbauskis
Judel Ošer Beiles


In October 1941, during the Great Action in the Kaunas ghetto, Chana and Lazarus Beiles were murdered in the 9th fort in Kaunas. Their 15-year-old son Judel Beiles (Jehuda Beilis) managed to get out from the pit. The boy went to a restaurant owner who had known his parents, and had offered them her help at the beginning of the war. Since SS men frequented the restaurant, Beiles couldn’t stay there, so the owner introduced him to Genė Premeneckaitė (later Jonušienė), the laundress, who lived in the village of Muniškiai. Premeneckaitė convinced her family - her mother, Aleksandra Premeneckienė, her elder brother, 18-year-old Juozas, and her younger brother Vytautas – to take Judel in their village home. This was very dangerous since one of their relatives from a nearby village collaborated with the Germans. He used to visit the relatives rather frequently. Also, some of the neighbors were openly hostile to Jews. One of them had killed a Jewish woman asking him for the shelter. The Premeneckas family strictly guarded their secret so that no stranger found out Judel was there.
After staying with the Premeneckas for a long time Beiles left them to take part in some actions of the Jewish underground in the Kaunas Ghetto. With the aid of a Catholic priest, Stanislovas Jokūbauskis, (before the war he taught Beiles’ class), Beiles transferred children from the ghetto to some reliable shelter found previously by priest Stanislovas Jokūbauskis. The priest Stanislovas Jokūbauskis helped Beiles to hide too.
Judel returned to Premeneckas family to Muniškiai village once more time, but left to ghetto again because he didn't want to separate from his family. Genute Premeneckaite failed to persuade him to continue hiding at their home in the village.
During the last days of the Kaunas ghetto existence the security was enforced and Judel didn't manage to escape from the ghetto and to return to Premeneckas family.
On the Kaunas ghetto liquidation days Judel Beilis, together with other ghetto prisoners, was transferred to Dachau. There he went through all the horrors of the concentration camp and lost his brother Joseph, the only family member left.
Judel Beiles survived Dachau and reached Palestine.
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