Antanas Blažaitis was born in 1897. He lived in Canada for a time with his wife Adelė and their children Leonas and Valentina Eugenija. Later, the Blažaitis family lived in Panemunė, Kaunas.

During the war, Antanas worked in a warehouse in Kaunas. There he met Rafaelis Finas, who had left the Kaunas ghetto with a labour brigade. Rafaelis looked distressed, so Antanas asked what had happened. He admitted that he had a daughter who could no longer remain in the ghetto. Antanas offered to have the girl brought to him.

Rafaelis Finas nevertheless wanted to make sure that the entire Blažaitis family agreed to such a dangerous decision. Only the next day, after speaking to Adelė and hearing her consent, did he entrust his daughter Roza to them.

Roza was secretly taken out of the Kaunas ghetto beneath sacks in a truck carrying bread. Adelė met her in Šančiai and brought her home to Panemunė.

She was not the first child the Blažaitis family had rescued. Earlier, a basket containing a Jewish girl a few months old had been left outside their home. A note from her parents asked the family to raise her if they did not survive. Antanas and Adelė took her in.

During the war, the household therefore included the Blažaitis children, the baby and Roza. Roza needed not only physical concealment, but also a convincing explanation for her presence in the family. Since she spoke almost no Lithuanian, neighbours were told she was a deaf and non-speaking relative from the countryside.

The Blažaitis family’s daughter Valentina stayed constantly beside Roza. Their efforts succeeded: the girl survived until the end of the war. Her parents, Chava and Rafaelis Finas, returned from concentration camps and found her.

The other rescued baby’s parents never returned. Antanas and Adelė raised her as their own child, and she became Irena Margarita Blažaitytė.

Additional family testimonies

Family notes collected by the project author’s father provide additional information about the Blažaitis family’s relatives. They record that the family lived in Kaunas and that Antanas worked in a warehouse during the war. They also mention the family’s time in Canada and state that their son Leonas was born there. These details are preserved as family testimony.

The author of the notes separately mentions Irena Margarita, the young Jewish girl whom the Blažaitis family sheltered and raised. The manuscript states that she was named Irena Margarita Blažaitytė and was subsequently regarded as a daughter. It also records the rescue of Roza Finaitė, involving Antanas, Adelė and their daughter Valentina.

The family testimony notes that the Blažaitis children remained in contact later in life. Some genealogical remarks and surnames in the manuscript are difficult to read, so we do not present them as confirmed facts.