About the rescuer and the rescue

Polikarpas Macijauskas is one of 159 Lithuanian clergy who are known as Righteous Among the Nations. Together with his friend Petras Girbudas, a doctor from Užventis, he became a real organizer of the rescue of Jews in the Kelmė-Užventis region during the Second World War. They agreed with local farmers, chose remote homesteads covered with trees, to which Alfonsas Songaila brought the Jews from the Šiauliai ghetto, harnessed to a horse.

Sometimes the priest Polikarpas Macijauskas sent people to his brother, the farmer Juozas Jonas Macijauskas, who lived in the village of Pakievukai.

During the German occupation in Kolainiai, he rescued Basja Brojde from Kelmė and four women who had escaped from the Šiauliai ghetto: they were dressed in nuns' clothes and hiding in secluded farmhouses.

P. Macijauskas hid Sara Olšvangaitė-Montvilienė and her husband in the church under construction together with Michail Butu, a priest of the Kolainiai Orthodox Church.

All people were equal to Polikarps Macijauskas. He helped, rescued, hid what he could - not a Russian, a Jew or a German - he hid a person. His kindness was enough for everyone.