Povilas Stonkus and his wife Marijona Stonkienė farmed in Žvingiai in the Šilalė region. Their daughter Zosė (Sofija) Stonkutė, later Skierienė, also helped rescue Jews. During the Nazi occupation, the family hid Edmundas Ruvinas Zeligmanas on their farm after he escaped the massacres in Šilalė.

Edmundas Ruvinas Zeligmanas was born in Šilalė on 25 February 1931 into a cantor’s family. His mother died in 1939. After the Nazi occupation began, Edmundas, his father and his brother were confined in the Šilalė synagogue on 7 July 1941. Grenades were thrown into it during the night, and one killed his brother. The following day, the boy saw his father murdered beside the killing pit, but managed to escape himself. He later escaped other massacres as well. His father, two brothers and sister were murdered during the Holocaust.

After several nights in the forest, Edmundas reached the home of the Lašaitis family, whom he knew, in Šilalė. They washed and fed him, but realized that a recognizable local child would easily be noticed there. They therefore sent him to Ona Norbutienė in Jokūbaičiai village. She hid him in a cold storeroom; sometimes he went outside wearing her son Povilas’s clothes or to tend cattle. However, the house stood beside a road used by Germans and members of the Lithuanian white-armband militia. Ona Norbutienė, known in the village as a midwife, could be called away at any time. She agreed with her sister Marijona and Marijona’s husband Povilas Stonkus, who lived in Žvingiai, that the boy would be safer with them.

Povilas and Marijona agreed to take Edmundas in, although their decision could have cost the whole family their lives. Their farm became both the child’s refuge and his hiding place. It was essential not only to conceal him, but also to keep him alive through changing seasons, feed him and protect him from betrayal.

The Stonkus family sheltered Edmundas knowing that helping a persecuted Jewish child exposed them to mortal danger. A German family lived in Žvingiai; according to Edmundas’s recollections, only the parish priest knew he was there. In summer, the boy hid in the rye fields; in autumn and spring, he stayed in a hiding place beneath hay in the barn. His rescuers had to feed him, protect him and keep their secret throughout the long years of occupation.

When German forces withdrew from Žvingiai in October 1944, Edmundas could finally leave his hiding place. A few days later, after thanking his rescuers, he moved to Pranas Šimutis and his sister in Šėrikai village near Šilalė. They welcomed the orphaned boy as their own child. Edmundas graduated from Šilalė secondary school in 1951 and from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Vilnius University in 1956, later working as an engineer and teacher. He married in 1964 and raised a daughter. In his recollections recorded in Vilnius in 2001, he remembered Marijona and Povilas Stonkus with gratitude.