The Brave Librarian of Vilnius University

Listen to this text (Lithuanian):

When we try to imagine a hero, the image of a fearless soldier determined to sacrifice his life for his country comes to mind first. But heroism doesn’t have gender or age – the bravest heart can beat inside the most fragile body. This was the case for the Vilnius University librarian Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). She was a hero who rescued the Jews from the Vilnius ghetto during World War II, despite her poor health and the risk of punishment, which could have been death or imprisonment in a concentration camp. Šimaitė didn’t betray the people she rescued or her helpers even when she was brutally tortured. The brave librarian was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations for her deeds, which was awarded to her on 15 March 1966 in Jerusalem.

Šimaitė was born in 1894 in Akmenė. Her struggling parents took her to Riga where she spent her childhood. She gained her education in Moscow. After returning to Lithuania in 1922, she worked as a teacher and translator. From a young age, she was not only interested in culture (she loved literature and art), but also in the ideals of social justice. Sometimes she called herself an anarchist. However, Šimaitė understood anarchism in her own way: for her it was attention and respect for every person, regardless of their origin or nationality. Over the period of 1940–1944 she worked at the Vilnius University library – it was here that she hid the Jews she rescued from the Vilnius ghetto and their letters.

The Germans occupied Vilnius in 1941 and a ghetto was established in the territory of the Old Town, where the Jews of Vilnius were imprisoned. Living conditions in the ghetto were very poor: there was a lack of food, firewood and medicine. During the liquidation operation, the ghetto residents were brought to the outskirts of the city and shot in large groups – before they were shot they had to dig out a common pit for themselves. When the ghetto was abolished (23–24 September 1943), only about 2.000, out of 57.000, Jews from Vilnius survived.

Šimaitė was aware of the inhumane conditions Jewish people had to face in the ghetto and decided to help them. Although she constantly lacked food and money herself, she used her own  money and donations from her friends to buy food, clothes, medicines, and forged documents and brought them to the people in the ghetto. She also brought letters from ghetto prisoners to their loved ones, looked for various opportunities to hide Jews, rescued valuable manuscripts, books and even children hidden in baskets from the ghetto. With the awareness of the Vilnius University professor Vaclovas Biržiška, Šimaitė hid a Jewish student on the university premises for almost half a year. The children rescued from the ghetto were sheltered in her own apartment and later given to trustworthy people.

The work of the brave librarian did not go unnoticed. In 1944 somebody turned her in. The  secret Nazi German police, the Gestapo, arrested her and then interrogated and tortured her for twelve days. With the help of her comrades, the death sentence for Šimaitė was changed into imprisonment in the Dachau concentration camp. Although very few people survived in this camp, Šimaitė succeeded. She was released at the end of the war. She lived in Israel for some time and later moved to France. She continued her mission to help those in need after the war: she corresponded with the relatives of the Jews that were imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto and the concentration camp, spoke out about the fate of those who were killed in the war, and sent books and even money to those who remained in  Soviet-occupied Lithuania despite living in poverty to the end of her days. It is said that real generosity is to give to another what you lack.