Obj. ID: 45563
Memorials Commemorative plaque to Ona Šimaitė in the Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2004
Memorial name
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
Ona Šimaitė, Righteous Among the Nations
Description:
A plaque of gray granite is fixed on the exterior wall of a building in the Simonas Daukantas Courtyard where the Yiddish Institute of the Vilnius University was located from 2001 to 2019. The name of Ona Šimaitė is emphasized, as well as the phrase “Righteous Among the Nations.”
It bears a Lithuanian inscription.
Inscription:
Vilniaus universiteto
bibliotekoje
1940–1944 m.
dirbo
Ona Šimaitė
(1894-1970)
Vilniaus geto
žydų gelbėtoja
Pasaulio tautų teisuolė
Translation: In the library of the Vilnius university, in 1940-1944, worked Ona Šimaitė (1894-1970), the savior of the Jews of the Vilnius ghetto, the Righteous Among the Nations.
5 image(s)
sub-set tree:
Ona (Anna) Šimaitė (1894, Almenė -1970, Paris) was manager of the Catalogues Department of the Vilnius University Library from 1940 to 1944. During the Nazi occupation of Vilnius, she assisted ghetto inmates, saved about one hundred of Jewish children, and helped to preserve Jewish cultural valuables, especially from the YIVO collection. She was arrested on April 28, 1944, sentenced to death, but with the help of bribes collected by her university colleagues, the sentence was remitted and she was sent to a concentration camp in France. She was one of the first Lithuanians to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1966.
The memorial plaque in the Vilnius University was unveiled on April 9, 2004, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of Ona Šimaitė’s birth. It was fixed on the wall of the Yiddish Institute building in Simonas Daukantas Courtyard and funded by the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania.
Each year, on Šimaitė's birthday, January 6, candles are lit in front of the plaque by the heads of the university. (We are grateful to Prof. Jurgita Verbickienė for this information).
Guzenberg, Irina, Vilnius: Traces of the Jewish Jerusalem of Lithuania. Memorable Sites of Jewish History and Culture. A Guidebook (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2021)., 239.
Guzenberg, Irina. Vilnius: Pamiatnye mesta evreiskoi istorii i kul'tury (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2013)., 61.