Edvardas Levinskas was a member of the Tolstoyist group, which supported the philosopher and writer Leo Tolstoy. The group represented and spread the ideas of humanism, spirituality, love of life, physical work, natural life, moral self-improvement and resistance to evil. The group, led by Juozas Petrulis, rescued and hid many Jewish families and organised their escape from the Šiauliai ghetto. Edvardas Levinskas, from the village of Vaizgučiai, Joniškis district. He was self-taught and passed the gymnasium extern exams. He worked as a primary school teacher in various places, contributed to the publication of the Freemasonic publications of the time, and edited and published the newspaper "Atgimimas", which was dedicated to raising spiritual culture. The sisters Teresė and Lilija Vilandaitė came from a German family and lived in Žagarė. Teresė Vilandaitė studied at the Žagarė trade school, had a good knowledge of Russian, German and Latvian, and worked as a teacher at the Latvian school in Žagarė. Edvardas and Teresė were married in 1926 in Klaipėda Region, because at that time it was the only place where civil marriages could be registered. Both were followers of Tolstoy, teetotalers and vegetarians. Although they were deeply religious, they did not accept church ceremonies. During the Russian occupation, Edvardas worked as a school inspector in Panevėžys. As his views and ideas were contrary to those of the government at the time, he gave up his job and moved to Žagarė in 1941. Here Edvar das, Teresė and Lilija lived together and farmed. They witnessed the massacre of Jews in Žagarė in October 1941. The Levinskis and Lilija were engaged in gardening. During the winter, when there was no field work, Edvardas translated the writings of L. Tostoy, while Teresė helped him with the translations and transcribed them.

They took food to the ghetto

After the Jews were rounded up in the Žagarė ghetto, Lilija Valandaitė received permission to hire people from there, as she, her sister, Terese Valandaitė-Levinskienė, and her husband, Edvardas Levinskas, were engaged in the gardening business. She also provided food for other ghetto residents through her workers. "Sometimes Aunt Lilija and I would go to the ghetto, which was surrounded by barbed wire, to bribe the guards to allow us to bring food to the people," says Leonas Levinskas, who was only 11 or 12 years old at the time. - We handed over a packet of cigarettes, sometimes a bottle of alcohol, and were allowed to pass unmolested. Meanwhile, the Jews themselves had to carry the food in disguises, and it was not always possible to escape. Once I saw with my own eyes how a Jewish boy was deprived of his milk by a soldier, poured out on the ground, and the crying child was pushed aside."

Leonas went to school with the Jewish children and had a lot of contact with them. The humiliation and stigmatisation of this people was incomprehensible to him and his family.

They warned of the shooting

When the Levinskas family found out that a large hole was being dug in Žagarė Park, the future grave of many thousands of people (about 3000 people were shot), they urged the Jews to hide and run away. However, many of them did not believe it, they did not want to leave their families in the ghetto.

On the day of the execution, the Jews of Žagarė were gathered in the town square, carrying food, clothes and documents. They were told that they were going to a labour camp.

When a German officer announced that they were going to a place where there would be no more problems and no more suffering, there was panic.

People realised the real threat and some started to run. The murderers opened fire.

The dead were thrown into trucks and taken to a pit dug in the park. Those who remained in the square and in the houses were dragged and pushed into trucks and transported to the pit.

They were told to undress themselves and jump into the pit.

L. Levinskas testifies that the killers were drunk. Some of them, realising what was going on, tried to get away and were stabbed themselves.

"I went to school that morning. I had barely time to open the wooden gate when there were shots and bullets whistling. People were running and being shot at. I rushed into the room and, with a wire hook, dragged a briefcase that had fallen inside. My father had told me not to leave the house, so I took a seat in the barn. I heard the roar of engines, a German command, machine-gun volleys and a terrible moaning, which merged into the cries of many people," says Leonas Levinskas.

The blood stains lasted for a long time

The next morning, the child did not make it to school again. On the way, he had to cross the town square, where pools of blood, torn clothes and documents were strewn about. A fire brigade washed the square with a jet of water. Leon felt sick.

Only on the third day of the market did he manage to go to class.

"Walking through the market, I saw people standing where there were blood stains, talking about politics, putting eggs and bacon on sale... And the Jewish shops - the rows were riddled with bullets. Even a month later, some of the stones had traces of blood on them," an elderly resident of Žagar recalls the bloody sights.

After these events, Leon's father suddenly collapsed, and his son refused to take German lessons at school in protest.

A German woman tried to stand up for Jews

When the Baltraiščiai started robbing and killing the richer Jews of Žagarė, Teresė Levinskienė, unable to accept the injustice and cruelty, dared to turn to the Šiauliai Regional Commissioner. However, the woman was not allowed to go to him.

Then she sent a letter in which she asked, in the name of the honest inhabitants of Žagarė, not to kill innocent Jews and not to humiliate the German people by such acts.

The woman signed the letter with her real name and surname, her address and her nationality - "German" (she was a descendant of a German family living in Žagarė).

Perhaps the woman hoped that the perpetrators of the repression would take into account the thoughts of her compatriot. However, the Commissioner of Šiauliai ordered that Teresa Levinskiene, together with the Jews, be shot in Žagarė on the day of the mass killings on 2 October 1941.

The woman was not destined to die. When the burgomaster of Žagarė, Rakštys, found out that Levinskienė had been arrested, he persuaded an SS officer to meet him to talk about an important matter, and was overruled.

He then put her in a car and told the driver to take her to Šiauliai, while he secretly let the woman go home.

The story did not end there. Two weeks later, the same officer broke into the Levinskis' house, demanded that Teresa deny everything she had written in the letter, otherwise he would shoot her. In the end, he was content to keep quiet and not tell anyone about the fate of the Jews of Žagarė.

He squatted down, covering the feet of the Jews

Her husband Edvardas Levinskas, her son Leonas, and her sister Lilija Vilandaitė, who lived with her, also contributed to this woman's efforts to intercede for the Jews and save them.

Leonas Levinskas recalls that in 1944, an elderly Jewish woman, Batya, the wife of Trusfus Trusfus, a pharmacist in the town of Šakyna (Šiauliai District), was hiding in their house.

The woman's granddaughter, Ruth Yoffe, also lived with them for some time. Later, another family took care of the girl.

"Because my mother was German, German officers often came to her house for coffee. They would want to listen to German news and to mark the moving front line on the map on the wall. Once, our Jewish woman in hiding came to the door to listen to what the Germans were talking about. As the door had no threshold, her footsteps were visible. When I noticed this, I deftly got to the door and knelt down to stand in the way," says Levinskas. - The old Jewess used to knit socks and gloves for the family, and we were grateful to wear them."

The family was exiled

After the war, disaster struck the Levinskas family: they were deported as Germans to Tajikistan.

In a foreign land, Teresė and Edvardas Levinskis continued to do good deeds. They wrote to the authorities asking for other families, asking them not to separate their children from their parents, and trying to help morally.

"One woman, who had three children, was already homeless, because she saw no way out and was starving. My mother went to her for many days. She would talk for a long time, bring some food, even though we had very little. The woman survived the crisis, raised her children. To this day, I still correspond with her, now in her nineties, and her surviving daughter. They are grateful to my mother," says Levinskas, who himself can thank the Jewish doctor for saving his life.

As an 18-year-old in exile, he contracted dysentery and ended up in hospital weighing just 34 kilograms.

The Jewish doctor used her own money to buy medicine, bring food and provide blood transfusions.

A Russian nurse, when the medical transfusion machine malfunctioned, injected blood with a simple large syringe and jokingly threatened, "Just try to die, then I will come and kill you".

Both sisters, Lilija Vilandaitė and Teresė Vilandaitė-Levinskienė, died in Tajikistan. Only father and son returned to Lithuania in 1955.

After returning from exile, Edvardas and Leonas Levinskis settled in Žagarė. Edvardas worked as a translator and died in 1975. He was buried in the Raktuvė cemetery. Leonas Levinskas married Sofija Kalendraitė, the daughter of Andrejs Kalendraitė. They both still live in Žagarė, in the same house of Edvardas and Terese Levinskas.

Information based on the text "Righteous Men of Žagarė and the World" by Loreta Ripskytė of 19 March 2013. 

And the publication in "Žagarės Balselis" 2013-03-18