Ona Šimaitė

Who was Ona Šimaitė?

Ona Šimaitė of Lithuania, a librarian at Vilnius University, used her position to aid and rescue Jews in the Vilna Ghetto.

Entering the ghetto under the pretext of recovering library books from Jewish university students, she smuggled in food and small arms and other provisions and smuggled out literary and historical documents, and also served as a mail carrier for the ghetto inhabitants, connecting them with the outer world. She also found people who would forge documents for Jews, and smuggled Jewish children out of the ghetto to families she found who agreed to hide them.

In 1944, the Nazis arrested and tortured Šimaitė. She was then deported to the Dachau concentration camp and later transferred to a concentration camp in the South of France. She remained in France following her liberation.