Gražbylė Venclauskaitė — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Gražbylė Venclauskaitė (1912-2007) was a Lithuanian lawyer and one of the Righteous among the Nations from Lithuania.

Her father was a lawyer and her mother, an actress.  Her godfather was the philosopher and writer, Widonas, a leader of the theosophy movement in Lithuania. During the First World War, Venclauskaitė lived in Tula, Russia. She graduated from high school in Šiauliai in 1930 and began studying law in Kovno. She was admitted to the bar in 1937, and from 1940 she was a notary in the Soviet republic of Lithuania. She was a lawyer in Kovno from 1944; from 1947 until her retirement in 1981, she worked as a lawyer in Šiauliai.

Her mother, Stanislava Venclauskienė, was famous in Šiauliaiּ because she brought up about eighty abandoned orphans in her home. During World War Two she opened up a sewing workshop in her home with the help of her two daughters, Gražbylė and Danute. She employed about fifty Jewish women thereby helping them to support their families while living in the ghetto in Šiauliai.

At the end of 1941, the Jewish women from Telšiai were exterminated at the death pits. Two of them, Ita Blank and her daughter Anika-Hannah were among the few who were shot but not killed. They crawled out of the pit and returned to the Telšiai Ghetto. Ita managed to leave the ghetto secretly and made contact with one of her Lithuanian acquaintances. She got Ita a permit to work in her house and Ita and Hannah hid there. Even when the Germans ordered all the Jews in Telšiai to go into the ghetto, Anita and her daughter stayed in the acquaintance's house until someone informed on them and they had to leave. They then went to Šiauliai and were rescued by Venclauskienė who took them into her home. At least five other Jews hid in the Venclauskienė home. The family hid them despite the death sentence that the Germans had declared that was binding on every Lithuanian who hid Jews and despite the numerous Lithuanian informers.

Towards the end of the war it became apparent to the Venclauskienės that continued hiding of the Jews was becoming very risky. Gražbylė took Hannah away from Šiauliai and legally adopted her. They stayed well away from Šiauliai until liberation.

In 1995, Yad Vashem awarded Gražbylė, her mother and four other members of their family the title "the Righteous among the Nations". Gražbylė was also made an honorary citizen of Šiauliai.

Translated from: Wikipedia