Shmuel Peipert — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Shmuel Peipert enlisted in the Red Army in 1941, served in the 16th Lithuanian Division and fought with his unit, which was advancing towards Lithuania. In 1944, in one of the battles for the liberation of Lithuania, Peipert was wounded and discharged from the Red Army as an officer. Peiper was about 24 years old when he returned to his hometown near Ponivez and his home and found that no one in his family was alive. He sold his parents' house and the small farm that was their property, and moved to the nearby town of Ponivez.

Peipert began his initiative to redeem Jewish children who had been placed in custody by Lithuanians during the war. This activity began shortly after the liberation of Lithuania, in the middle of 1944, and the payment for the first children he redeemed from his own money. Peipert began searching for Jewish children when he was still in an officer serving in the Red Army uniform.

Peipert was very dedicated to finding Jewish children and taking them out of Lithuanian homes. At that time it was very dangerous to roam around Lithuania where Lithuanian nationalists, popularly known as Jaliukai, "the Greens", or Miskobroli, "brothers to the forest", attacked Red Army units and Jews. Despite the danger, Peipert continued to travel around Lithuania looking for Jewish children. The Jews in Ponivez warned him that he might pay for it with his life, but nothing deterred him. All the while Peipert financed his actions with his own money, and though he lived very modestly, his means were running out.

Peipert's relationship with the children he rescued and redeemed was unique. His acquaintances testified that he treated the children with great patience and love. Although he himself was content with little, he used to buy children clothes, toys and sweets. The children returned his love and felt safe in his company. Even after he brought the children he redeemed to the orphanages, he continued to visit them and keep in touch with them. A man who joined him on some of these visits, testified when they arriving at the children's home, the children would run to him with shouts of joy "Father".

The first girls he redeemed, he chose to transfer to the custody of the Mother Superior of a Lithuanian monastery he knew, and not to leave them in the homes of their rescuers. He estimated that the longer the children were in their rescuers' homes, the stronger the ties with the families will be, and in the future it would be more difficult to separate them. He built the courses of action according to what he learned during his activity. He had healthy senses that guided him how to behave in different situations. Although he was a simple man, as his acquaintances testified, he was a young Jew with a Jewish identity. He actually practiced the idea of ​​mutual guarantee, both by virtue of the insights of simple logic, and by virtue of the identification and compassion he felt for the children, and the concern for their Jewish future.

Peipert began to act alone as early as 1944 and on his own initiative, even before an institutional organization of the Jewish community was established in 1946. He was an emissary on his own behalf, on behalf of his Judaism. When organized activities began on behalf of the Jewish community, he joined the other activists who engaged in them.

Peipert dreamed of immigrating to Israel, but explained that as long as there were Jewish children in Lithuanian hands, he could not leave. The children need to return to their people.

Hasia, who was staying at a monastery near Ritaba, said that at first she refused to admit to him that she was Jewish, because she knew she was not allowed to betray her Judaism. Peipert did not give up and went on to check in and bring her candy. Because she refused to take them from him, so he brought sweets for all the children. Rebecca, who himself had brought to the convent's custody after the war, also testified that she remembered his visits, and the sweets he used to bring with him.Peipert continued to search for Jewish children even in 1947, although he was aware that his travels throughout Lithuania endangered his life.

During one of his trips to rescue Jews in 1947, Peipert was captured by Lithuanian nationalists around the town of Plunge, tortured and murdered. Peipert was about 26 years old at the time of his death. His last trip, the journey from which he did not return, is related to an attempt to ransom a Jewish boy living with his adoptive family in a village near the town of Zidikai in northwestern Lithuania, about seventy kilometers north of where Peipert was killed. The boy kept living with his rescuer and only years later did he learn that he was Jewish.Peipert was involved in removing a large number of children from Lithuanian homes, also as part of the organized activities carried out in Lithuania by the Jewish community, and not just independently. In addition to financing the operations with his own money at the beginning of his activity, he was also the one who handled the entire removal process: locating the children, negotiating with the rescuers and returning visits to their homes, coordinating the children's removal, disseminating information about them and searching for relatives. When the activities of the Jewish communities in Vilnius and Kaunas began, these activities were coordinated and managed by them.

Translated from: Emuna Nahmani Gafni: Shmuel Peipert-a  messenger on his own behalf... 2015