The Catholic priest Juozas Stakauskas was head of the state archive in Wilna (Vilnius). When Jews were persecuted after the city’s German occupation in June 1941, he decided to help. Stakauskas requested ten Jewish workers from the ghetto, thus protecting them for a time from violence and murder by the SS.
Due to lack of space in the archive, in 1942 files were taken to vacant rooms in the Benedictine monastery in the old center of Wilna. In 1943 Stakauskas set up a hiding place there for Jews escaped from the ghetto. His friend Vladas Žemaitis walled off a secret space using stacks of books. Eleven Jews were hidden there, including Samuel Bak and his mother Mitzia. Stakauskas, Žemaitis, and the nun Maria Mikulska took care of them. The hiding place was destroyed by Soviet grenades during the siege of Wilna in July 1944. However, the people in hiding managed to escape, and survived.
Juozas Stakauskas was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial Center Yad Vashem in 1974.