The translator Sofija Binkienė and her husband, the poet Kazys Binkis, lived in Kaunas. After German troops invaded in 1941, they were appalled by the brutal persecution of the city’s Jews.
In early 1942, Sofija Binkienė was asked by a former colleague, Natalija Jegorova, whether she could hide a Jewish girl. Binkienė took in Gita Judelewitsch, who had escaped from the ghetto, and later two-year-old Kama Ginkas. Along with other women, Binkienė arranged more hiding places for escaped Jews, and took them in temporarily. The people she hid gave her the affectionate name of “Aunt Zosia” and called her home the “Jewish hotel.”
After the death of her severely ill husband in 1942, Sofija Binkienė’s daughter and her partner supported her rescue work. The helpers shared their meagre food rations with the escapees and arranged further places to hide.
In total, Sofija Binkienė’s aid network rescued 18 Jews. In 1967 she was honored by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Sofija Binkienė planting a tree in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem during the ceremony in her honor, Jerusalem, 1967. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem
Sofija Binkienė (front, 4th from left) with some of the Jews she rescued, including Adina Segal (3rd from left) and Samuel Segal (2nd from right), during the ceremony in her honor at the Yad Vashem Memorial Center, Jerusalem, 1967. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem
