The Lithuanian civil servant Juozas Rutkauskas was married to a German and had three children. His wife and children moved to Germany in 1941, while Rutkauskas remained in Vilnius. He ran the Office for Registration and Passport Matters in nearby Rudamina. Rutkauskas used his position to produce forged papers for Jews interned in the Wilna (Vilnius) ghetto. Many Jews performed forced labor outside the ghetto. Rutkauskas offered them his help. He obtained a forged identity card for Cecilia Gradis, for example, with which she managed to escape to Vienna.
Rutkauskas’ Jewish acquaintance Anna Ran helped him to distribute the documents inside the ghetto. He gave her his daughter Margarita’s identity card for her own use and reported it to the police as lost. This enabled Ran to escape. Rutkauskas was arrested at the start of 1944 and detained in Lukiškės prison. He did not survive his imprisonment.
The Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Juozas Rutkauskas as Righteous Among the Nations in 1996.
