The Jews hidden in Pauvlavicius’s cellar remained there for the next three weeks, until the day of liberation. ‘After liberation,’ Miriam Krakinowski recalled, ‘Pauvlavicius was killed by Lithuanians who hated him for saving Jews.’*4 He was actually murdered by one man. That someone should be murdered by his fellow villagers, his fellow nationals—his fellow human beings—for an act of kindness (some would say, nobility) is hard to contemplate. Yet such incidents were repeated again and again.

Martin Gilbert, The righteous: the unsung heroes of the Holocaust, New York, 2003, p. 131