The Virovitch Ginas Family
Sara Ginaite is the daughter of Yosef Ginas and Rebecca (Virovich) Giniene. She was born March 17, 1924 in Kovno (died Aprill 2018, Toronto), where her father worked as a representative of a foreign manufacturer. Sara had an older sister, Alice, who was married before World War II. Sara attended a Jewish, Lithuanian-speaking high school and was about to graduate when the Germans occupied Lithuania in June 1941. On the heals of the invasion, Lithuanian partisans launched a violent pogrom in Kaunas. Three of Sara's uncles, Isaac, Salomon and Abrasha Viravicius, were murdered by their janitor. Their mother (Sara's grandmother), Malke Viraviciene, died upon hearing the news. Later that summer she and her family were forced into the newly established ghetto in Kovno. There, she met Misha Rubinsonas, who had attended the Yiddish-speaking Shalom Aleichem school in Kovno. The two were married in a civil ceremony in the ghetto on November 7, 1943. Misha was an active member of the ghetto underground. He headed the youth branch of the Anti-Fascist Organization (AFO) and was secretary of the Young Communist League. He and his sister Sonia were instrumental in securing a cache of arms for the underground from a storage shed near a German field hospital. After Sonia secretly copied the key that had been left in the door of the shed, the ghetto underground staged a raid and brought the arms to a nearby cemetery. From there they were transferred by truck to a safe-house in the city. Misha and Sara were among the first group of seventeen underground members who on December 14-15, 1943, left the ghetto for the Rudninkai Forest and became partisans. On January 7, 1944, Sara was sent back to the ghetto with four others to escort a new group of resistance fighters to the forest. She reentered the ghetto by pretending to be a nurse and claiming that she needed to escort four sick workers to the ghetto hospital. The ruse worked, and on February 8, Sara returned to escort another group to the forest. The partisan unit they established, called "Death to the Occupiers," operated in the vicinity of Vilna and assisted in the liberation of the city. Both Sara and Misha survived and settled in Vilna after the liberation. Sara's father died of natural causes in the ghetto. Her mother was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, where she took sick and died. Sara's sister Alice was liberated from Stutthof and her husband, from Dachau.

The Virovitch family gathers at the Kovno train station to bid farewell to Abrasha Virovitch who was immigrating to Palestine.

Abrasha was one of six children born to Malka Virovitch (pictured third from the left). His brothers were Salamon, Liova, Isaak and his sisters were Rebecca Giniene and Bertha Jurovitzki. The entire Virovitch family including Rebecca's two daughters Sara and Alice gathered to wish Abrasha well. In Palestine, Abrasha married Fania, and the two returned to Kovno in 1939 to pay the family a visit. Once the war started, he was unable to return to Palestine. He and his brothers, Salamon and Isaak, were murdered three days after the German invasion of Lithuania, June 23, 1941, when Lithuanian partisans entered the family's apartment, dragged out the men and shot them in the back yard. Abrasha's young wife, Fania, was killed during the liquidation of the Kovno ghetto, but their daughter, Tania, born in 1941 survived in hiding.

Sara Ginaite-Rubinson papers

Document | Accession Number: 1996.2.6
The Sara Ginaite-Rubinson papers contain photographs and documents relating to her family and the time she served as a partisan fighter in Lithuania during World War II. The photographs consist mainly of her family members, with some depicting Sara during her time fighting in the “Death to Occupiers” partisan group. Also included are documents concerning her relative Zlata Ginaite, photocopies of primary documents she discovered while researching the Lithuanian resistance movement, and correspondence with museums regarding her research. Also included is a copy of the Yiddish newspaper, Letzte Najes.

The Sara Ginaite-Rubinson papers contain documents pertaining to Sara’s family and her time as a partisan fighter during World War II. The photographs consist mainly of family members, but also has several photos of Sara’s time in the Rudninkai Forest serving with the “Death to Occupiers” partisan group. A certificate from the Soviet Army, dating from that time period and which certifies that Sara Ginaite served as a partisan fighter during World War II, is also included. Years later, Sara Ginaite-Rubinson conducted research both on her family and of the Lithuanian resistance movement, and the collection contains photocopies of primary and secondary documents that she discovered during her research. Included are copies of documents that pertain to her relative, Zlata Ginaite, including her marriage certificate, Belgian identification card, and school diploma. Another item belonging to a relative is the student identification card for Liova Viravicius. Other photocopies are of instructions to members of the “Anti-fascist Organization” and a brief history of the Kovno occupation, both in Lithuanian. Related to this research, the collection also contains correspondence sent from Ginaite-Rubinson to museum curators concerning her research, with one letter from Leningrad and written in Russian. Also included is a copy of the Yiddish newspaper Letzte Najes, which has an article from 2005 concerning Yehuda Beylis, a Jewish police officer who assisted Jewish children in escaping the Kovno ghetto.
  

Sara Ginaite at the liberation of Vilna. The photograph was taken by a Jewish, Soviet major who was surprised to see a female, Jewish partisan standing guard.
Photographer
Yasha Riumkin
Date
1944 August 10 - 1944 August 11

Picture c1935 from left to right are Franute Grunskaite, Sara nee Ginaite and her mother Rebecca nee Virovich. Franute Grunskaite who was the housekeeper for the family. was later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Sara's cousin, baby Tania Virovich

May 1944
Tanya Virovich poses on a street in Kaunas where she went on a walk with her rescuer, Franute Granskyte.

Malka Viravich and her daughter Berta Viravich Jurovitzki. The tombstone writing identifies the grave as "our dear daughter, Chana, the daughter of Gutman Viravich."

Gutman and Malka Virovich pose with their granddaughter Alice, while waiting for her parents to join them for Shabbat c1930.

Liova Arie Virovich

Josif Leizer (Juozas) Ginas 

Members of the Virovich family stand outside their wine store and home in Kaunas.

Pictured on the far right is Liova Viravich and his nieces Sara and Alice Ginaite.

Rivka Gin (Virovich) 
Gender:
Female
Birth:
September 05, 1894
Kaunas, Kaunas governorate, Lithuania, Russian Empire
Death:
March 17, 1945 (50)
Sztutowo, Nowy Dwór Gda?ski County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland
Immediate Family:
Daughter of Gutman Tuvia Virovich and Sheine Malka Virovich
Wife of Josif Leizer (Juozas) Ginas
Mother of Alice (Zlata) Ginas Benn;

Josif Leizer (Juozas) Ginas