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He was born in 1930, worked as a pedagogue from 1955 till his
pension in 2003.
He was also School Inspector and a teacher in history.
His mother,
Berta Gegeckiene, kept a "restoran" in Pakruojis. The spot
where she kept the restoran was rented to her by Frada Katz Shapiro
, the mother of Rivka Shapiro. Berta and Frada were good friends and when
one of her sons (Zenonas brother) was killed by the Germans, the Shapiros went to church for the funeral of her son. Before 1941 Berta moved to new Pakruojis and
Kauzuna and Mikalaus took
over the restaurant. (They were there at the time of the massacre in 1941.) Berta
was an important witness for the prosecution in the process against war
criminals , held in
Siauliai.
Zenonas, one of her children, didn’t
witness the killing of the Jewish families of Pakruojis in the summer of 1941.
However in August 1941, the morning after the
killing of the
Jewish women and children, amongst
them his Jewish friends, Zenonas went to the killing spot.
He was completely devastated, he told us, by what he then saw and he has
still nightmares about it.
He saw a spot, freshly dug and covered, several shoes, clothes and a lot of blood
all over the place, especially on the trees. It was too horrible to see and to talk
about.
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