During a visit to Lithuania, the Speaker of the Knesset, Julius Edelstein, awarded two sisters whose parents saved a woman of Jewish descent during the Nazi occupation.
Righteous people of the world recognized Ignacy and Katarzyna Buely. Edelstein together with the Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon presented the award to their daughters: Kristine Kovalevskaya and Leocadia Khaninovich. The Buele family deserved the title of the Righteous Among the Nations for saving the life of Feigi Dusyatskaya, a 24-year-old resident of the Vilna ghetto. On February 13, 1941, together with her mother and sister, this woman was taken to be shot with a group of suicide bombers from the Vilnius ghetto.
When the inhabitants of the ghetto were taken to Panyarya and started shooting, Feiga fell into a pit over the bodies of the deceased. Bullets did not wound her, and when the police left, she got out of the hole and ran to the village of Vaidotai. There she found the house Buele, in which she spent the summer with her brothers and sisters. There they hid it. The policemen who were looking for Jews knocked at the Buele house. Katarzyna Buel told Feige to climb the stove, and her two daughters, Christina and Leocadia, to cover her and pretend to be asleep. The police did not find the Jewess and left.
In a ceremony held on September 13 in the Vilnius Gymnasium them. Sholem Aleichem was attended by the daughter of the rescued Feiga Dusyatskaya, Anna and Kotya Dobetsky, who arrived from France.
In total, about 900 Lithuanian citizens are recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations.