Juozapas Skvireckas (1873–1959) was a Lithuanian archbishop of Kaunas (1926–1959).

I put this information on Wikipedia about Skvireckas' help to the Jews as recorded in Nazi-era sources, but it was taken off.

According to the Jewish press during the Nazi era:: "Archbishop Warns Lithuanian Officials Not to Help Nazis Exterminate Jews," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 26, 1943, The British radio reported from Stockholm that Archbishop Skvireckas of Nazi-occupied Lithuania warned all Lithuanians against helping the Nazis execute the Jews. He denounced the Nazis as "murderers of Jews and persecutors of Poles" and appealed to Lithuanian officials "not to commit the sin of lending a hand to the German atrocities." "In the name of the Church," the archbishop said, "I condemn the hands of those who continue to share in the murdering of Jews, persecution of Poles and peoples of Polish origin. I condemn those who expel these people from their homes and who deport them. Lithuanian officials must realize that such activities are not a part of their duties." The London Times today praised the "extra-ordinarily courageous attitude" of the Archbishop and asserted the "the German crimes have united all the persecuted peoples."

[Excommunication of Lithuanians Assisting Nazis in Persecution of Jews and Poles], Chicago Sentinel, May 27, 1943. Dziennik Polski, official organ of the Polish Government-in-Exile, reports that Bishop Brizgis of Lithuania has excommunicated all Lithuanians participating in or assisting Nazis in the persecution of Jews and Poles. The paper says that the Gestapo recently massacred 6,000 Jews in the Vilna district while Nazi photographers filmed the mass-execution.

"How Lithuanian Jews Perished," The Jewish Chronicle (UK), June 23, 1944. Priests protested from the pulpits against the persecutions of the Jews, the Bishops appealed to the Commissioner General and the Lithuanian police openly refused to do the hangman's job.

"Catholic Priests in Lithuania Courageously Shielded Jews from Gestapo," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 9, 1944. With part of Lithuania now liberated by the Russian armies, a picture emerges showing Catholic priest in Lithuanian towns often actively though futilely intervening with the German occupation authorities for the life of Jews and often rising their own lives to hide Jews from Nazi extermination. Especially courageous was the behavior of a Catholic priest in the small Lithuanian town of Vidkule who hid fifty Jewish children in his church and called, in his sermons, upon Lithuanians to give every possible assistance to Jews. When Gestapo agents learned that he had secreted Jewish children and came to the church to get them, the priest met the Gestapo officials on the threshold saying, "You will enter the church only over my dead body." After brutally beating the priest, the Gestapo broke into the church and dragging the children out, burned them alive. The priest was arrested soon afterwards and shot. Similar incidents took place also in other townships in Lithuania. In a small town near Vilna the local priest succeeding in hiding in his house a Jewish family, the only family to survive the wholesale massacres organized by the Germans in that township. The bishop of Vilna circulated an epistle calling upon all Catholics to give to the Jews utmost assistance.

According to a letter to the papal Secretariat of State dated February 5, 1942 published in the Actes et Documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Vatican City, Libreria EditriceVaticana, 1965-1981, vol. 8 Letter 28, p. 434), the legation of Lithuania to the same had just received a telegram requesting for intervention for Jews in Lithuania, the contents of which read, “We beg you graciously intervene through His Holiness in behalf Lithuanian chief rabbi Ben Shapiro and family ascertain their condition and possibly enable them to come Lisbon kindly wire Union Orthodox Rabbis American rabbi Israel Rosenberg President 673 Broadway.” The letter says that the Minister from Lithuania would be extremely grateful if the request expressed in the telegram could be granted. It also informs the papal Secretariat of State that Bishop Skvireckas had already intervened for Jews with the German authorities regarding an increase in food rations assigned to them and that he had received a message of thanks and statement of gratitude for his good offices from the very same Rabbi Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kaunas.

As a result of this intervention Rabbi Shapiro’s family was shot. According to the account of survivor of the Lithuanian ghetto survivor Alex Faitelson published in his The Truth and Nothing but the Truth, Jewish Resistance in Lithuania (Jerusalem, Gefen Publishing House Ltd., 2006) and his Heroism and Bravery in Lithuania 1941-1945 (New York, Gefen Books, 1997). “The Nazis ignored both the International Red Cross as well as the Catholic Church, to whom American Jews had officially applied in the hope that, through their good offices, they would help their brethren. On the contrary, such requests only hastened the death of many families” (Faitelson 2006,191). Faitelson quotes Dr. Shmuel Grinhoiz, the former deputy director of the labor office in the Kovno ghetto, as having written in Fun letzn churbn (From the Last Extermination, no. 8),

"On December 2 [1943], the Gestapo assembled the entire Shapiro family. It was explained to them that the Catholic Church had intervened on their behalf as a result of the request of the American Jewish rabbis and they were to be sent to Switzerland. That is, the elderly wife of the rabbi, her son Dr. Chaim Nachman Shapiro, a senior lecturer who headed the cultural activities in the ghetto, his wife and son (the old rabbi was no longer alive at the time), were taken outside the town and there shot to death.” (p.32)." (Faitelson 2006, 192)

He also quotes L. Garfunkel, deputy chairman of the Jewish Council in the Kovno ghetto, as having written in Kovno ha-Yehudit ve-Churbana (The Destruction of Kovno Jewry, Jerusalem, 1959),

"On the 2nd of this month [December 1943] the Gestapo arrested Dr. Chaim Nachman Shapiro, eldest son of Rabbi Shapiro, the last rabbi of the Jewish community of Kovno, who had died a few months earlier. His wife and only son, aged fourteen, were also arrested with Dr. Shapiro. The following day, his mother, the seventy-year-old widow of the former rabbi, was also arrested. They were held by the Gestapo for a few days and afterwards, tied in chains, transferred to the municipal prison. There they were only kept for a few hours and then taken to the Ninth Fort and murdered there...It seems that one of the rabbi’s relatives in America asked the International Red Cross for information as to whether the rabbi’s family were alive and how they were situated. (p.157)" (Faitelson 2006, 192).