Regina Narusiene, Chairwoman of the World Lithuanian Community.

Regina Narusiene lives a busy double life. Through part of the year, she stays with husband and family in a small village 100 km. northwest of Chicago, but it’s not usual to see her for long periods at her home in Vilnius and work on behalf of ‘the international Lithuania’ – this nation outside the nation that includes about almost as many Lithuanians as the country’s resident population. Regina has been President of the World Lithuanian Community (WLC) since 2006. Before that she led the Lithuanian American Community Inc. (LAC) for six years and then was the president of the Board of Directors of that Community for another 6 years.

She is in Vilnius today, and invited me to her apartment, for an informal coffee chat about her life and observations about Lithuania and Lithuanians.

Dual citizenship. These two words have come to represent Regina's premier of the heart since she took over the leadership of WLC in 2006, the same year that Lithuania's Constitutional Court ruled that the country's Constitution had to be interpreted in such a way that individuals with citizenship of another country should not be allowed to have and keep Lithuania’s citizenship as well.

“The first few months after the court had made its terrible decision, at first I received almost 100 angry letters every day from Lithuanians and their descendants from around the world. They felt that the mother country had disowned them, cutting ties with them and that their efforts and desires to be citizens of Lithuania were not welcomed or respected. They felt that the mother country wanted to punish those who had emigrated, whether this occurred against the background of war, persecution or for economic reasons.”
Regina is herself a lawyer, with over 50 years legal practise in Illinois with her husband Bernard, litigating all types of court cases. Still, the ruling of the Lithuanian Constitutional Court has surprised her. She strongly argues that Lithuanian citizenship for those of Lithuanian descent is an inalienable constitutional birth right and that the government may not arbitrarily take it away.

"I maintain that people of Lithuanian heritage, who were born in Lithuania and have Lithuanian citizenship, have an inviolate birth right to citizenship. Lithuania cannot deprive them of this birth right. That right is guaranteed by the Constitution, but somehow that Constitutional right has been ignored. In my opinion, depriving Lithuanian citizenship to Lithuanians living abroad is against the best interests of Lithuania," she says, convinced that Lithuanians living abroad worldwide should be welcomed to participate in their motherland’s future through Lithuanian citizenship. The most valuable asset of a nation has is its people. When a substantial part of its people are rejected the nation dwindles. It self destructs.

She proceeds to tell me that the WLC laboured to supersede the decision statutorily, but that Presidents Adamkus and Grybauskaite declined to approve Parliament’s pro dual citizenship statutory enactments. Finally Lithuania did on 2 December 2010 enact a new citizenship law, which allows Lithuanians citizens and their descendants to preserve their Lithuanian citizenship if they emigrated before 11 March 1990. This new legislation prohibits dual citizenship for all those who emigrated after the reestablishment of Lithuania’s independence on 11 March1990, with the exception for those who received another country’s citizenship between January l, 2003 and November 16, 2006, the date the Constitutional Court decision became effective. The ruling is not applied retroactively, only prospectively. The new citizenship law becomes effective on 1 April 2011. The World Lithuanian Community takes the position that it is incorrect to take away the Lithuanian citizenship from Lithuanian descent people and their descendants that was acquired by birth. The Community does not support an unrestricted dual citizenship Constitutional amendment.

Behind a blue curtain
Our little coffee chat in Regina's apartment has an important and serious beginning, but I also wanted to know more about the personal life of Lithuania's international 'mom', so I ask if there is something she remembers from her childhood in Lithuania, during the early years of World War II.

On my request she tells me a dramatic childhood story, in deep emotion, but lightens up when she describes her years in America, where she was educated as a lawyer and became a successful attorney in partnership with her husband Bernard. She became active in her support for a free Lithuania early, and has been in the very forefront for political, economical, cultural, educational and social support to her home country during the last several decades.

But first her childhood story from wartime Lithuania:
“I was almost five years old, but I still clearly remember the day when a truck with Soviet soldiers drove up to the home we were hiding in Kaunas. My father ordered me to hide behind the blue curtains in the home’s living room and not make even the smallest move or sound. Our family was to be deported to Siberia and the soldiers had come to take us. It felt as though it took an eternity before my father returned and told me I could come out from my hiding place. A truck with German soldiers had come up behind the Soviet truck, forcing the Soviets to leave. That probably saved our lives. As the Soviets were returning to Lithuania in 1944 we escaped to Germany, and after living in Displaced Persons camp for 5 years, in 1949 we emigrated to the United States.”

KGB infiltrators in our US-LT societies
As the Soviets once more reoccupied Lithuania in 1944, Regina and her parents managed to get out of Lithuania. They knew that the fate awaiting them under a Soviet-controlled Lithuania would be deportation to northern Siberia's frozen tundra.

Like so many other Baltic refugees they came to eastern Germany, where they lived for a while in Dresden and were witnesses to the bombing and terrible destruction that took place during the war's final months. Regina's parents followed the war developments closely, and realized that they had to get farther west into Germany, or otherwise they risked to come under Soviet control in the part of the country that later became the DDR (East Germany). The day after the German surrender the family heading south-west. They had to walk 200 km on foot, while a smaller part of the trip took place on cattle trains. Finally they came to the city of Augsburg, north-west of Munich in the southern German region Bavaria where they stayed in a Displaced Persons camp until 1949, when a cousin in Chicago helped them to come over to the U.S.

Regina tells me that her father had a small notebook where he wrote down all the events, including the many concerns, which met the family during the escape from Lithuania until they finally were able to settle in Chicago.

"But he never told me much," she says. "Only when I got older I realized that my father was afraid of informers who could make life difficult for us, for our relatives who remained in Lithuania, and for the Lithuanian partisans who kept on fighting against the Soviet occupants well into the 1950s. The KGB had their own spies within the Lithuanian communities in the U.S., so we were extremely careful with what we said outside the home. I had, anyway, not so much to tell as my parents were very reluctant to share information with me. "

Until the 1960s, we thought we would someday return to Lithuania
Regina's new life in Chicago was similar to that of American children in general. She immediately attended high school, which was extremely difficult because she did not then posses basic English language skills. Seven years later, after acquiring a bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the University of Illinois she began to study law at the University of Illinois where she met her future husband, Bernard, and the two married in 1959. Bernard was also Lithuanian, but born in the United States. After graduation and having received their Juris doctors degrees, the two new lawyers opened their own law office. They raised three children and now have seven grandchildren.

"Through all these years, there was not a single day without us thinking of our beloved homeland - Lithuania. The very limited information coming out from the almost totally sealed Soviet Union, told us about terrible atrocities against our people. We heard vague stories about the incredibly tragic deportations of hundreds of thousands from the Baltics to Siberia, and we were told that thousands and thousands became victims of the terrorist regime that ruled our home country. It was very hard to realize that there was so little we could do, but we held together and kept the memory of Lithuania before the American people as best we could. In 1952, LAC (Lithuanian American Community Inc.) was founded, and quickly became the organization that united Lithuanians all over the United States together with a common bond. "

What a contrast it must have been between the post-war lives of the Lithuanians who managed to flee, before the borders were completely closed in 1944-45 and those who were trapped in a country that increasingly appeared as a prison it was virtually impossible to escape from alive. The only thing the Lithuanians in the U.S. could do with the tragedies that took place in their homeland was to transmit radio programmes in their native language through the station Voice of America to tell their country people that they were not forgotten and that they had to try to keep their spirits up even in those difficult times.

They did manage to convince the American government not to recognize the unlawful annexation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union. The Lithuanian Americans managed to maintain the pre-war Lithuanian Embassy in Washington and consistently advocate the Lithuanian cause.

LAC also did their utmost to lobby the U.S. authorities to pressure the Soviet Union out of Lithuania. Regina maintains that throughout the post-war period the Lithuanian-Americans kept alive the hope of a free Lithuania.

"Until the end of the 1960s we believed that Lithuania would again be a free and independent country and that we could return to. But then came the 1970s, as time went on our hopes began to fade," she admits with sorrow in her voice. She now looks out through the windows facing a Vilnius that today is free, peaceful and stunningly beautiful, but that not many years ago was eyewitness to incomprehensibly gruesome atrocities against its citizens.

The most thrilling moment of my life
The little eight year old girl who left home in a chaotic and dangerous escape from a cruel enemy in 1944, was to become a mature woman of 53 before she again could set foot on the home country's beloved soil.

In August 1989 Regina came back home, and on 23rd of August was standing in Vilnius along with tens of thousands of other Lithuanians and held hands in a 600 km long human chain that stretched from Vilnius to Tallinn. Fifty years had passed since Molotov and Ribbentrop had signed the infamous pact that was to be the beginning of a bloody and deadly hell, unprecedented in Europe's history, for a population that did not want anything but to live in peace and harmony.

"I felt the rebirth of my homeland, and when I stood there in the line with my dear countrymen to mourn all those who had been killed and tortured by a regime of madness, and heard our Lithuanian national anthem resound from the speakers around Vilnius, with hope for a new time to come. I was moved to tears more than any time earlier in my life. That moment was the most thrilling I've ever experienced. And I decided then and there to do my very best to help Lithuania to again be resurrected, and grow as a proud and strong nation." The lawyer, politician and activist who has experienced so much, and through her profession and life learned how to act professionally and balanced in all circumstances, had become clearly emotional.

President Bush Sr. at first chose a head-in-the-sand attitude
"Understandably, I was full of enthusiasm and optimism when I returned to the United States in 1989. The Lithuanian Americans quivered with excitement and jubilation, and we were soon organized to exert supportive pressure through all political, media and other channels we had access to. I think my uncle in Lithuania, having been deported to Siberia, expressed how we all felt, in one single sentence, when he said that he had been in Siberia and that he was not under any circumstances letting this chance for freedom slip by."

But the battle for secession from the Soviet Union was still not won. Gorbachev's sweet words about freedom for all the Soviet states were not truthful so all means had now to be used to ensure Lithuania's independence. The Lithuanian parliament's declaration of freedom 11 March 1990 was the first and most important step in that direction, but it was also more and more obvious that the Soviets would resist. Regina tells me that when Professor Landsbergis came to Washington 9 December 1990, he was convinced that the Soviet military would take action against Lithuania. Landsbergis met with U.S. President Bush Sr. to tell him this, but President Bush was unwilling to do anything at all at that time and went instead for a head-in-the-sand approach, telling us that the U.S. could not let the USSR fall apart, due to nuclear concerns etc.

“Fortunately however, the Baltic desk at the State Department in Washington was unwilling to accept such attitudes. We spent efforts to effectively exert pressure on all sides. Among the first things we were very pleased with was the cooperation with Iceland, which was the world’s first nation to recognize Lithuania's new independence. Tacitly the U.S. authorities supported Iceland's recognition, but they felt they couldn’t take a similar step so soon," explains Regina.

When the Soviet troops attempted to re-impose complete control of Lithuania on 13 January 1991, Regina and the Baltic organizations in the United States were quick to condemn the attack. "I hold you personally responsible, Mr. Gorbachev," she said in an interview with CNN that was carried nationwide in the United States.”

A change of mindset is necessary in today’s Lithuania
In 1994 Regina Narusiene was elected President of LAC (Lithuanian American Community Inc.). She held this position through two terms, until 2000, then she served as chairman of the LAC Board of directors for two terms until 2006, when she was elected President of the WLC (World Lithuanian Community) and now is in her second 3-year term as leader of the this 'nation outside the nation'. During the 20years that have passed since Lithuania regained its freedom, she has made tireless efforts for her homeland. She spearheaded the drive in the United States for the admission of Lithuania into NATO from January 6, 1994 until its official admission into NATO on 29 March 2004. She has served as an advisor on various matters to most of the Prime Ministers of Lithuania and extensively contributed her legal talents with respect to the printing and issuance of the Lithuanian currency - Litai. She is a founding member and continues to serve as a member of the Lithuanian Royal Palace Foundation. She feels that she has always been personally well received in Lithuania.

“Recently however, I've heard some in Lithuania say that Lithuania does not need or want our help. Still I see significant reluctance to improve the country's legal systems. It seems that some of the country's leaders simply are not ready to or interested in implementing urgently needed reforms. I am saddened to see the public’s perception that rule of law is still not working effectively in Lithuania." Regina sighs a little deflated when she shares those thoughts with me.

Towards the end of the conversation I ask her to express some thoughts on what it takes to get Lithuania to grow stronger and better over the years to come. I'll let her words finish my little report from our coffee talk:

"Let me first say that it is deeply tragic to see so many young, talented and beautiful people leave this country. Some say that it is now no longer talk of emigration, but evacuation. It is therefore obvious that much more must be done to pave the way for good jobs and opportunities for the country's younger population. But it is also my opinion that we need a shift in mindset among some of the country's leaders.”

“Last but not least, I yearn to see far more of the population, young and old, engaged in voluntary public oriented organizations and activities. That is exactly what democracy for a large part is about, and it does not take much. Lithuania's people should begin to take such initiatives themselves. A good, democratic society consists of people who give of themselves to help each other. Lithuania has unfortunately still a long way to go in this respect.”

“I will conclude by saying that it is important for the nation to maintain good relations with all Lithuanians, and their descendants, now living in other countries.”

“Lithuania needs a new global strategy, and we in the ‘Lithuanian World Community’ will do our utmost to contribute to such a strategy. Lithuania has an enormously large group of smart Lithuanians and good hearts outside the country, and it is important that Lithuania invite to dialogue with them and seek their support and input to promote a better future for Lithuania, the country we all love. "