USA and the relationship between the Lithuanian-Americans and their homeland was substantially covered in our
VilNews editions during April and May 2012. Feedback from you, dear readers, is still wanted!

Click on the READ buttons below to access the articles:

1		Healing the wounds between LT-Americans and the homeland
1.1		“I am very pleased to see this intra-Lithuanian forum open up and give vent to these prejudices we have about each other”
2		The President and the World-Lithuanians on collision course?
3		A native American who loves Lithuania!
3.1		“There are significant cultural differences between LT-Americans and Lithuanians that grew up in the Soviet Lithuania”
3.2		“My impression is that many of us Lithuanian-Americans have thought about the possibility of retiring in Lithuania”
4		The Knights of Lithuania keep on fighting
5		Lithuanian ‘egg art’ on the Martha Stewart Show
6		Hordes of Lithuanians came to Pennsylvania to work in coal mines
7		Son of a Lithuanian coal miner
8		Easter and more – in Boston & Vilnius
9		We will never forget or underestimate the role of Lithuanian Americans in our struggle for independence
10		Alexander & Ruth Bielaski The Lithuanian FBI boss and his sister
10		TIME 1951: "The most invulnerable, most unfirable, most feared and most admired career woman in the U.S. Government."
11		Cultivating Lithuanian unity world-wide: What YOU can do!
12		LT-American filmmaker Jonas Mekas launches 'bar movie' in NY today
13		Vanda’s story: Memories of a prewar childhood in Lithuania – and an escape to the U.S.
14		Chicago 26 – 28 April: 200 scholars meeting to examine the Baltics
15		LT sportsmen in USA
16		Lithuanian-American Johnny Podres (1932-2008): US baseball’s ‘most valuable player’ in 1955
17		Antanas Smetona: Lithuania's famous president who ended his days in the U.S.
18		No flowers for Smetona
19		US-Lithuanian Facebook sites do a superb job!
20		Would you like to join me to the Lithuanian Cultural Garden in Cleveland?
21		A visit to our Homeland through the eyes of 12 American-Lithuanian women
22		Saluting the Lithuanians of Brockton, Massachusetts
23		Boston, Massachusetts, July 1, 2012: The 14th Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival!
24		Boston Lithuanian Cultural "Subatvakaris" - 50 years
25		US-Lithuanian Jews play many key roles
26		“Why do you love Jews so much?”
27		Ona Šimaitė: Righteous – and Human
28		Rūta Šepetys and Ellen Cassedy Probably our relatives brushed shoulders in the marketplace
29		What defines Lithuania? SOME US-LITHUANIAN REFLECTIONS…
30		How Chicago became Lithuania’s second capital
30.1		As vast as the waves of Lithuanian immigrants who crossed the ocean to start new lives thousands of miles from their native land
31		No LT leaders called to say they love me
32		Sending e-mail to LT is like sending it to the black hole of the universe
33		Should there be gay parades in Lithuania?
34		Global Baltic ‘family reunion’ in Chicago
35		Nazi – not Nazi?
36		Juozas Ambrazevicius- Brazaitis is no hero
37		Good morning, Mr. President!
38		U.S.-Nordic-Baltic cooperation
39		Message to all U.S.-Lithuanians: Come home, your country needs you!

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98th Annual Lithuanian
Days in Frackville,
Pennsylvania!

August 11-12, 2012

· AUGIS Lithuanian Pop & Folk Singer
· Sing a-long with Lynne Cox, Accordionist
· Malunas Dance Ensemble, Baltimore, MD
· Zilvinas, Dance Ensemble, Philadelphia, PA
· Gintaras Jr. Dance Ensemble, Mahanoy City, PA
· “Spins and Needles Guild” Weaving Demonstrations
· The Sensations Band
· Thomas Sadauskas: Lithuanian Genealogy Expert
· Pennsylvania National Guard
· Lithuanian Heritage Room
· Delicious Lithuanian Food
· Lithuanian Arts and Crafts:

Longest Running Consecutive Ethnic Festival in the USA!

Website: www.kofl144.weebly.com

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Regina Narusiene leaves the position as President of the World Lithuanian Community now in August. Here with her husband Bernard in Vilnius’ charming, bustling Pilies gatve on a beautiful July Sunday morning.

International Lithuania
needs new blood!

Text & photos: Aage Myhre, editor-in-chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

“We need new enthusiasts, young people in our worldwide organization, the World Lithuanian Community (WLC). We need Lithuanians, wherever in the world they live, to participate more actively in the maintenance and development of the Lithuanian identity and heritage.”

I wander through beautiful Vilnius Old Town with Regina Narusiene and her husband Bernard, both of them successful Chicago attorneys, this sunny July morning.

We hear voices in all languages​​, laughter, sounds. It smells of food from all world corners around us. Vilnius has become a hugely popular destination for tourists from all over the globe. I think back on how this street looked 22 years ago, when I came here for the first time. The pictures above and below are from the same street, one taken now in warm July 2012, one taken in November 1990 when coal was still dumped on the sidewalks from the horse-drawn carriages.

The lady I walk with, Regina Narusiene, 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. Now she has finished her second term for WLC and will leave the organization in a few days, at a meeting here in Vilnius starting 6th of August, and she is concerned that the recruitment to international Lithuania has become insufficient.

For six years she has lived 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, working intensely on behalf of  ‘the international Lithuania’ – this nation outside the nation that includes about almost as many Lithuanians as the country’s resident population.

WLC is now suffering from what is commonly known as an "ageing population" even if there in recent times has been some amazing enthusiasm from "second, third and fourth generation Lithuanians”, not least here in VilNews.  An input of new members and enthusiasts is, however, vital to ensure the long-term continuity of this important Lithuanian tradition and movement around the world. WLC needs YOU!

If you've previously taken part in other forms of organisations you'll have a good head start. Naturally, if you've been active in Lithuanian groups or institutions WLC would particularly like to hear from you. But what if you are a complete beginner? Don't worry, you'll still be made very welcome. Don't let the apparent complexity of what this organization does put you off!

I have agreed with Regina that she will be quick to answer everyone who writes her with questions, expressing any sort of readiness to participate in the works of international Lithuania.

So please do not wait, write her an email as soon as you can. Her email address is rbnar213@gmail.com

November 1990, my first visit to Vilnius: Delivery of coal to properties in Pilies g. right in the centre of the city. With horses. People pick it up in burlap sacks.
Other times, the horse driver is simply shovelling the coal out on the sidewalk in front of the buildings on his ordering list.

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Good morning,
Mr. President!

There is no head of state in the world, other than former President Adamkus, who has been running 100 meters in 10.8 seconds... This reveals the newly released 400 page sports biography that has been prepared by sports journalist Maryte Marcinkevičiūtė. It is early morning in May 2012. I am here to interview His Excellency, President Valdas Adamkus.
Photo: Aage Myhre.

President Valdas Adamkus interviewed by Aage Myhre
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

Former President Valdas Adamkus welcomes me in his office in the rear wing of the Presidential Palace in Vilnius Old Town this early May morning. We are approaching the end of our series on the relationship between the Lithuanian-American community and the home country, and I have come here to the ex president's office to learn more about how he, as the world's most famous Lithuanian-American, looks at this relationship. I would also like to hear more about his own history in Lithuania before and during World War II, about his years in Chicago and about his time as a politician and President of Lithuania for most of the years of 1998-2009.

I must admit that I sometimes felt Adamkus was too weak in his job as president. I often wished that he more pronouncedly had called the country's nomenclature to account for their transgressions against the nation's population, and I felt much more should have be done to fight corruption, injustice, intolerance, neglect of society's weaker groups, violence, crime and other misdeeds that Lithuania is still so tragically suffering under.

But after sitting with him for nearly two hours this morning, it slowly dawned on me how impossible it must have been to change attitudes and deeds in a country that to such a high degree had been brainwashed and subjected to almost unbelievable abuses over the years under Soviet tyranny. My respect and understanding of President Adamkus grew significantly during this interview.

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Juozas Ambrazevicius -
Brazaitis is no hero

Darius Udrys

Opinion: Darius Udrys

If there’s one thing civilized people should all be able to agree upon, one would think that it would be not to make heroes out of Nazi collaborators. Yet here in Lithuania we are about to witness just such a moral travesty.

Somebody apparently decided it would be a good idea to move the remains of Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis, acting prime minister of Lithuania during the first months of the Nazi occupation, from the United States to Lithuania. Buried previously in Putnam, Connecticut, he has been exhumed and will be reinterred in Kaunas this Sunday with as much fanfare as can be mustered among the clueless and the callous.

Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis is no hero.

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Juozas Ambrazevičius or Juozas Brazaitis

The controversial case of Juozas Ambrazevius Brazaitis' (1903-1974) remains being returned to Lithuania for re-burial this week

Juozas Ambrazevičius or Juozas Brazaitis was a Lithuanian literary historian, better known for his political career and nationalistic views. He was acting Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania, the so-called Nazi puppet government, from 23 June 1941 to 5 August 1941.

He later joined an anti-Nazi movement, until he escaped from Lithuania by the end of WWII.

A document by the US Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, from January 1975, states that Brazaitis was removed from the list of Alleged Nazi War Criminals and that further investigations had been stopped. But Efraim Zuroff, leader of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel, says: "At the time the Americans didn't have the data that clearly point to his connection to the Nazis and to anti-Jewish violence." Here is a copy of the 1975 document...

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“The LT government didn’t call to say they love me.”
This was the headline of an article we brought earlier this week, about Rimgaudas "Rim" Vidziunas in Arizona, USA. Rim and many other American-Lithuanians have been doing much to keep the memory of Lithuania alive. When I asked if he ever heard from the Lithuanian authorities, he told me that no one from the homeland had ever told him or other refugee children that they are loved by the ancestral homeland, that they are welcome back now that the communism yoke is lifted off.

It seems, unfortunately, that today’s Lithuanian leadership has not done much to restore contact with this most valuable of all resources, namely its own people around the globe – the diasporas.

And even worse is that when these 'refugee children' are trying to make contact with Lithuanian leaders themselves, they will very often not even receive replies.

Sadness pit dug even deeper.

Here a couple of emails we received some time ago, from two American-Lithuanians born in their home country before the war:

____________________________________________________________________

Sending e-mail to LT is
like sending it to the black
hole of the universe

Vytautas Sliupas

Dear Aage:

Lithuania's business people and government officials are yet to learn the necessity of good communications. Without a two way communication there is no possibility for further contacts. One of the most frustrating experiences I had was in e-mail (before that it was in regular "snail mail") communications. I would write and write but receive no reply (with only a few exceptions).

When I was working, our management had a rule - "answer all letters received in not more than three days. If there is no answer to be given, than at least acknowledge the receipt".

One of my American colleagues, who was sincerely trying to help Lithuania, said "Sending e-mail to Lithuania is like sending it to the black hole of the universe. Everything goes one way and nothing comes back".

No wander he is now disenchanted and helping others.

Vytautas Sliupas, P.E.
www.aukfoundation.org
Burlingame, California

____________________________________________________________________

"Dummheit und Stolz
wachsen auf einem Holz"
(Pride and ignorance are akin)

Stan Backaitis

Dear Aage,

Several months ago I had arranged a visit between the minister of energy and a CEO of an important nuclear reactor manufacturer. The meeting was supposed to be for the benefit of the minister on information of what is forthcoming in the future, particularly in small reactors and the possibility of establishing a European affiliate of the company in Lithuania.

The minister graciously extended an invitation to the CEO, but the minister's secretariat refused to extend even the slightest courtesy to this visit, such as picking up the visitor from the airport and transporting him to the meeting, setting up a meeting agenda, or even providing to the visitor's office the address of the ministry. They claimed that this was just another sales visit, and the visitor should take care of everything on his own. As a result the CEO canceled the meeting and eventually went to London. The European affiliate was established in the UK. Thus through such arrogance another opportunity was lost.

There is a lot truth in the German proverb "Dummheit und Stolz wachsen auf einem Holz".

Best regards,
Stan Backaitis
Washington, USA

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