Memories too much at age 20

Not all new migrants could leave their past behind in Europe, as this tragic story details.

New Australian Found Shot
YORKETOWN, Dec. 27.

Juozas Abaravicius, a Lithuanian, was found with gun shot wounds in his head and a rifle between his legs at the back door of a guest house at Stenhouse Bay. at 5 pm. on Christmas Day. He died in the Southern Yorke Peninsula Hospital at 630 pm. yesterday. Abaravicius arrived in Australia in 1948 and joined the Waratah Gypsum Co. early this year. He had spent some time in a German concentration camp during the war. The Coroner (Mr. E. Lloyd) deemed an inquest unnecessary.

The Advertiser Wednesday 28 December 1949

MEMORIES TOO MUCH AT 20

ADELAIDE, Saturday.-Friends of Juozas Abaravicius, 20, of Stenhouse, South Australia, said to-day that they believed his suicide on Christmas Day was prompted by memories of Christmas, 1944.

Abaravicius was the only survivor of 32 Lithuanian prisoners shot by Nazis on December 25, five years ago.

Last Christmas Day he played all the records of carols he could find in the boarding-house where he lived in Stenhouse Bay.

He said to his landlady, "I've never felt so terrible in my life."

Then he shot himself with a .303 ride. As he was dying, he whispered in Lithuanian the Christmas songs of his boyhood.

The Sunday Herald Sunday 1 January 1950