Australian Lithuanian History

It was with much excitement that I learned that Lithuania had began to digitise and place on-line historic records.  They are calling it The Virtual Electronic Heritage System (VEPS).  Through the portal called epaveldas you can access thousands of cultural heritage objects newspapers, manuscripts, maps and sound recordings.  So far they have digitised 2 295 506 pages of documents preserved in archives, libraries and museums, 17 500 images from the Lithuanian Art Museum and 11 000 musical works (sound recordings with the total duration of 71 580 minutes). There are several reasons why this is great news to anyone researching Lithuanian history or their family.  Digitised records include Birth death and marriage records for numerous areas.  Its not complete and you may have to know Latin, Russian or Lithuanian cursive.  It is also not indexed, so you have to go through page by page.  You also need to know the area your family came from a...

Vasario 16, (February 16) Lithuania’s Independence day is the name given to the only Lithuanian High School high school outside Lithuania. During World War II, thousands of Lithuanians left their homeland fleeing Soviet occupation. By the close of the war, most of them had ended up in Germany. As war refugees they were housed in “displaced persons camps.” Conditions were harsh and their future uncertain. Yet they did not allow that to discourage them and went to work establishing Lithuanian educational institutions for themselves and their children.  By 1947 there were 26 Lithuanian high schools, five Lithuanian technical colleges, and 112 Lithuanian primary schools in Germany. As Lithuanians emigrated many of these schools were closed, but 8,000 Lithuanians chose to remain in Germany. In 1950, Germany’s Lithuanian Community established a single high school for Lithuanian students. The high school was founded in Diepholz—the site of a displaced persons camp where many Lithu...

The year is 1995.  In the year 1995, Salomėja Vasiliauskienė was president of the  t he Lithuanian Catholic Women’s Society , Saulienė Pušdešrienė was secretary, Birutė Budrienė was Treasurer and Jovita Vosylienė looked after everything else. They did have helpers, Terese Gasiunienė was the Prayer Coordinator, Stefa Ciplienė organised the church decorations, Prane Horskienė took care of the priests robes and Judita Nekrošienė visited those sick in hospital.    Elena Baltutienė was in charge of inventory and Stasė Bardauskienė oversaw the kitchen. In that year, Judita visited 74 sick people, 48 of whom were in nursing homes. Six priests visiting and stayed at the Catholic centre, which meant the women oversaw all their food and accommodation needs. The Catholic Women held 15 meetings, they participated in the Australian Catholic procession in honour of St Mary.  They visited the Baltic homes, organised and catered for the ‘Užgavėnės Balius...

His long blond locks of hair and his fierce attitude on court earned Vitas Gerulaitis the nickname 'the Lithuanian lion'.  Born in Brooklyn, USA to Lithuanian parents, he followed his fathers talent on the tennis court.  Vitas senior had won the Lithuanian tennis championship in his youth.  By 1984, Vitas junior, had won 27 titles and was ranked no.4 in the world. In 1980, he visited Adelaide, with his father, where they visited another former Lithuanian tennis champion, Alfonsas Remeikis.  Remeikis was living in Adelaide at that time. Vitas accidental died in 1994, aged only 40.  While sleeping at a friends house, he was poisoned by carbon monoxide leaking from a faulty swimming pool heater.

In 1990 Basketballer Romas Brazdauskas came to work and live in Adelaide with his wife, Rasa and son, Lukas.  Romas had come to Australia previously and had attended the Australian Lithuanian scports festival in Melbourne.   He came to Adelaide to play with West Adelaide. The Other Dream Team, 1992 bronze medal winners in Barcelona. Romas is far right.   Romas was born on 20 February 1964 in Kretinga.  At 204cm tall, he wasn’t someone to miss.  Previous to coming to Australia he  played for Panevėžys "Lietkabelis", Vilnius "Statyba",. Ryga "ASK" (Latvia), Vilniaus "Statyba", and Kaunas"Žalgiris".  He was awarded the ‘All Stars Five’ medal here and had a 76% shooting rate.   In 1992, while still in Australia, Romas was selected to play for basketball for Lithuania at the Barcelona Olympics.  This was the first time Lithuania had a national team since the restoration of independence in 1990.  The team went on to win a bronze medal...