DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English

Sandy Baksys. Just as we might expect of a biopic about a female champion in the sport of “ultimate” fighting, the new documentary, “Thug Rose: Mixed Martial Artist,” by veteran Lithuanian-American filmmaker Marius Markevičius, can be described as the ultimate sports psychology film. Whereas Markevičius’ Lithuanian basketball documentary, “The Other …

Victor Nakas. Once upon a time, thousands of people, mostly men, decamped deep into Lithuania’s forests. They established underground bunkers from which they would emerge to battle Soviet troops tasked with occupying and pacifying the country. Initially, these “forest brothers” (miško broliai) succeeded in making large areas of the countryside …

Laima Vincė. Ten years ago, two couples met in Jamaica to spend their vacation together. New York-based Lithuanian-born artist Ray Bartkus and his wife, Ina, a fashion designer, flew from New York to Jamaica, while Algirdas Kumža, signatory of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Toma, and their two …

Laima Vincė. My first Lithuanian folk dance festival – as veterans of Lithuanian folk dance festivals like to say – took place in Cleveland in 1984. I danced with “Liepsna” from Elizabeth, New Jersey. We’d dance in the church hall, just like all over the United States and Canada, young …

Sandy Baksys. Sometimes the buried war crimes of the past and the brazen crimes of the present vibrate at the same emotional frequency. This was clearly the case at a recent World War II “Victory Day” incident in a Soviet military cemetery in Warsaw. Online videos showed the Russian ambassador …

Victor Nakas. When George H.W. Bush assumed the presidency in January 1989, he directed his team to propose a creative new strategic approach to dealing with a U.S.S.R. that was becoming less repressive and more amenable. His national security adviser called the results disappointing. Though Bush deserves credit for engineering …

Jonas Ohman is a legendary figure in Lithuania. Born and raised a Swede, he first arrived in Lithuania in the early 1990s as a student. Then he knew nothing about the country except that it was occupied by the Soviet Union. He was impressed with how ordinary Lithuanians faced down …

Reminiscences of Bernard Terway about his youth from 1940-1959 in Seltzer City, Pennsylvania, composed by Sandy Baksys. In June 1940, when I was just five weeks old, my father Joseph Tirva, 45, was buried alive in an accident in a “bootleg” coal mine. Dad’s so-called “coal hole” couldn’t have been …

Linas Jegelevičius. The current invasion of Ukraine shook Richard, a 30-year-old Lithuanian, to the core of his being. Emboldened by the bravery of Kyiv’s defenders, he resolved to join the Ukrainian military forces in their struggle against the invading Russian army. “Richard” is a pseudonym; he asked not to be …

Živilė Gimbutas. This memoir opens with a stroll along Freedom Avenue in Kaunas during the author’s childhood, around 1938, and a return to the bustling city center in recent times, around 2000. Turning on Daukantas Street, Dita and her mother pass Swans Pharmacy and come to the garden of the …