Culture

By Mary-Lou Weisman. LITHUANIAN HERITAGE March / April 2021 For more than half a century, writer and cartoonist Al Jaffee has been gleefully putting a premature end to the innocence of American youth in the pages of MAD, this country’s first popular satiric magazine. Suddenly, parents were hypocrites, teachers were …

Two Brothers Went to War, Only One Came Home Neither Is Forgotten Sandy Baksys. Some 80 years ago, Julius and George Sneckus went to fight for their parents’ adopted homeland in World War II. The only children of first-wave Lithuanian immigrants Petronele (Nellie) Matukaite and Jurgis (George) Charles Snieckus, the …

Linas Jegelevičius. Statesman Emanuelis Zingeris, a signatory of the March 11, 1990 Act of the Restoration of Lithuania’s Independence, is serving his seventh term as a Member of Parliament, the Seimas. Zingeris is also vice-chairman of the Human Rights and Legal Affairs Committee in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council …

By Gvidas Kovėra. About 1968, more and more students became interested in the old heritage of our country and ethnographic expeditions were organized. Their purpose was to collect surviving traditions, examples, stories, songs and dances. People formed groups to play traditional folk music. During the period of Soviet occupation from …

Dr. Darius Kučinskas. To mark the upcoming centennial of Lithuanian opera, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library in Vilnius, in cooperation with the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, has initiated a project to digitize the videotapes of Chicago’s Lithuanian opera productions. Cameraman and photographer Aleksandras Plenys undertook the original videotaping from …

Linas Jegelevičius, Representing Draugas News in Lithuania. There are books that are so riveting that you just can’t put them down. Two books by Gediminas Kulikauskas, Contraband of Oranges and The Lithuanian Code, both bestsellers, are among my favorite reads. Their author, who also wrote, Electricity Boycott and The Republic …

Several years ago, Draugas News featured a story on Nida Degutienė – businesswoman, food blogger, writer, and freelance journalist, who had just published a cookbook, Taste of Israel. Nida became immersed in Litvak and Jewish cuisine when her husband diplomat Darius Degutis was appointed Lithuania’s ambassador to Israel and South …

Vin Katilius-Boydstun.     There is no universally agreed-on definition of a shtetel. According to professor of Jewish history, Yohannan Petrovsky-Shtern, what became known in Yiddish as the shtetel grew out of the “Polish private town,” the property of Polish magnates during the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, continuing as such …

By Ramūnas Čičelis. It’s a great honor and pleasure for me to present and discuss the creative works of the Litvak author Grigory Kanovich (Kanovičius). Kanovičius grew up and was formed in the same town in which I was born and raised and in which I live still – the …

By Daiva Steponavičienė. In 2009 we celebrated the 1000 year anniversary of the first mention of Lithuania in a written historical document. As part of the festivities, an array of reconstructed national outfits worn by Lithuanian tribes in the 1st – 12th centuries and during the period of the Grand …