Diaspora

“Thug Rose”: Lithuanian America’s Ultimate Fighter. A Film Review

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 …

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A War Unknown No More

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 …

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We all Felt Like Kings: The Tale of Kings: The 16th Lithuanian Dance Festival in Philadelphia

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 …

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An Immigrants’ Grandson Remembers: Life and Death in a Pennsylvania Coal ‘Patch

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 …

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Mission Accomplished, Almost. THE LITHUANIAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE MAP

“Destination Lithuanian America,” the five-year-long heritage mapping project, is coming to a close. This January, project director Augustinas Žemaitis added his last 100 discovered heritage sites to the 750-site compendium. The map covers Lithuanian-American churches, cemeteries, clubs, monuments, museums, and locations otherwise falling under the rubric of “Lithuanian heritage.” It …

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A Life of Devotion: Brother Vincent Žvingilas

By Kendall Svengalis. LITHUANIAN HERITAGE September / October 2021 Over the course of its 112-year existence, Draugas (The Friend), the Chicago-based Lithuanian-Catholic newspaper, has bene ted from the contributions and tireless efforts of several hundreds of editors, writers, and staff members. Beginning in 1918, its operations, both administrative and editorial, …

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Al Jaffee – Reverse Immigrant

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 …

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How a Lithuanian-American Son Lost in World War II Unites Multiple Generations of His Family.

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 …

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Viktoras Petravičius: Master of the Monoprint

By Izida Petravičiūtė von Braun In 1978, in the journal Lituanus, Professor Stasys Goštautas of Boston University, wrote about Petravičius and his art as follows: “Never since the delightful graphic art of the primitive and anonymous artists of the eighteenth century, has Lithuanian art exhibited such a pure and candid …

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DEAD FREDDIE is ALIVE and IN THE HOUSE!!!

Audronė (Audrey) Kižys. What do you really know about that guy who once lived down the block? Especially if he’s older and your paths didn’t usually cross. He seemed like a regular guy growing up in the 60s and 70s on Chicago’s southwest side, in the Lithuanian enclave known as …

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