Gelvonai Secondary school

2013

Our Way to Freedom

Lithuanian partisans leaders

During the first occupation by the Soviet Union in 1940–41, Lukša was a member of the Lithuanian Activist Front. Opposing the Soviets, he was caught and imprisoned in Kaunas. After the war started in the Eastern Front and Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania, Lukša was released.

Soon he joined the anti-German resistance.

Juozas Lukša

From 1944, after the return of the Red Army, he engaged in the underground movement. At first he participated as a student, helping out with clandestine matters and unarmed resistance in Kaunas. In 1946, after the arrests of many activists, he left the city and joined the armed resistance. Within a year he commanded Birutė brigade of Tauras district that was active in Kaunas area.

At the end of 1947, he escaped through the Iron Curtain as a messenger to the West in hopes to attract support for the fighters and to establish contacts with Lithuanians in exile. He first came to Sweden. Later he was engaged by the French intelligence and thereafter transferred to CIA, where he received training as an intelligence agent in West Germany.

While in Paris he met Nijolė Bražėnaitė, fell in love and got married. During the stay in the western countries, he wrote a book Fighters for Freedom about the actual situation in the Soviet Union. He was parachuted back to Lithuania in 1950. For a year he was intensively searched for by the Soviet counterintelligence. Finally he was betrayed by fellow fighter Jonas Kukauskas and killed in fall 1951.

Adolfas Ramanauskas codename Vanagas was one of the prominent leaders of the Lithuanian partisans. Ramanauskas was born to Lithuanian immigrant family in the United States. In 1921, his family returned to Lithuania, bought 6 hectares (15 acres) of land in Bielėnai near Rudamina, and took up farming. Ramanauskas graduated from Galiniai primary school in 1930, and from Lazdijai secondary school in 1937. He continued his studies at the Klaipėda Pedagogical Institute (now Vilnius Pedagogical University). Just before graduation the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory) was ceded to Nazi Germany; therefore the institute was evacuated to Panevėžys.

The same year, Ramanauskas enrolled into the Kaunas War School. He graduated with the rank of second lieutenant in the reserve forces.  His class of 1940 was the last class to graduate from the war school before Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940.

Adolfas Ramanauskas Vanagas

After graduation Ramanauskas moved to Krivonys near Druskininkai where he became a teacher. He participated in the anti-Soviet June Uprising at the start of the 1941 German invasion of Russia.  During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, Ramanauskas lived in Alytus and taught mathematics, Lithuanian language,

and physical education at the Alytus

Teachers' Seminary

As the red army was winning over the Wehrmacht, Lithuania was again occupied by the Soviet forces. In spring 1945, Ramanauskas joined the Lithuanian partisans who waged an armed guerrilla warfare against the Soviets. He chose codename Vanagas (Hawk) and joined partisan formations in southern Lithuania (Suvalkija and Dzūkija), which were most active among Lithuanian partisans.

From 1952 he obtained fake documents and lived in hiding. KGB operatives, led by Petras Raslanas and Nachman Dushanski, continued to search for Ramanauskas. He was betrayed by Antanas Urbonas, former classmate at the Kaunas War School, and arrested on October 11, 1956.

He was taken to KGB prison in Vilnius (now Museum of Genocide Victims) and tortured. On October 12, barely alive, he was transferred to a hospital, where doctors noted his many wounds. Ramanauskas was sentenced to death on September 25, 1957, and executed on November 29, 1957. The place of his burial is unknow.

Jonas Žemaitis (also known under his codename Vytautas; March 15, 1909 in Palanga – November 26, 1954 in Moscow) was one of the leaders of armed resistance against the Soviet occupation in Lithuania and acknowledged as the Head of State of contemporary occupied Lithuania.

Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas

Žemaitis was born in Jonas Žemaitis and Petronėlė Daukšaitė's family. Despite the fact that his father was non-religious, Žemaitis was christened in Palanga's church. From 1910 to 1917 he lived with his parents in Poland, Lomža. In 1917, Žemaitis returned to Lithuania and settled down in Šiluva's region, Kiaulininkų village. In 1921, he finished Raseiniai Gymnasium First Class. In 1926, started studying in Kaunas War School.

In 1944 he joined the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, organized by Povilas Plechavičius. After the force was disbanded by the Nazis, Žemaitis went into hiding. When the Red Army returned to Lithuania, Žemaitis joined the Lithuanian Freedom Army and the Lithuanian partisans, steadily rising to a position of leadership. In February 1949 he established the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and became its chairman; he worked to continue partisan resistance to Soviet occupation and legitimize the actions of the partisans. In December 1951 he was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and became paralyzed. In May 1953 his place of hiding was discovered by Soviet agents and he was arrested. After being transported to Moscow, he was interrogated by Lavrentiy Beria and was executed in the Butyrka prison in 1954.