Refugess in Lithuania During Wwii

Hogeshool Leiden
2010 m.

REFUGESS IN LITHUANIA DURING WWII

Erasmus students
Vytautas Arbatauskas
Sandra Klimčiauskaitė
Andrius Vasiliauskas

In the troubled 20th century humanity experienced two World Wars and many
small regional wars and conflicts. Many of them are characterized as very cruel. The
war refugees were an important subject all the time both for countries involved in war
and for the rest of the world opinion as well. It looks the same even today. Poorly
discussed, often lacking objective view (sometimes it looks as a rule), the facts therefore
are tendentiously delivered by one of the conflict sides. Sometimes it seems as usual as
daily news, very similar to hundreds of world news in present news media resources.
Everyone living in action zone becomes the victim of every single war as a
natural disaster. After September 1st1939, when World War II began, the fatality of war
touched the citizens of West Poland, and later, after September 17, we can talk about all
the citizens of Poland, who against their own will were involved into the nightmares of
war. During the first weeks while German – Polish front line was moving to the East,
thousands of people were moving towards unoccupied regions. The refugees might be
described as different, motley by all meanings huge mass, where Polish and Jewish refugees were in the absolute majority. It seems that for the most Polish it was a spontaneous action, as soon big part of them came back to their native regions.
In 1939, Lithuanian legalese language described foreigners who came to Lithuania because of war as war refugees . In 1951 Geneva convention of refugees status of refugee was adjusted   to persons who were described as refugees according to agreements of May 12th 1926 and June 30th1928 as well as according to conventions of October 28th1933 and September 14th1939. The entry for refugee in Lithuanian encyclopedia says that the refugee is person who is persecuted and has to leave his...