Lithuania at the beginning of World War I: watched as the largest crowds were prepared for slaughter
Exactly one month after the Sarajevo Bosnian student Gavril Principa demonstrated exceptional accuracy in a second assault on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian emperor, and killed both the heir and his wife in two shots. July 28 survived the war that turned into the First World.
Lithuania, which found itself in the United States from the epicenter of the war, received more gloomy letters to its emigrants.
Parents – son: We, parents, congratulate your son Vincentėli and also congratulate you all brothers and sisters … Now maybe for the last time we say goodbye, because we will not see you here anymore. We have big troops. Da doesn’t hit, but everything has already taken away from us. Between the ages of 16 and 43, all the men were expelled. The animals and all food were taken away. We no longer have anything to eat and we die of starvation. We are all left, having to dig to the ground and waiting for death … Goodbye, goodbye, supposedly covered in tears, maybe we won’t see any more …
Parents – son: Today, our parents are announcing an unfortunate message to you that our country has burst into tears as we have heard a terrible war with us. The tsar arrested the horses from the people, the carriage and the people themselves, some into war, others into abazan and all sorts of works like ve: digging canals, driving out girls and women, literally all, only women left with small children. There is no time to work for a living, no matter how we take what to work, it also attacks the hands.
Constance – for Joseph: I wish Tamsta good health by asking God to afflict one individual, we no longer have to meet here on the hill of tears. Our king began to plead with Prussia and drove everyone to guilt.
Many of these letters were handed over to Lithuanian newspapers published in the USA, and now most of these letters make it possible to imagine how people in Lithuania met the war and try to restore its first day.