RESTORED LITHUANIAN PARTISAN DOCUMENTS, HIDDEN UNDERGROUND FOR OVER 70 YEARS
After a year of meticulous work, documents from the Iron Wolf and Žalgiris units of the Tauras District of Lithuanian partisans have been restored.
In April 2022, a metal box containing documents from the Iron Wolf unit of the Tauras District, which operated in the Marijampolė and Prienai regions from 1945 to 1952, was discovered while digging sand in a forest near Nemunas, close to Pociūnai in the Prienai district. The find reached the Lithuanian Special Archives only after several months. During this time, the neglected documents had dried out and become so fragile that they disintegrated into tiny fragments at the slightest touch. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the recovered documents was in such poor condition that they could not be restored.
In June 2023, in a forest near the Rokai training ground in the Kaunas district, a shell casing with a cracked wooden lid was found while digging. Inside the casing was a bundle of damp, stained, discolored paper sheets covered in a thick layer of dirt. Upon examination, these were identified as documents from the Žalgiris unit of the Tauras District, which operated in Suvalkija and the Kaunas region between 1945 and 1952.
Due to their poor physical condition, the documents from the Iron Wolf and Žalgiris units were initially stored in a freezer until restoration could begin. After receiving funding from the Lithuanian Council for Culture in 2024, the documents, preserved in the freezer until then, were restored by conservators at the Lithuanian Central State Archives.
The restored documents will be preserved in the Lithuanian Special Archives. Once processed and cataloged, they will be digitized and made available online on the website Lithuanian Partisan Document Electronic Archive (https://epartizanai.archyvai.lt/), where digital images of documents from the Lithuanian Special Archives, other memory institutions, and private collections are published.
Last updated: 25-11-2024
Related news:
The President of Fighting Lithuania: Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas
The Virtual Exhibition "Reflections of Petras Plumpa's Anti-Soviet Resistance in KGB Documents"
Archivists in Lithuania celebrate International Archives Day
Young history researchers will have the opportunity to spread their wings more