Murder by Nazis, deportation by Stalinists

Posted on July 5, 2011

Rozalija Stulginskiene’s son, Father Vaclovas Stulginskis, was a deacon at the Kaunas Theological Seminary. In 1941 he was murdered by occupying German Nazi forces.

In 1947, because she owned a small family farm, she was deported to Siberia by occupying Stalinist forces.

She was imprisoned near the town of Igarka, in the Krasnoyarsk region, for seven years. Upon completing her term, she was so frail and weak that she was transferred to the Tupik sanatorium, in the Shirinsky District of Khakassia. While there she wrote letters to try to find her one living son, Alfred.

She received a letter from her nephew, Father Jankus, of the Church of the Resurrection in Los Angeles, California, who found out that her son was working as a lumber jack in rural Canada. Father Cekavicius, of St. Raphael’s Church in Long Island City, New York, found out that Alfred was actually living in Toronto, and wrote that he would try to find a mailing address.

In the two letters written by Rozalija Stulginskiene, in 1955 from Tupik, she tremendously regrets not receiving any letters from her son. In May 1956 she returned to Lithuania, where she died within a few weeks. There is no further information available about this Stulginskis family.

The letters of Mrs. Stulginskiene, Father Jankus and Father Cekavicius are on display as part of the Hope and Spirit exhibit which I have organized, at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, 6500 S. Pulaski Rd., Chicago, Illinois. The exhibit has been extended, and will continue until mid-January, 2012.