George Matulaitis Journal

treated. They even tore the hair of several women. Bodies were battered, bruised, and swollen. They took Father Muckermann away in an automobile, ostensibly to the George Hotel. Then they arrested a number of people and took them to the former Lithuanian Council building. They released some of the detainees after they had picked out the ones who seemed better educated and locked these up in the Luki kiai Prison, 1 where even now over a dozen women are jailed. Among them is the Duchess Grudzinska, a very devout Russian Catholic who converted from the Orthodox Faith. The Bolsheviks have locked the church and the building which housed the Christian Workers’ Association and posted guards around it. A search was conducted: the floor boards were ripped up and some books were taken. When I learned of all this, I sent Father Tumas with a letter to Kapsukas asking that he return the keys of the church and allow the people to pray there. I requested that Father Tumas personally inquire about the whereabouts of Father Muckermann and that he, as well as all those who had been arrested, be released. Kapsukas promised to return the keys and the church itself. He also said that the people would be released after they had been questioned, but that Father Muckermann would not be set free. Later I received a letter from Kapsukas saying that Father Muckermann had been taken to a prison in Mi<sk and that he would be tried there very soon. Attached to the letter were a few words from Father Muckermann—at least, something that had been taken down as having been said by him. Kapsukas claimed that the soldiers had not mistreated him when they escorted him out of the church, and he asked me to pacify the people. This had to be done because, Kapsukas added, someone had started a rumor that the Bolsheviks had murdered Father Muckermann. On Thursday some of the members of the executive Committee of the Workers’ Association came to see me asking what they should do: leave Vilnius or stay? I calmed them down and told them to stay 190 1. This notorious prison was built in 1898-1903, when Lithuania was under Czarist rule. It faces Luki kiai square in the old part of Vilnius on the left bank of the Neris River. The rebels of the uprising against Russian rule in 1863 were executed in this square, the future site of the prison. During the Russian, German, Polish, and Bolshevik occupations many Lithuanians were imprisoned and died here.