George Matulaitis Journal

the Lithuanian soldiers. Everywhere there is evidence of nationalistic prejudice. On March 20th Jonas Vai nora, a nationally conscious Lithuanian from Ezerenai, came to serve Mass. He attended secondary school in St. Petersburg. When he entered the seminary, he did not know a word of Polish and told me how much he had suffered because of his not knowing Polish. The first time he came to the seminary, he asked the doorman in Russian where he might find the Rector and if he could see him. The astonished doorman asked him if he were Catholic. Vai nora said that he was and that he wanted to enter the seminary. The doorman shook his head doubtfully, wondering if he would be accepted without knowing any Polish. He was accepted, but he also had a lot of difficulty until he learned Polish. Naturally, when he had to write essays in Polish, he wrote practically nothing. The professor would give him a zero cubed (0 3 ) and humiliate him. They put him in a room with several Polish roommates who would make fun of him and mock him cruelly. Unable to put up with this, he went to the Inspector to complain and asked that he be placed with a friend who had promised to teach him Polish. The Inspector refused to let him room with this seminarian. He said: “You knew that this is a Polish seminary, and if you didn’t know any Polish, you should have gone to Kaunas. So now you just have to put up with it.” Realizing that here in Vilnius they would, in the end, simply label him a Lithuanian fanatic and expel him from the seminary, he decided to move to Kaunas. He went to the Rector and told him everything quite openly. The Rector consoled him and retained him in the seminary. After he learned Polish, he no longer had as much trouble. When I asked him how many Lithuanians there were in the seventh year, he answered that there are two admitted Lithuanians and three more who probably enrolled as Poles. It seems that in the past if a Lithuanian knew Polish when he entered the seminary, he would usually sign up as a Pole in order to avoid problems and not be persecuted for his so-called “Lithuanian mania.” 1 230 1 Literally litwomania , a special term coined by the more chauvinistic Poles to label those Lithuanians who insisted on using their own language or who engaged in any activities on behalf of Lithuania as a sepa- rate and independent nation.