George Matulaitis Journal

Our future brother and servant, Andrius Meciunas, has come back. He stayed at his hometown of Rodunia and also at Marijampole. Jonas Varzaitis has also returned to Marijampole. Our brother, Vincas Urbanavi ius, has just died, having fallen ill with typhoid fever. Otherwise, all are well and busy working. There are 18 sisters 1 who are doing well too. Mr. Dybowski, the engineer-mathematician who had visited me once (I think it was March 13th) on the recommendation of Father Lubianiec, had announced that he was head of the Polish Military Organization [ Polska Organizacja Wojskowa ] and also appointed by the Poles to govern Vilnius, has turned out to be a provocateur. Some of the priests informed me that, ostensibly with the knowledge and blessing of the bishop, he had been going around among the priests and asking them to help him recruit young men into the army. He is the son-in-law of Dr. Domasevi ius, 2 a Lithuanian Bolshevik. Yesterday, the Legionnaires arrested this Mr. Dybowski and put him in jail. Father ÷ arnowski told me about it. On April 26th I went to visit the wounded in the hospital at the old bishop’s mansion. 3 In addition to the Legionnaires, there are also some Bolsheviks and Lithuanians there. May 1 It is the beautiful month of May, dedicated to Our Lady. O Blessed Virgin Mary, holy and beloved, entreat God to give us peace. All day long the firing of the big guns could be heard and sometimes machine guns as well. The soldiers in the streets seemed calmer; apparently, they are doing better. Yesterday they received reinforcements. 266 1 The Sisters of the Poor under the title of the Immaculate Conception, a religious community for Lithuanian women founded by Matulaitis in Marijampole in October of 1918. 2 Andrius Domasevi ius (1865-1935): physician from the town of Panevezys; worked in Vilnius from 1893. One of the founders of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, he later became a Bolshevik; in 1919, he was the People’s Health Commissar. 3 Built by the first bishop of Vilnius in the 14th c. as an episcopal residence and subsequently remodeled in the neoclassical style, it was confiscated after 1795 and used by the Russian government to house visiting rulers. In 1812 Napoleon stayed here for three weeks on his way to Moscow. In 1901 the building was con- verted into a museum in honor of Muravjov, the governor general of Vilnius 1863-65. When the Poles occu- pied Vilnius, they used the building as an army hospital, and the army chaplain, Bishop Bandurski, lived here. It was then renamed in honor of Napoleon and a memorial plaque affixed, dated May 5, 1921. Later, the build- ing was taken over by the Red Army, not to be used as a residence for the bishops of Vilnius.