As we mark the day of the restoration of the Lithuanian state and celebrate her 100th birthday, let’s also remember those who built this state, where the law is not just a paper concept but a category forming the foundation of the state and citizens and affecting our daily lives.

Jews comprised a large part of the community of Lithuanian attorneys. The majority of Jews had the experience of both being caretakers of the law and of having their legal rights taken away from them. The textbooks don’t talk about Jewish attorneys and it is only rare archival material which gives us a glimpse of their professional portraits. Very little is generally known about cases at the Lithuanian Special Archive which detail the fate of Vilnius attorneys arrested in 1939.

Full text in Lithuanian here.