On VU’s Birthday, 27 Former Members of Its Community Will Rejoin It and Receive Memory Diplomas

This year, on 1 April at 3 p.m., 27 former members of the community of Vilnius University (VU), who were unable to graduate from VU more than eight decades ago due to the activities of totalitarian regimes, will be honored with Memory Diplomas at the Theatre Hall.

"The Returning Memory – Memory Diplomas project is a meaningful initiative of Vilnius University. The 20th century was a century of complex conflicts and destructive wars. There are two ways of dealing with this heritage: trying to get rid of it, to forget it, to erase it from your memory, and trying to rethink and embrace it. The University has chosen the latter. It is our message to the Lithuanian society and the international community that we are able to look at ourselves with an open mind," says Professor Rimvydas Petrauskas, Rector of Vilnius University.

On VU's birthday, Rector will personally award two Memory Diplomas to former VU students: Gediminas Juškevičius, who studied physics, and Ričardas Pikelis, who studied the Lithuanian language and literature. Other symbolic diplomas will be received by the nominees' family members and relatives. In the absence or failure to find the family members or relatives, the diplomas will be archived at the VU Museum and will be returned to the families should relatives of the persons honored with the diploma be found and contact VU.

According to one of the nominees, Gediminas Juškevičius, although he only studied for one year, VU had a huge impact on his life: there he learned the basics of physics, printed posters for the death anniversary of Romas Kalanta, broadcast foreign radio stations to the residents of his dormitory and met his future wife.

As a result of his anti-Soviet propaganda and refusal to serve in the army, he was persecuted by the Soviet Union's special services (KGB), expelled from VU, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in various Georgian prisons, but he does not regret his fate and has no grievances against it.

"I don't have any bad memories from my time in prison. I've had some luck in my life because I could have had much worse consequences, but I didn't", says Mr. Juškevičius.

Memory Diploma and the public award ceremony, established six years ago, are part of the history research-based initiative The Recovering Memory. Its aim is to assess the impact of totalitarian regimes on the VU community, to discover the victims of these regimes, and to symbolically bring them back to the community.

To date, more than one and a half hundred people have been found and honored with the symbolic diploma. However, over a thousand more people could qualify for the Memory Diploma: Lithuanians, Poles, Jews. There are nominees not only in Lithuania, but also in the United States, Israel, Poland, France, and there may be nominees in other countries in Europe and all over the world.

The VU invites individuals who have been expelled from the VU as a result of political regimes, or those who knew such people in their circle, to make inquiries at or to fill in the questionnaire to be honored with the Memory Diploma.