Lithuanians honour partisans with candles ahead of remembrance days

A campaign to honour partisans is taking place in towns and cities across Lithuania ahead of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, LRT reported.

Under the initiative, “Light a candle for the partisans of your region”, people visit the places where those who gave their lives for Lithuania’s freedom were killed or are commemorated, tend their graves and light candles in their memory, said Rasa Duobaitė-Bumbulienė, chair of the council of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees.

“Travelling around Lithuania on these days, it is now rare to find a forgotten cross or memorial to our freedom fighters,” she said. Many partisans left to defend their homeland when they were very young, some still teenagers, and many had not started families, she added. “I say that it is our duty, as the generation of freedom, to light a candle of remembrance for them.”

Members of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union and local communities are also tending freedom fighters’ graves, places where they were killed and the areas around memorials throughout the country.