News

Employees of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will participate in the environment-cleaning campaign “Darom 2011”. On 16 April, diplomats and other employees of the Foreign Ministry will clean up the Jašiūnai manor park in Šalčininkai district.Foreign diplomats, who reside in Vilnius, are also invited to take part in this campaign.

The Jašiūnai manor is one of Lithuania’s most authentic late Classicist style manor houses, but the park is neglected and not very well maintained. The manor house is a cultural heritage monument, included in the list of cultural heritage objects of Lithuania for its archaeological, historical and urban value.

The Jašiūnai manor (15th–18th century) was owned by the Radvila family, Jonas Sniadeckis settled here at the beginning of the 19th century. The Estate became an important cultural centre: it had a rich library, such Vilnius University Professors as Andrius Sniadeckis and Stanislovas Bonifacas Jundzilas, and writer Adomas Mickevičius were frequent guests here. The Estate is surrounded by one of the most beautiful Classicist style parks in Lithuania.

The Jašiūnai town is important to Lithuania’s history not only because of the manor - in 1920 at Jašiūnai Lithuanian troops fought the Polish forces led by Lucjan Żeligowski. In 1941 in Jašiūnai, security police of the Nazi occupation administration shot 575 people, mostly Jews.

The environment-cleaning campaign “Darom” has been organized for the fourth year in Lithuania. This year Lithuanians living in Belgium are also taking part in the campaign. In Brussels, they will clean the territory of former Lithuanian Embassy in Belgium.

At the end of 2009, the Embassy moved out from the building closer to the centre of Brussels, near the premises of the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the European Union. Since then, the building has been used by the Lithuanian community in Belgium. On Sunday, lessons of Lithuanian history for elementary and high school pupils and rehearsals of the community’s choir take place in the old Embassy building.

In 1991, the building was given as a present to Lithuania by the Lithuanian community in Canada, so that the restored state of Lithuania could have its own diplomatic representation in Brussels.