‘American culture overwhelms everything‘: Maintaining national identity in Little Lithuania in L.A.

Los Angeles, located ten time zones away from Lithuania, became home to tens of thousands of Lithuanians after World War Two. Institutions founded by Lithuanians after the war are still in operation here, helping different generations maintain their Lithuanian identity.  

Towering palm trees and stunted buildings line the string-straight streets that stretch for tens of kilometres, with no clear boundaries between Los Angeles and Santa Monica. On one of these endless streets, on the side of Santa Monica, the California Lithuanian Credit Union is located.

Inside, visitors are greeted by signs in Lithuanian and English, as well as a few moments of hesitation about which language to speak to the staff.

Gida Urbonienė, who has worked here for almost 20 years, addresses customers who walk through the door in both languages: “We say ‘hello’ and ‘labas’, and then the person responds in the language they prefer.”

Albinas Markevičius is one of the founders of the California Lithuanian Credit Union. The man in his nineties retired from the credit union’s board after 53 years of service but still works in his office on a hot October afternoon.

At his desk is a photo of him smiling next to former US President and California Governor Ronald Reagan. They used to talk about golf, Markevičius says.

Although he has lived most of his life on the Pacific coast, he spent his childhood in inter-war Lithuania: “Žiūriai village, Slavikai parish, Šakiai county,” the man recounts.

Markevičius left Lithuania during World War Two as a teenager and remembers the journey that followed in detail.

“We ended up in the Russian-occupied zone in East Germany and stayed there for a year and a half. It’s hard to talk about what happened there. I have never seen such atrocities before,” he says.

He still remembers an American general Clay, who hated the Communists and helped Markevičius’ family to move from the Soviet-occupied German sector to West Germany.

This was the path to the US for many Lithuanian expatriates at the time – through the postwar German refugee camps. Neither a ruined Germany on the brink of starvation nor battered Western Europe would accept them; there was only one way – across the Atlantic, into a world untouched by war.

Markevičius’ family had to wait until 1949 to be allowed into Canada, as the man received a visa to work in the gold mines. It took another eight years before he had a US visa in his hands.

Coming to the US was an emotional moment for many. Danguolė Navickienė, a Lithuanian woman living in Los Angeles, reached New York from Germany by boat after the war and says she will always remember the moment she first saw the shore.

“Everybody came on deck and saw our new home, the Statue of Liberty greeting us as if a religious vision,” she says.

“My father worked the hardest jobs so that he could get a teacher’s permit in the US,” Navickienė recalls the difficult beginning in the new country.

Many Lithuanians at that time moved to Chicago, where a large Lithuanian community was established before the war. Markevičius, meanwhile, chose California. In 1957, he came to Santa Monica, which was a quiet town on the ocean at the time.

Here he started a real estate business, even though it was not easy for immigrants to get business loans or mortgages in the US. The Lithuanians had already set up their own credit union, but it was run according to the interwar Lithuanian principles – loan applications were often rejected and the system was “dictatorial”, Markevičius says.

According to him, the Lithuanians did not understand “the American capital system”. As such, he decided to create a Lithuanian credit union which would operate according to the principles of American capitalism.

“In Canada, you needed half of the amount to buy a property, but here 20 percent, and sometimes even 10 percent, was enough. I realised that there was a fantastic opportunity to buy property,” Markevičius explains.

The California Lithuanian Credit Union now has a capital of 150 million dollars. In the years since Lithuania regained independence, the Lithuanian expats have sent several million dollars through the credit union to their relatives, as well as organisations in Lithuania.

“We used to send over 10,000 dollars a day,” Markevičius recalls the first few years after Lithuania regained independence.

Little Lithuania in L.A.

A sign proclaiming the northern Los Angeles neighbourhood as Little Lithuania stands next to a church built by Lithuanians after the war.

One of the first Lithuanians to settle here were Violeta Gedgaudienė and her family.

“Many Lithuanians lived here. My parents lived here. There was an entire [Lithuanian] culture here. This church used to be full,” says the Lithuanian woman who has lived in Los Angeles for more than 50 years.

The Lithuanian school established next to the church was also one of the first such schools in the US.

“People used to drive two hours each way on Saturdays to bring their children to the Lithuanian school,” says Marytė Newsom, the headmistress of St. Casimir Lithuanian Heritage School, where around a hundred children still learn Lithuanian on Saturdays.

Newsom was born when her parents were on their way to the US, having left Lithuania in 1944. Maintaining a national identity in the US throughout a lifetime is not easy, she admits.

“American culture is such that it overwhelms everything. You always have to swim to the surface and try to stay afloat,” she smiles.

Navickienė, who arrived in New York at the age of five, also talks about her efforts not to drown in American culture.

“When my daughter turned five, I went to register her for kindergarten, and she looked at me and said: ‘Mom, you speak English?’ Not a single English word was spoken in our house so that the children would not forget the Lithuanian language,” she says.

Third generation

The Los Angeles Lithuanian Days is one of the largest Lithuanian culture festivals outside Lithuania. Laura Remeika, head of the Los Angeles Lithuanian community, is one of the organisers of the event. She and her parents came to the US almost 30 years ago, after Lithuania regained independence.

For this generation, the acquisition of American citizenship presented also posed a question of preserving Lithuanian citizenship.

“I have an American passport. I only have American citizenship. I have an old Lithuanian passport, but it has expired, so I am not a Lithuanian citizen,” says Remeika.

This is one of the most important unifying issues for the Lithuanian community today, as Lithuania is set to hold the second dual citizenship referendum next year.

“This is a very sensitive topic for me because I was born in Lithuania, I grew up in Lithuania, we have Little Lithuania here in Los Angeles, and it is very painful not to have Lithuanian citizenship,” Remeika shares.

According to her, the Los Angeles Lithuanian community will be working to educate people in Lithuania about why this referendum is so important to them.