Juozas Gabrys

Juozas Gabrys was born on February 22, 1880, in the town of Garliava, near the city of Kaunas, Lithuania.[1] He went to the Garliava primary school starting at the age of seven. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Odessa in 1907.

Gabrys was a secretary of the Great Seimas of Vilnius during the 1905 Russian Revolution.[1] He went into exile in 1907 to Paris.[1] There, in 1911, he founded the Lithuanian Information Bureau.[1] In 1912, he founded the Union des Nationalités.[1] These two organizations supplied European powers with information on Lithuania and other exploited European countries that crusaded for human rights and freedom.[1] In 1915, Gabrys moved from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland.[1] He started a campaign of political activities and held the first Lithuanian conferences during World War I to obtain freedom for Lithuania.[2] His campaigns were financed by Lithuanian immigrants of the United States and the German Foreign Ministry.[1] He published articles in more than fifty European newspapers for his campaigns, sometimes bribing editors to get them through.[1] His greatest success in organization was the Congress of Nationalities held in Switzerland in 1916 with 400 representatives from 23 nationalities.[1]

According to Alfred E. Senn, "Gabrys was undoubtedly the best known Lithuanian political figure on the European scene before 1916."[3] During the time period of World War I, Gabrys hoped to secure independence for Lithuania.[4] He communicated the cruel treatment the Lithuanians were receiving from the German military when they were occupying Lithuania to the French authorities.[1] He also called upon the Allies of World War I for assisting against German occupation.[1] Gabrys involved the Vatican in a worldwide collection of millions of Swiss francs for Lithuanian victims of war, which ultimately ended up in his personal bank accounts.[1] He labelled himself "Count of Garlawa" in his memoirs.[4] When the new Lithuanian government started at the end of 1918, Gabrys was not a political participant because of his disagreements with the government officials.[1] Because of his German government contacts during World War I, he ultimately "became virtually an unperson" in Lithuanian history despite his efforts to liberate the country.[4]

In 1919, with the help of the French, Gabrys unsuccessfully attempted to get a Lithuanian government position. From that point on, he dabbled in Lithuanian politics until he retired. In retirement, he became a gentleman-farmer in Switzerland. Gabrys died on 26 July 1951 at Corsier-sur-Vevey in Switzerland.[1]

Gabrys is the only leading Lithuanian liberation political advocate during World War I to write his memoirs in a Western language.[4] His works include:

• Gabrys, Juozas (1911). La nation lithuanienne; son état sous la domination russe et allemande. Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d'Appel. Retrieved 2014-06-11.
• Gabrys, J. (1918). Carte Ethnographique de L'Europe 1918. Lausanne: Institut geographique Kummerly and Fray, Berne.
• Gabrys-Paršaitis, Juozas (2007). Tautos sargyboj. Egzodo archyvas. Vilnius: Versus aureus. ISBN 978-9955699545.
• Demm, Eberhard; Christina Nikolajew; Nathalie Chamba (2013). Auf Wache für die Nation: Erinnerungen : der Weltkriegsagent Juozas Gabrys berichtet (1911-1918). ISBN 9783653031485. Retrieved 2014-06-10.

• Senn, Alfred Erich (1980). Jonas Basanavičius: The Patriarch of the Lithuanian National Renaissance. East European Biography Series. Newtonville, Mass: Oriental Research Papers. p. 53. ISBN 0-89250-251-7.
• Smele, Jonathan (2006). The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921: An Annotated Bibliography. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4411-1992-6.
• Tucker, Spencer C.; Roberts, Priscilla Mary (2005). The Encyclopedia of World War I: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-420-2.

• Works by or about Juozas Gabrys at Internet Archive