A second wave of Lithuanian emigration looks nothing like the first. It was not a slow movement of villagers toward ports, but a flight in the last year of the war, followed by years in camps and a scattering across several continents. Many American, Canadian and Australian families of Lithuanian descent trace back to those camps. This guide explains what Lithuanian displaced persons faced after 1944, how many people the sources count, and where the records of camp life and resettlement are held, with each number tied to its source because the sources do not agree.
Why 1944 splits so many families
As the war moved west, many Lithuanians left, aiming to travel far enough to come under American or British protection, according to a presentation by Regina Butkus of the Lithuanian-American Community at the Baltic Heritage Network’s 2024 conference. In the first postwar years, displaced persons, or DPs, hoped that the Baltic states would soon regain independence and that they could go home. That did not happen, and the camps became a waiting place that lasted for years. Some relatives left, and others stayed in Lithuania under Soviet rule, so a family tree can divide into two parts with very different records.
The numbers, with their sources
| Fact | Figure | Source note |
|---|---|---|
| Lithuanian refugees in German DP camps | About 60,000, mostly in the British and American zones | Lithuanian archives’ virtual exhibition |
| DP camps in the three western zones of Germany | 269 in total | The same exhibition |
| Camps where Lithuanians lived | As many as 113 of the 269 | A 2006 paper at an international conference on Baltic archives abroad |
| Lithuanian DPs the United States authorized under 1948 legislation | 30,000 | The 2024 conference presentation |
| Lithuanians who emigrated to Australia | About 10,000, 1947 to 1951 | The 2006 conference paper |
| Lithuanians who stayed in Germany | About 10,000, including the sick, the elderly and some of German origin | The 2006 conference paper |
The sources also date the departures a little differently. The Lithuanian archives’ exhibition says most had moved on by 1950 to the United States, Australia, Canada or even New Zealand, while an encyclopedic heritage site gives about 1948 to 1952. The 2006 paper says that major emigration began in 1948 and that the main flows went to the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and Italy. Use ranges rather than single dates when you describe your own family.
Camps as small Lithuanias
The camps were not only shelters. One heritage encyclopedia says that by 1948 there were 158 Lithuanian schools in Germany, among them 26 colleges and a Baltic University, and that the camps worked as small Lithuanias within the legal limits set by the occupying powers. The scholar Remigijus Misiūnas wrote a monograph on Lithuanian DP publishing from 1945 to 1952 under the title Books of Barrack Culture. For a family historian, this means that documents beyond official forms may exist: camp school certificates, community certificates and printed camp newsletters. The Lithuanian archives’ exhibition, for example, reproduces a certificate issued by the commandant of the Lithuanian community of a DP camp at Hanau to a musician.
Where the camp and resettlement papers are
The largest collection is at the Arolsen Archives in Germany, the successor to the International Tracing Service. A research paper describes it as the world’s largest repository of documents on Nazi persecution and on Allied efforts to manage the displaced persons problem. It outlines registration records and the casefiles of the International Refugee Organization, or IRO, about the care and maintenance of DPs in occupied Germany, and says these can be used to explore migration paths and resettlement. The paper, which appeared in the journal Historical Social Research, says that most holdings had already been digitized when it was written, so check the archive’s current online search for your family’s names, and expect some variants of spelling.
Several other places hold related material. Our guide to requesting records from Lithuanian archives lists the archives in Lithuania, and the Lithuanian archives’ virtual exhibition on Australian Lithuanians includes photographs from the Australian Lithuanian Archives. The Baltic Heritage Network keeps a directory of memory institutions organized by country, including Lithuania, the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany, which is a good place to look for community archives, libraries and societies that collected diaspora papers.
Records in the receiving country
After resettlement, the ordinary records of the new country take over: arrival and immigration papers, naturalization files, church registers and community organizations. We have not reviewed the archives of those countries for DP-era Lithuanians, so we cannot say which series are most useful. Start from the camp, the date and the ship or route you find in Arolsen, and then look in the country where the family settled. For Lithuanians who arrived much earlier, see our guide to the first wave of emigration, which covers a different set of ports and records.
The family that stayed
If one branch stayed in Lithuania, its records may include Soviet-era files rather than church books. Our complete guide describes the Lithuanian Special Archives, which hold records of deportation, arrest or emigration in Soviet times. Letters between the two halves, where they exist, can supply the missing link between a camp name and a village name.
Questions about citizenship
Many people ask whether a DP-era departure has an effect on Lithuanian citizenship. The consular pages describe exceptions to the rule against dual citizenship that refer to people who left before 11 March 1990 and their descendants. Whether any exception applies to your family depends on your own documents, so read our guide to restoring Lithuanian citizenship and the citizenship overview, and confirm the current rules with an official source.
Legal note: this article is general information, not legal advice. Citizenship rules change and depend on individual facts, so check the current rules with an official Lithuanian source or a qualified lawyer.
A worked example
Example (invented, for illustration only): A reader knows that her grandmother “came from a camp in Germany.” She asks the family for names, the year and any ship, then searches Arolsen for the grandmother’s name and for spelling variants, since names were often rendered in more than one spelling. She finds a registration card that names a camp and a birth date. That date lets her search Lithuanian church books for the birth, and the camp name leads her to a community newsletter in a diaspora library. A DNA match from a cousin in Lithuania, found through the testing steps in our DNA guide, then confirms the village.
Fitting a camp family into the larger tree
- Write down what the family says about the camp, the year and the destination.
- Search the Arolsen Archives for the main spelling and for every variant you can think of.
- Record the camp, the date and any ship or route that appears.
- Look in the destination country for arrival and naturalization papers.
- Return to Lithuania for the birth and marriage entries that name the village, using the regions and borders guide to choose the right archive.
Sources for this guide include the Lithuanian archives’ virtual exhibition, the 2024 conference presentation on displaced persons, the 2006 paper on Lithuanian archives abroad, the research paper on the Arolsen Archives and a heritage encyclopedia entry on Lithuanian sites in Germany.
More guides in this series are in Lands & Journeys.
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