Belarusian Émigrés Mark 'Day Of The Dead' In Lithuania

The Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, was lit up on November 1 with thousands of candles to honor the dead, including many famed Belarusians. 

A lantern inside the Vilinus cemetery.

Every autumn, several European countries including Belarus and Lithuania, mark "Forefathers' Eve," an ancient custom dating back to the pre-Christian era, to honor the dead with candles and visits to graves. 

A couple pay their respects at a grave in the Rasos Cemetery. 

Around 58,000 Belarusians currently live in Lithuania, many of whom fled there after their country's disputed 2020 presidential elections and the widespread state violence that followed.  

A cross surrounded by autumn leaves and candles. 

For many Belarusians in Lithuania the Rasos Cemetery, where many notable ethnic Belarusians are interred, has become a site to continue ancient traditions while paying respects to their forefathers. 

In 2019, several leaders of an 1863 uprising against Russian rule were interred in the cemetery's chapel (pictured), including Konstanty Kalinowski. The young revolutionary was executed by tsarist authorities in 1864, and is considered one of the founders of Belarus's nationalist movement. 

 

People walk through the gate to the Rasos Cemetery on November 1.
 

 

The graves of Anton and Ivan Luckievich inside the Rasos Cemetery.

The brothers were leading figures of the Belarusian independence movement in the early 1900s. 

The grave of Belarusian poet and politician Lyavon Dubeykauski, wrapped in a strip of white-red-white flag. 

The flag was the official symbol of Belarus's short-lived Belarusian Democratic Republic of 1918-1919, and has now become a symbol of opposition to the authoritarian rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. 

The grave of Belarusian playwright Frantsishak Alyakhnovich. 

The Rasos Cemetery is believed to have been founded in the 1700s and is the resting place of many famous Lithuanians, Poles, and Belarusians. During the Soviet period the authorities planned to build a motorway directly through the cemetery, but the proposition was eventually scrapped.