Jonas Césna (1897-1975) was born in Lithuania and educated in Ukraine. He fought for Ukrainian independence, was captured by the Poles, and spent time in a POW camp. In 1922, he returned to Lithuania where he attended military school and then became a captain in the cavalry. In 1940 when the Russians occupied Lithuania, he served in the "29th October Territorial Corps," until it was disbanded during the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941. In 1944 Césna escaped to Germany and in 1949 came to the United States with his family. He maintained close ties with the Provisional Ukrainian Government in Exile and also preserved the historical archives of the Defense of the Fatherland Detachment (Tévynés Apsaugos Rinktiné) with which he had fought. His final years were spent in St. Paul, Minn., with his wife Kotryna and daughter Liuda.
Papers (1950-1974) of Jonas Césnas, a Lithuanian American, include his own writings and material on Polish Lithuanian disputes.
Inventory available.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.