Biržai
Monsignor Adolfas Sabaliauskas, a well-known writer (pen-name Žalia Rūta), and great collector of folklore, folk art and musical instruments, erected a beautiful Lithuanian-style chapel near his birthplace in the tiny cemetery of Mielaišiai in the Rayon of Biržai and asked his relatives to bury him there.
People from the surrounding area used the chapel: They held wakes for their dead through the night and the following day buried the decedent in the cemetery after the priest conducted services.
But later under the Soviet government, the chairman of the Geidžiūnai District confiscated the keys to the chapel and forbade people to pray there. According to local residents, the chairman intends to convert the chapel into a grain warehouse.
After Msgr. Sabaliauskas died in 1950, his friends took his remains to the chapel in accordance with his wishes, but when they could not find the key they cut a hole in the outside wall under the altar, inserted the casket and closed it up again.
In 1966 the director of the Biržai National Heritage Museum supposedly planned to have a commemorative plaque made and fastened to the chapel and even have a sign erected by the road. But seven years later nothing has yet been done.
On August 19, 1972, at the initiative of the decedent's friends, a marble plaque was made and fastened to the spot where the decedent is buried. But unfortunately barely a year had passed before the commemorative plaque was broken and crushed with no trace remaining at the initiative of some barbarians.
This is how the people of Biržai "paid tribute" to their famous cultural researcher on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
