Napoleonas Butkūnas certainly and rightly believed in the future of Lithuania.
Early Life
He was born on 22 January 1907, a native of Telšiai, from a family of wealthy farmers. It was large family, as My Heritage genealogists list 5 brothers and 3 sisters.
He had only one year of primary school, but this was followed by three years of private tutoring. He graduated from Plungė Gymnasium (senior high school) in 1928, so at the age of 21.
He entered Lithuania's military school and graduated with the rank of Lieutenant, before being promoted to Senior Lieutenant. The graduation probably was in 1930. After the 1934 coup d'état, he left the Army and work briefly as a civil servant.
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| Napoleonas Butkūnas in military uniform Source: MyHeritage |
The coup was an attempt by supporters of the former Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras to overthrow the government of President Antanas Smetona.
Napoleonas was not happy working as a civil servant, so he enrolled to study at the Klaipėda Trade Institute, from which he graduated in 1938. He would have been a contemporary of Algirdas Undzenas at the Institute, although 6 years older.
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| An older Napoleonas Butkūnas Source: Australian Lithuanian Archive |
With a World War Coming
Those 3 years of tertiary education mean that, like Algirdas, he was one of the most educated Lithuanians to later find themselves in Australia. Unlike Algirdas, he had not leapt directly into management but instead took on the role of bookkeeper in a textile factory.
He again served in the Lithuanian Army, perhaps as a reservist, from 1938 to 1941, meaning that he maintained his role during the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940-41.
His selection papers for Australia have an interesting variation on the usual ‘forcibly evacuated by the Germans’. They say that he was ‘shanghaied in the street by the Germans’. They also say that he had worked in farming and as a labourer, possibly with the German forces or once he parted from them in Germany.
Napoleonas's date of arrival in Germany is noted as a very precise 25 July 1944 on his application for Australian citizenship. This was around 3 months before the last Lithuanians could flee their homeland as the Soviet forces invaded it a second time.
After the War
When the War ended, he lived in a DP camp in Memingen. Later, finding his brother Vaclovas Butkevičius and his family in Oldenburg in the British Zone, he stayed with them and taught for 2 years in that camp’s Lithuanian school. (The family name of Butkūnas which Napoleonas was using at the time and later is a shortening of their name, Butkevičius. He had changed his name in 1939.)
War separated Napoleonas from his wife, Marija, and daughter, Liucija, both of whom remained in Lithuania. Despite this great loss, Napoleonas remained outgoing and involved himself in many cultural pursuits in Australia.
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| Marija Butkūniene, Napoleonas' wife Source: MyHeritage |
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| and their daughter, Liucija Butkūnaitė, later Pečkienė Source: My Heritage |
He described himself as a widower during the selection process for resettlement in Australia. He arrived on the First Transport, on 28 November 1947. At the age of 40, he was among the oldest passengers.
Later, when he applied for Australian citizenship in 1954, he changed his marital status from separated, which he then crossed out, to married. Here was a loyal husband.
Life in Australia
His level of English at the time of the selection interview, probably in September or early October 1947, was described as ‘slight – learning’. However, when the Lithuanians assembled in the Diepholz camp one week prior to departure from Bremerhaven on the Heintzelman, in late October, he was elected the interpreter for their committee headed by Jonas Motiejūnas and Povilas Baltutis.
Moreover, Genovaitė Kazokas, in her 2003 book, Lithuanian Artists in Australia, having interviewed Napoleonas, reported that one of the subjects he taught in the Oldenburg camp was English. It seems that the Australian interviewers got the strength of his English wrong. If they asked him directly about it, perhaps he was being modest.
As he stayed in the Bonegilla camp until 29 January 1948, more than 7 weeks, he had the opportunity to improve his fluency by attending classes every weekday, and chatting with the Australian staff.
With one-quarter of the men, he was sent initially to pick fruit in northern Victoria. In his case, his employers were AW and JF Fairley of Shepparton. After more than two months of this, he returned to the Bonegilla camp on 7 April. He stayed for another two weeks, with the possibility of more English language classes.
Next, he was sent to work at Goliath Portland Cement company in Railton, Tasmania, on 22 April.
His cancelled Alien Registration Certificate, held by the National Archives of Australia in Melbourne, shows his first address as being in Melbourne as of 19 August 1949. That was more than one month before the date, 30 September 1949, on which he would have been released from his ‘two-year’ work contract. It has been recorded without further comment.
Active Lithuanian in Melbourne
In Melbourne, he worked initially as a storeman and became an active member of the diaspora community. By the time he applied for citizenship in May 1954, he was a self-employed professional photographer.
For a long time, he was the only photographer of Lithuanian events. He advertised in the Lithuanian press that, ‘Those important occasions such as weddings, name days, christenings, house warmings, need to be imortalised in photographs, so when you return to Lithuania you have something to show your relatives’.
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| Napoleonas Butkūnas, photographer, advertisement Source: Australijos Lietuvis |
He became a long-time contributor to and distributor of the Melbourne press. He worked for some time for the printing house of Teviskės Aidai, the Melbourne-based Lithuanian Catholic newspaper.
For more than 20 years, Napoleonas ran a bookshop in Melbourne’s Lithuanian House. He distributed thousands of Lithuanian publications, hundreds of plaques and Lithuanian signs. He supported Lithuanian activities and the parish with the profits from these sales.
When Lithuanian organisations were being established, Napoleonas was active everywhere. He was a founding member of the Melbourne Lithuanian Club, held various positions in the board of Kariau Ramové (the Lithuanian branch of Australia’s Returned Services League) and was briefly its chairman. He was also a frequent member of the Australian Lithuanian Community National Council, as well as the founder of the Blaivininkų Draugia (Temperance Society) and an active member of the Christian Democrats club.
In her book on Australian Lithuanians, Luda Popenhagen pinned down one of his many committees as that which founded Melbourne’s Lithuanian Club, registered with the Government in 1957. Another committee has been pinned down in the photograph below.
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| We think that Napoleonas is seated at the right of the front row in this photograph of a Melbourne Lithuanian community committee Source: Australian Lithuanian Archive |
As a journalist, he wrote articles on various topics. As an artist, he used to paint in oils and donate his paintings to raffles organised by Lithuanian groups.
Genovaitė Kazokas wrote that art was Napoleonas' favourite subject in high school. She added that, “His oil paintings show a sense of composition and competent brushwork. His themes are Australian landscapes rendered realistically and with conventional perspective …”
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| A landscape in oils by Butkūnas Source: Kazokas' thesis Vol II |
What of Lithuania’s future? This was the type of question that Napoleon raised in conversations. ‘It is important that the Lithuanian consciousness of the diaspora lasts as long as possible, so that there are close and sincere relations between the homeland and the diaspora’, he wrote.
Napoleonas' Legacy
On 13 March 1983 at the age of 76, Napoleonas died in a Melbourne hospital. The funeral service was held at St. John's Catholic Church in East Melbourne, which had become the Lithuanian parish church. The Lithuanian choir, men's choir and a soloist, his nephew, Jurgis Rubas, sang. From the Church, a long convoy of cars escorted the casket to the Fawkner Cemetery, and from there a crowd of about 80 returned to the Melbourne Lithuanian Club for the wake.
Napoleonas bequeathed $30,000 to the Australian Lithuanian Fund. It was about half of his estate and, at that time, the biggest contribution to the Fund. It had been created through donations to develop and nurture Lithuanian cultural activities institutions around Australia. Napoleonas had said in his will, ‘Use my savings for the Lithuanian cause according to your wisdom’.
The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates that the $30,000 in 1983 would have had a buying power equivalent to nearly $118,000 in 2024. The interest it would have earned since 1983 could be taken into account too, although clearly some of the money has been spent on worthwhile projects – from the interest earned, rather than Napoleonas’ capital.
Also, in the immediate aftermath of his death, 16 people and organisations had donated a total of $125 to the Fund in his memory. The Reserve Bank estimation of the modern buying power of this amount is $490.
Discovering Australia
We know that he also cared about his new homeland, Australia, as he became a naturalised Australian citizen on 26 September 1955.
His niece, Dana Baltutienė wrote about him in the Mūsų Pastogė issue of 12 March 1984.
“My memories of my uncle Napoleon from the time in Lithuania are rather vague. I was still too young. I got to know my uncle more closely in the German camp in Oldenburg, where he then taught at a school for Lithuanian fugitives and deportees. Our family lived in a neighbouring camp, and Napoleonas visited us often.
“My uncle and I came to Australia in 1947.* He was sent to Tasmania for contract work, leaving my parents in northern Victoria. In 1951, uncle bought a house in Melbourne, in the suburb of St Kilda. At first, my parents also took shelter under that roof.
“At that time, the Lithuanians of Melbourne had already started organising community life, and our family actively got involved. Uncle, of course, had become a member of the family. We went everywhere together to dances, plays, to church on Sundays.
“When he bought a car, a new period of traveling around Victoria began in my life. Whenever my uncle was able to get away from work and I from school, we would travel together. During five years of living together in St Kilda we drove across Victoria. We travelled very simply, without any amenities. When the evening came, uncle would park the car away from the road, tie his own a hammock between two eucalyptus trees and sleep. I, meanwhile, made my bed in the bushes. As soon as the sun came up, we continued our journey. Uncle was never looking for conveniences.
“Later, after I got married, he bought a tent and a spirit stove. He extended his travels even to northern Australia. After returning, he shared his impressions with us, showing photos and slides from the trip.
“Uncle was a friendly person, a bright face in Melbourne's Lithuanian community. He lived a modest and simple life. He neither smoked nor drank nor ate meat. He had loved books since he was young, and as he got older, he became even more attached to them.
“He often wrote about various topics in our press. He nurtured the Esperanto language, submitted essays to their publications.
“After falling ill with arthritis in his legs, he returned to his youthful hobby of painting. His drawings, dominated by nature, Australian eucalyptus trees and the sun, decorate the rooms of his wife, daughter and grandson in Lithuania.”
In Conclusion
To be buying his own house in 1951, maybe less than 4 years after arrival in Australia, is amazing. Someone who did not drink alcohol, smoke or eat meat, however, would have had much lower living expenses than someone who did.
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| The photograph of Napoleonas used with his Teviškės Aidai obituary Source: Teviškės Aidai |
Thanks to that large donation from his estate, Napoleonas’ legacy lives on in literature as well as his art. For instance, one of the first steps after Lithuanian freedom from Soviet control in 1991 was the publication of an anthology called Po Pietų Kryžium or Under the Southern Cross.
Money from the Australian Lithuanian Fund, including from Napoleonas’ estate, was used to print this anthology in Lithuania, at a price much less than the cost of preparing and printing a book in Australia. This was organised through the efforts of Napoleonas’ niece, Dana Baltutienė, now chairing the Lithuanian Cultural Council. When the anthology became available to Australian purchasers in 1991, it was possible to offer it for sale at only $10 a copy, a price of about $23 in 2024. Of course, it also had offered business to a newly independent Lithuanian printing house and its employees.
Footnote
* Her uncle certainly came to Australia in 1947, but Dana was hazy about her own date of arrival. A Bonegilla camp identity card has Danuta Butkevicius arriving on the Svalbard, which reached Australia on 28 June 1949. Although Dana was already 11 years old, the signature on the card is V. Butkevicius or her father, Vaclovas, who came with his wife and Danuta on the same voyage. Also on that voyage was another Butkevicius, Jonas. If he was related, there were now 3 brothers in Australia. And, for there to be a nephew with a different family name, at least one of his sisters probably reached Australia too.
CITE THIS AS: Pocius, D, Ščevinskienė, R and Tündern-Smith, A (2025) 'Napoleonas Butkunas (1907-1983), Patriot, Photographer, Philanthropist'
Sources
Australijos Lietuvis [The Australian Lithuanian] (1951) ['Advertising'] Melbourne, 29 October, page 14 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280320837, accessed 8 September 2025.
Baltrukonienė, Alisa (1983) ‘Mirusieji, Anapilin Iškeliavo Napoleonas Butkūas’, ‘The Dead, Napoleonas Butkūnas has set off for Anapilis’ Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 4 April, p 2 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1983/1983-04-04-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 13 March 2025.
Baltrukonienė, Alisa (1991) ‘”Po Pietų Kryžium”’ [‘”Under the Southern Cross”’] Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 15 April, p 7 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1991/1991-04-15-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 11 March 2025.
Butkevičiūtė-Baltutienė, Dana (1984) ‘Dėdė Napoleoną Prisimenant’ [‘Remembering Uncle Napoleonas’] Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 12 March, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1984/1984-03-12-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 12 March 2025.
Find a Grave, 'Napoleonas Butkunas' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212474059/napoleonas-butkunas accessed 9 September 2025.
Kazokas, Genovaitė Elena (1992) ‘Lithuanian Artists in Australia 1950-1990, Volume II’, Hobart, University of Tasmania, thesis. https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Lithuanian_artists_in_Australia_1950-1990_Vols_I_and_II/23205632/1, accessed 8 September 2025.
Kazokas, Genovaitė (2003) Lithuanian Artists in Australia, 1950-1990 Melbourne, Europe-Australia Institute, pp 187-8.
My Heritage, 'Napoleonas Butkūnas(Butkevičius)' https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-1-OYYV6P5EABRTJ4FB3EB2WUN4XXQXZKY-1-16/napoleonas-butk%C5%ABnasbutkevi%C4%8Dius-in-myheritage-family-trees, accessed 11 September 2025.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A446, Correspondence files, annual single number series with block allocations, 1926-; 1955/3672, Application for Naturalisation - BUTKUNAS Napoleonas born 22 January 1907, 1954-1955; recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8838788, accessed 10 September 2025.
National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla],1947- 1956; BUTKEVICIUS DANUTA, BUTKEVICIUS, Danuta : Year of Birth - 1938 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - SVALBARD : Number - [UNKNOWN], 1949-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203671692 accessed 8 September 2025.
Reserve Bank of Australia, 'Inflation Calculator', https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualDecimal.html accessed 11 March 2025.
Popenhagen, Luda (2012) Australian Lithuanians Kensington, NSW, University of New South Wales Press, p 127.
pv (1984) 'Pašventintas Napoleono Butkūno Antkapis' ['Napoleon Butkunas' Tombstone Consecrated'] Teviškės Aidai [The Echoes of Homeland] Melbourne, March 23, p 7, https://www.spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1984/1984-03-23-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 8 September 2025.
Wikipedia, ‘1934 Lithuanian coup attempt’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_Lithuanian_coup_attempt accessed 14 March 2025.
Zubras, A (1984) ‘Jis tikėjo Lietuvos ateitimi’ [‘He believed in Lithuania’s future’] Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 12 March, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1984/1984-03-12-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 11 March 2025.
