Auszra, Laikrasztis, iszleidziamas per Dra. Bassanawicziu / Lietuvių Tautos Praeitis — Lithuanian Historical Review, Vol. VI (Auszros faksimilinis perspausdinimas)

Auszra (Dawn) was the first Lithuanian-language newspaper printed in the Latin script after the tsarist Russian Empire's 1864 ban on Lithuanian Latin-alphabet printing — a ban that lasted until 1904. Published clandestinely in Prussian Lithuania (Ragainė/Ragnit) and smuggled into Russian-controlled Lithuania by knygnešiai (book carriers), Auszra became the intellectual and emotional catalyst of the Lithuanian national revival. Dr. Jonas Basanavičius, its founding editor, became the patriarch of Lithuanian national consciousness. This 1983 Chicago facsimile edition is itself a diaspora cultural artifact of the first order: produced by Lithuanian Americans at the centennial of the newspaper's founding while Lithuania remained under Soviet occupation, it represents the diaspora's commitment to preserving and transmitting the foundational texts of Lithuanian identity across generations and across the Iron Curtain. The subscriber list on p. 427 is a sociological document of the Lithuanian-American professional community at its peak, listing physicians, engineers, professors, and clergy who collectively underwrote this cultural mission. For the Žiburio school community in Detroit, this volume embodies the very purpose of Lithuanian heritage education: connecting diaspora children to the moment when Lithuanian language and identity were most imperiled and most defiantly asserted.

Diaspora facsimile reprint preserving the founding text of the Lithuanian national revival, issued in Chicago to mark the centennial of Auszra and to transmit the memory of the press ban era and the origins of Lithuanian national consciousness to diaspora communities under Soviet occupation of the homeland.