Milosz plaque unveiled in Vilnius

The gesture is part of the international Year of Milosz, marking the centenary of the feted writer. Milosz lived for many years in Vilniusd when, as Wilno, it was a part of the pre-war Polish republic.

The plaque itself has been installed on a building that the hallowed scribe knew decidedly well – his former secondary school.

“Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Prize laureate and honorary citizen of Vilnius, studied in this building – the former Zygmunt August School – during the years 1921-1929,” the tribute reads.

The wording of the plaque is in both Lithuanian and Polish.

Polish Radio has a special section devoted to Milosz to accompany the year's celebrations. As it was, the author himself, who had communist tendencies as a young man, was a former employee of Polish Radio during the thirties. However, he was relieved of his post for being too leftist. Amongst the charges was that he showed too much sympathy for the Lithuanian cause.

After the war, Milosz became a cultural attache of the Polish Communist state, but after growing disillusionment with the realities of the Stalinist system, he defected to the West in 1950.

His book The Captive Mind endures as one of the most chilling critiques of the Soviet system. (nh)