Lithuanian minority in Poland  The Lithuanian minority in Poland consists of 8,000 people (according to the Polish census of 2011) living chiefly in the Podlaskie Voivodeship in the north-eastern part of Poland. The Lithuanian embassy in Poland notes that there are about 15,000 people in Poland of Lithuanian ancestry. Lithuanians are an indigenous people of the territories of north-eastern Podlaskie Voivodeship in Poland, being the descendants of the various Baltic tribes of the region (Yotvingians), which merged into the Lithuanian ethnicity in the Middle Ages. Poland first acquired its Lithuanian minority after the Union of Lublin in 1569, which transferred the administration of the historical Podlaskie Voivodeship from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Polish Crown (both entities then formed a larger, federated state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). During the next two centuries, the Lithuanian minority, faced with the dominant Polish culture in the region, was subject to Polonization. After the partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century, the Polish cultural pressure in the region was replaced by that of the Russian Empire, until the end of the First World War resulted in the restoration of independent Polish and Lithuanian states. During the Interwar period of the 20th century (1920–1939) Lithuanian-Polish relations were characterised by mutual enmity. Starting with the conflict over the city of Vilnius, and the Polish-Lithuanian War shortly after the First World War, both governments - in an era when nationalism was sweeping through Europe - treated their respective minorities harshly. When Poland annexed the town of Sejny and its surroundings back in 1919, repressions towards the local Lithuanian population started, including the Lithuanian language being banned in public, Lithuanian organizations (with 1300 members), schools (with approx. 300 pupils) and press being closed, as well as the confiscation of property and even burning of Lithuanian books. Beginning in 1920, after the staged mutiny of Lucjan Żeligowski, Lithuanian cultural activities in Polish controlled territories were limited; newspapers were closed down and editors arrested. One editor - Mykolas Biržiška - was accused of treason in 1922 and received the death penalty; only direct intervention by the League of Nations spared him this fate. He was one of 32 Lithuanian and Belarusian cultural activists formally expelled from Vilnius on September 20, 1922 and given to the Lithuanian army.