Dominik Semashko (; 16 August 1878 – 27 November 1932) was a Belarusian activist. In 1890s, he joined the Polish Socialist Party and other socialist groups advocating workers' rights. The police forced him to flee to Switzerland where he received engineering education and firefighting training. During World War I, he was fire chief in Vilnius from 1915 to 1918. In 1918, he was elected to the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic and co-opted to the Council of Lithuania. Initially, he was a supported of a union between Lithuania and Belarus along the lines of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania but later shifted to more fully support Lithuania. He represented Lithuania at the Paris Peace Conference and during the negotiations of the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty. In 1920–1922, he was Minister for Belarusian Affairs. He then retired from politics and devoted his time to firefighting. Biography Semashko was born into a family of poor nobles from Raseiniai. He was born in Vilnius though in his autobiography he noted Surdegis as his birth place. He studied at the Real Gymnasium in Vilnius but was expelled for anti-Tsarist activities after he joined the Polish Socialist Party. In 1895, he moved to Kamianske on the Dnieper river in Ukraine to work in a factory. There he joined a volunteer firefighter brigade and a union advocating for workers' rights. For that, he was searched by the Tsarist police and had to escape to Lviv in then Austria-Hungary in 1898. There he joined workers' organization Borba (fight, struggle), was arrested by the police, and exiled to Switzerland. He completed firefighting courses in Biel/Bienne and a technical school in Winterthur in 1902. In 1903, he joined Polish socialists in London and helped them publish various revolutionary brochures in Belarusian. He returned to the factory in Kamianske during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He again joined the volunteer fire brigade. He returned to Vilnius in 1911 and organized a fire brigade in Šnipiškės in 1914. Semashko rallied the men into a militia to protect the city from hooligans and fires when the Russian Imperial Army abandoned the city during the Great Retreat in mid 1915. He became city's fire chief (brandmajor) and commanded both local and German Ober Ost firefighters during fire. At the same time, he turned away from Polish political activists towards Belarusian and Lithuanian causes. He was a contributor to the Belarusian newspaper Homan