maintained a low profile in the controversy on affairs in the Klaipėda Region. With Lithuania ceding Klaipėda Region with effect of 22 March 1939, after the German ultimatum to Lithuania, again not hindered by the protecting powers of the Council of Ambassadors, the majority of the parishioners welcomed the return to Germany. The EOK sent telegrammes to the parishes thanking them for maintaining the union with the old-Prussian church in the prior years, suggesting this union evidenced their German attitude. On 1 May 1939 the regional synodal federation was abolished and its parishes reintegrated into the Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia. Post war development By the end of 1944, when the Soviet Red Army approached the Klaipėda region, the Nazi authorities ordered civilians to evacuate the endangered areas. However, the evacuation started too late since the Red Army approached much faster than expected and could cut off the territorial connection with German-held territories by January 26, 1945. Many refugees perished due to Soviet low-flying strafing attacks. Rescued were mostly those who managed to flee before the Soviets via land or by sea vessels into the areas conquered by the Britons and Americans. Among them the pastors A. Keleris, J. Pauperas, M. Preikšaitis, O. Stanaitis, A. Trakis, and J. Urdse, who recollected Lithuanian parishes and reorganised Lithuanian pastoring in the western zones of Allied-occupied Germany. Together with 65,000 refugees from Lithuania proper, mostly Roman Catholic, who made their way to the western zones, 158 schools of Lithuanian language were founded there until 1948. With the emigration of many Lithuanians to overseas or the assimilation of the remaining Lithuanians and Prussian Lithuanians, who hold German citizenship, in West Germany the number shrunk to a mere one, Litauisches Gymnasium/Vasario 16-osios gimnazija (Lithuanian High School) in Lampertheim in Hesse. Until 1990 this high and boarding school remained the only Lithuanian school in the non-Communist countries, attended by several known exiled Lithuanians. The remaining inhabitants of Lithuania Minor underwent terrible years under the Soviet annexation, especially those in the Russian Kaliningrad oblast. They were generally robbed and plundered, many imprisoned in labour camps, some deported to Sibiria, and generally refused any access to ordinary food supplies causing most of them to perish. An exception were those Prussian Lithuanians surviving in or returning to the Klaipėda Region, which became part of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic on 7 April 1948. They could return to their homes, which,