 Both governments – in the era nationalism swept through Europe – treated their respective minorities harshly during the interwar period.In interwar Lithuania, people declaring Polish ethnicity were officially described as Polonized Lithuanians who merely needed to be re-Lithuanized, Polish-owned land was confiscated, Polish religious services, schools, publications and voting rights were restricted.According to the Lithuanian census of 1923 (not including Vilnius and Klaipėda regions), there were 65,600 Poles in Lithuania (3.2% of the total population).