President. there have been dark chapters in human history but none darker than one which began 22 years ago in the Baltic States of Lithuania. Latvia. and Estonia. It was on June 15. 1940. that these vountries were forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union and many hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants uprooted from their homes and deported to Siberia. These helpless victims of this unwarranted aggression are still suffering in exile. far away from their homeland. Since those fateful days. we it. the free world have heard practically nothing about them except what we have learned from those few who have had the extraordinary luck to escape. And the fate of millions of Lithuanians. Latvians and Estonians in their homeland under Communist tyranny is probably not much better than those who still suffer in exile. In recent years. we have learned that the native population of the coastal areas in these countries were moved to other parts of the Soviet Union in order to make room for the Asiatic people who were transported there. This means that years after the deportations of 1940 there were additional deportations by the tens of thousands. All this was done to speed up the communization of these countries. once the home of rising democracies. Fortunately. however. these people are schooled and hardened in adversity. and are not easily swayed even under the most oppressive of tyrannical regimes.
Keywords matched
deported Asiatic deportations