Speaker. individual libertiesfreedom of speech. of assembly. and of movementare among the noblest of human goals and the most cherished of human desires. Where they do not exist in actuality they can only be wished for in mens souls. Today. on this anniversary of the ruthless Soviet deportation of thousands of Lithuanian citizens to the barren wastes of Siberia. we who are fortunate enough to live In freedom extend our sincerest sympathy to the Lithuanian people. for whom individual liberties are an ideal and not a reality. We encourage them to hold fast to the hope that the day may soon dawn when they too will once again know what it is like to live without fear of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. without threat of forced exile to the slave camps of the Communists. On the night of June 14. 1941. 30.000 Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. But this was only the beginning. Successive mass deportations followed until Lithuania was emptied of a significant proportion of her people. Already she had been robbed of her sovereignty by the occupying Russian Army to satisfy the appetite of Communist expansion. Tens of thousands of her people had been forcibly removed from their homeland.
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