Immediately the Red army advanced and occupied all three countries. and by the end of June Estonians. Latvians. and Lithuanians alike were robbed of their freedom. In the meantime wholesale arrests and imprisonments of prominent men in every walk of life were proceeding: Terror in every quarter. and no one felt safe. even women and children were. in some cases. faced with summary arrest. imprisonment. and deportation. No one knows how many tens of thousands of Estonians. Latvians. and Lithuanians were thus arrested by Soviet agents and then deported to distant parts of the Soviet Union. but the fact that in Lithuania alone more than 34.000 were arrested in June of 1940. indicates that at least that many innocent Estonians and Latvians shared a similar sad fate. Arrests and deportations did not end in June. but continued throughout the Soviet occupation of the country during 194041. culminating in the wholesale arrests of tens of thousands during the nights of June 1314. 1941. Thus at the very least more than 100.000 Baltic peoples were uprooted from their homes and exiled to distant. inhospitable Siberia. It Is impossible to say what was in store for these innocent souls in Asiatic U.S.S.R.. but obviously there they suffered and labored in forced work camps under abominable conditions. No doubt many of them have died far away from their native homes. At the end of the last war a few of the survivors were allowed to return to their homes and only through them have we learned of the tragic fate of all those deported in 194041 by Soviet authorities. From the moment these peoples were herded into freight cars and shipped off. they knew that their share in this world was hard work. hunger. misery. and death in exile. They knew that they were doomed to a kind of serfdom to slave in forced Sovet labor camps where death itself comes to be welcomed. Today. in observance of that June 14. 1941. we pay our respects to the memory of these Baltic peoples deported and doomed to death by the Soviet Government. Equal Pay for Women
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deported deportations deportation Asiatic