Almost simultaneously. the Soviet Army moved into Latvia and Estonia. There then began a reign of terror which. for sheer brutality. has never been surpassed in any country. Scores of thousands of Baltic citizens were deported to Siberia. The prime target of the deportations was the intellectual eliteuniversity professors. newspapermen. lawyers. doctors. the clergy. and political and community leaders. By destroying this intellectual elite. the Soviet occupiers sought to destroy the capability of the Baltic peoples to offer resistance. Those who were deported were herded into cattle cars under appalling conditions and sent to remote areas of Siberia. The great majority of them perished en route to their destination. or else perished in the Kremlins infamous slave labor camps. where the mortality rate was reputed to exceed 25 percent per annum. Only a tiny minority survived to return to their Sovietdominated homelands. Lithuanian resistance leaders estimate that in the period immediately following the occupation. some 400.000 Lithuanian citizens were either murdered by the Soviet secret police or deported to Soviet Siberia. and that approximately another 400.000 had fallen victim to Nazi terror during the war. Thus. they point out. Lithuanias population loss as a result of the Soviet and Nazi occupation amounted to 25 percent of its total population.
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deported deportations