Speech #970039306

Latvia. and Estonia slept. Soviet trucks and motorcars emerged from their hiding places and began to execute a carefully designed plan to deport hundreds of thousands of antiSoviet elements from these Baltic States. The deportees. seized in the night. given less than an hour to gather their belongings. separated from their families. were herded into the trucks. and then into railroad cattle cars. and sent off to the Soviet Union. Thousands of them. including many children. died en route because of the inhunan conditions. Those who did survive were brought to the slave labor camps in Siberia and Vorkuta. or. if they were women. to the collective farms or the forest lumbering camps or the fishing industry at the mouth of the Lena River. In all cases. they were used as cheap and expendable labor under the harshest of conditions. By the end of 1941. well over 100.000 inhabitants of the Baltic States had been deported. and by the end of the decade. more than 850.000more than 10 percent of the population of Lithuania. Latvia. and Estoniahad been deported. These mass deportations were a later major stepa brutal vicious stepin the larger Soviet design to rob the Baltic countries of their independence. That Soviet design has been made clear when Molotov and von Ribbentrop signed the NaziSoviet pact 2 years earlier. on August 27. 1939. This infamous agreement. which cleared the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland only 1 week later. placed Estonia. Latvia. and. after further negotiations in September 1939. Lithuania. in the Soviet sphere of influence. By June 14. 19401 year before the mass deportations began. and the same day that German troops rolled into ParisEstonia and Latvia had been forced. by threat of outright invasion. to sign "Treaties of Mutual Assistance." with the Soviets and the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs was in Moscow facing the same ultimatum. By the time the mass deportations began. the russification of the Baltic States was in full steamthe armies were taken over by the Soviets. and all sources of national pride were banned. The deportations themselves had been planned weeks or even months in advance. with detailed instructions prepared which clearly demonstrate the cruelty of the Soviet plan. Soviet Order No. 001223. the secret "Instructions Regarding the Procedure for Carrying out the Deportation of AntiSoviet Elements from Lithuania. Latvia. and Estonia." contained the following directions: ... It is essential that the removal of the members of the deportees family and of the head of the family shall be carried out simultaneously. without notifying them of the separation confronting them ... and Care must be taken that the operations are carried out without disturbances or panic. so as to avoid any demonstrations and other troubles ... Mr. Speaker. care may have been taken to avoid disturbances during this evil exercise. but the world has noticed.