This progress was brutally interrupted with the advent of World War II. Via the infamous MolotovRibbentrop pact of 1939. the sovereign nations of Eastern Europe were divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The subsequent illegal annexation of Lithuania in 1940 by the Russians was the precursor to a systematic campaign of terror marked by the mass deportations of 1941. The Soviet Union had smashed the independence of this small Baltic State and proceeded through the next 40 years to attempt. by every means possible. to crush the national identity of the Lithuanian people. It is this continued brutality that so disturbs us as we commemorate Genocide Day.
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deportations