Speech #980215714

Many people simply disappeared. summoned to interrogations or called by supervisors to their places of employment. never to be heard from again. Some were snatched in full public view. while others were awakened by a knock on the door in the dead of night and spirited away from their families forever. The mass deportations had the objectives of removing all leaders and intellectuals from the captive nations. breaking the back of any resistance movement. and physically and spiritually weakening the nations. The huge mass deportations began during the night of June 14. 1941. Cattle wagons and stock cars awaited the deportees. The people were crammed together so that they could scarcely move. and a hole in the floor served as a toilet. In Estonia. some 60.000. in Latvia. over 34.000. and in Lithuania 75.000 people were murdered. arrested or deported in 194041. Despite the terrifying brutality unleashed on these small Baltic States. there was resistance. But. the deportations had so successfully depleted and devastated the populations that it could not triumph. From July 1941 to October 1944. the Baltic States were occupied by German forces. after the German attack on the Soviet Union. and were ruled by a provisional German Government. After reconquest of the Baltic States by Soviet forces. the Soviet regimes were again installed in the countries. and deportations were begun. again. During the period 19451952. over 500.000 more citizens of the Baltic States were deported to the Soviet Union. The Baltic peoples were the first in the free world to see the unmasked face of Communist brutality and disregard for the sovereignty of nations and the sanctity of human life. They were not the last. Most recently. we have seen again that brutal face unmasked in the hills of Afghanistan. Like the brave people of the Baltic States. the spirit of the Afghan freedom fighters cannot be crushed. despite the occupation of their homelands. and the murder of their populations. It is fitting that we stop and reflect. today. 44 years after the Sovietinitiated deportations and murder of the peoples of the Baltic States. on the spirit of freedom that still permeates those sons and daughters of Latvia. Estonia. and Lithuania. and their descendants in America. Canada.