Ukrainian Bishop to address Baltic Remembrance Service
Bishop Hlib Lonchyna of the Ukrainian Catholic Church will deliver the Address at the Baltic Remembrance Service at St James’s Piccadilly, London, on Sunday 14th June 2015, 3.00 pm. The service, an annual event, commemorates the hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians who were deported to the Soviet Gulags during and after World War II.
The UK-Baltic community has remembered the victims of Communist repression since their arrival in this country as refugees after the War. The commemorations have been held on or close to 14th June, this being the date of mass deportations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians by the NKVD (precursor of the KGB) that began on 14th June 1941. Deportations from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova took place at the same time. Although the first deportations were in 1940, and hundreds of thousands were deported during the second Russian occupation, 14th June has remained the symbolic date on which all the victims are remembered.
During the period 1939-1945, during the Soviet Russian and Nazi occupations, the population of Estonia decreased from all causes (deaths, deportations, refugee flight) by 25%, that of Latvia by 30%, and of Lithuania by 15%. War and occupations deaths amounted to some 8%-9% of the population of each country (cf. 0.8% for the UK, 9% for the USSR, 5% for Germany).
The Baltic Council in Great Britain
