Victims of Soviet Deportations commemorated in London
On June 15th, 2014 the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian communities gathered at St. James's Church in London to pay tribute to the victims of the June 1941 Soviet Deportations to Siberia.
Religious service to commemorate the deportees from the Baltic States is an annual event organized by the Baltic Council in Great Britain.
„June of 1941 marks the beginning of one of the darkest periods of Lithuania‘s history. Thousands of innocent people dubbed as ‘class enemies‘ were compelled to suffer in the Soviet labour camps. Some of them never came back. Others would forever bear physical and emotional scars of the exile. Today together with the Baltic sisters of Latvia and Estonia we pay tribute to all of those who had to endure the soviet nightmare of 1941” the Lithuanian Ambassador Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė said.
On June 14, 1941, mass deportations started in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The deportees were subject to arrest, property confiscation and imprisonment in labour camps. Lithuania alone lost around 30 thousand people through the June 1941 deportation.
