Lithuanian victims of Soviet repressions were honored in Washington, DC.
Lithuania marks June 14 as a Day of Mourning and Hope. At 3am on June 14, 1941, NKVD officers began mass arrests of Lithuanian citizens. In less than a week 18,000 people, including families with children, were deported to Siberia in sealed animal or freight wagons. Today, June 14, Washingtonians were reading the names of Lithuanian deportees as part of a larger Lithuanian youth initiative "Say it. Hear it. Remember it."
Aiming to preserve the memory and honor the innocent victims, the initiative of reading loudly the names of the deportees and political prisoners was started in 2016 by the youth project “Mission Siberia”.
For the first time this year, the initiative was organized abroad- in Washington DC. The readings took place at noon at the Victims of Communism Memorial, located on the intersection of New Jersey and Massachusetts Avenues Northwest, and were organized by the Embassy of Lithuania, “Mission Siberia”, and Lithuanian Community in Washington, DC.
The initiative was joined by the representatives of the U.S. National Security Council, Free Russia Foundation, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, JBANC, Ukrianian National Information Service.
The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania on June 15, 1940. A year later, on June 14, 1941, the mass deportation of Lithuanian citizens began. Some 300,000 Lithuanian citizens were deported or imprisoned during 50 years of the Soviet occupation.
