Every year we commemorate the mass deportations of citizens from the three Baltic States on 14 June 1941, by Soviet Russia.
With similar onslaughts and invasions in Ukraine over the past year, members of their local community will be joining us for this occasion.
We invite you to the commemoration event for this year, and the concert, to be held at the
Sydney Latvian Hall, 32 Parnell St, Strathfield, Sydney
Sunday 4 June, 2023
Commencing 2 p.m.
This year we will be featuring a panel discussion on relevant issues.
The panel will include:
- Ms Kateryna Argyrou, Co-chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations; and
- Mr Lembit Suur, who is a former Australian diplomat, who was posted to the Australian Embassy in Moscow as First Secretary in 1990, and hence was “on the spot” when the Baltic States were achieving their independence.
The concert will feature music from all three nations. This will include Karin Kapsi playing cello with a trio accompaniment; Kooskõlas choir.
No entry fee, but we would appreciate a donation to help cover costs.
Background to Deportations from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
14th June 1941 and 25th March 1949
The Soviet Union forcibly occupied the three independent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from June 1940 to June 1941, and again from 1944 to 1991. During this time, a policy of systematic genocide was carried out by eradicating a large part of the Baltic population and bringing in people from other parts of the Soviet Union. Arrests, deportations, and executions occurred throughout the periods of occupation, but there are two dates that Baltic people will never forget – 14th of June, 1941 and 25th March, 1949.
During the night of 13th to 14th June, 1941, some 60,000 innocent people were woken up, ordered to pack a few essentials, and herded into railway cattle trucks for a slow, weeks’ long journey to remote parts of Siberia in the Soviet Union. There were no charges against them, no trials, and no possibility of appeal. The deportees included many children, infants, and the elderly. Many died on the way, even before reaching their destination. During 25th to 28th March 1949, some 100,000 more Baltic people suffered the same fate. A large proportion of the deportees died in exile.
In August 1991, the Baltic republics regained their independence, and eventually the occupying Red Army was forced to leave. However, the aftermath of the occupation still remains. The military forces left, but not so the hundreds of thousands of retired Red Army personnel, and Russians who had been imported into the countries. They had by now settled and become used to being a privileged class. They also realised that the quality of life, and the lifestyle, in the Baltics was superior to that in the Russian Federation, and did not wish to go back.
The demographic makeup of the Baltic republics had by now changed, with a large proportion of the population thus being Russian and of other foreign-speaking nationalities. To this day, many of these people, even of third generation Russian descent, refuse to learn or speak the local official language of their country of residence, and many do not apply for citizenship. Obviously this is divisive, creates tensions in the countries, and inhibits the recovery from fifty years of occupation.
The Russian Federation does not even formally admit that these countries were occupied by the Soviet Union, and it has not given up its hopes to regain control of the three Baltic States once more.
There is rightly deserved international condemnation of the Nazi regime and its crimes, but the equally abhorrent crimes of the Communist Soviet Union are swept under the carpet, and while the perpetrators of the many atrocities committed are known, they remain unpunished, and some are even lauded as heroes, and awarded medals for their deeds. Baltic communities all over the world thus commemorate their holocaust and pray that such crimes against humanity shall never be allowed to occur anywhere, ever again.
2023 marks 82 years since the events of 14th June, 1941
