Lithuania commemorates victims of Soviet deportations on Day of Mourning and Hope

Lithuania marks the Day of Mourning and Hope on Friday to commemorate the Soviet deportations and honour their victims.

A solemn commemoration took place at the Seimas, and a minute of silence was observed in memory of the victims one minute before noon.

At noon, national flags were raised in Independence Square in Vilnius, followed by a march of remembrance.

A commemoration ceremony was also held at the monuments to political prisoners and deportees in Vilnius where the names of deportees and political prisoners were read out. Similar ceremonies are planned in other parts of the country.

In the afternoon, a remembrance ceremony will be held at the Naujoji Vilnia railway station.

On June 14, 1941, mass arrests and deportations of Lithuanians to inner parts of the Soviet Union and Siberia began.

According to the data of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, the Soviets deported, killed and imprisoned about 23,000 people during the first occupation. In total, about 130,000 people were deported from Lithuania by 1953, and another 156,000 Lithuanians were imprisoned.

Deportation of Lithuanians | photo courtesy of the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights

Same methods in Ukraine

What we are witnessing now in Ukraine is a testimony to the experiences of Lithuanians who survived deportations, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said on Friday.

“Not without reason today is a day not only of mourning, but also of hope. It seems to me that these things fit together very nicely, despite what we are seeing in Ukraine today,” the prime minister said at the Day of Mourning and Hope commemoration in the Seimas.

“What we are seeing in Ukraine is a testimony to the same things that our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts saw. [...] It’s a manifestation of zero humanity in their lives,” she added.

For his part, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said in a post on X that Russia is using the same methods in Ukraine that the Soviet Union used when it occupied Lithuania.

“You don’t ‘join’ the Soviet Union. They invade you, send trains full of your people to prison camps, hold a fake referendum and pretend to save you from nazis by killing you. Sounds familiar? Moscow has been using the same script since the night of June 14th 1941,” he wrote.