There are many tragedies in this world of ours. I guess this is why the first Baltic Remembrance Day passed unnoticed in the world's media. But there was an announcement of the event at Latvians Online (July 13, 2009):
The first Baltic Remembrance Day is scheduled June 14 in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians who were deported by Soviet authorities in 1941.
The event, coordinated by the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC), is scheduled at 4 p.m. [on June 14, 2009] at the Victims of Communism Memorial at the intersection of Massachusetts and New Jersey avenues, according to a JBANC press release.
Organizers of the event will call on the Russian government “to take responsibility for its history, and to acknowledge and apologize for these acts, which it has never done,” according to the press release.
Nearly 15,500 Latvian men, women and children were rounded up and deported to Russia from June 13-14, 1941, according to historians. Many of those deported worked for or had ties to the Lavian government, or work social or cultural leaders. Similar deportations took place in Estonia and Lithuania.
A second deportation, aimed largely at people resisting collectization of agriculture, took place in late March 1949. More than 42,000 people were forced to leave Latvia.
I do not profess to be a disinterested observer of the world's indifference to what happened in three small countries 68 years ago. My maternal grandfather and grandmother were deported from Latvia to Siberia (in cattle cars, and then by a barge). His crime? According to the NKVD arrest warrant: he was a banker and the leader of Latvia's Farmer's Party. Her crime? According to the arrest warrant: she was the wife of a banker and the leader of Latvia's Farmer's Party. My sister found out, many years later, that they died in Siberia from lack of food and medicine about a year after being deported there.
Mr. Putin does not think that Russia needs to apologize. I guess he thinks that hard times require hard men (and mass murder too?).
