We could have been deported, too
Stalinist war crimes against humanity continue to this day under Putin
During the Soviet occupation, the most ambitious mass terror campaign in the history of Latvia was carried out on March 25-28, 1949. The Stalinist regime deported 42,125 Latvians to labor camps (gulags) in Siberia. They were mainly women, children and the elderly, so-called "anti-Soviet elements."
Criminal deportations also took place in neighbouring Estonia and Lithuania. A total of 94,799 people were deported from the three Baltic States. That’s a staggering number, equal to the entire population of the city I live in today.
The sobering fact is that my mother, my little sister and I could have been among those taken away to Siberia, except for the grace of God and a decision by my parents.
In 1944, in Riga, where I was born and where we lived during the Second World War, there was a lot of discussion and debate in our family—as there were in many Latvian households then. Do we try to escape to the West or do we stay and try to survive until the war ends?
My grandparents on my Mother’s side wanted to stay. On my Father’s side, they opted to escape. In a difficult decision that eventually broke my Mother’s heart (when she never again saw her parents alive), we escaped from Latvia, first to Poland, then to Germany, and eventually to Canada in December 1949.
So many awful memories return as I watch the horrible attack on Ukraine by the Putinist regime in power in Russia today, seven decades following Stalin
Read more about Operation Priboi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi
And if you think Soviet-style self-purification is a thing of the past, think again:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/russia-media-putin-ukraine/
The abduction of Ukrainian children is only the latest example:
Children of War is a website operated by the Ukrainian government. It is updated daily and puts the number at 16,226 children deported as of today. Only 308 of them, it says, have been returned, while another 464 children have been confirmed killed by the fighting and another 935 wounded.
https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en/
Michael Scharf, a human rights lawyer who tries cases at the International Criminal Court at the Hague, says the real number is likely closer to 400,000 children. That's based, he said, on “numerous reports of Russian forces seizing children from orphanages, schools and hospitals in areas of Ukraine under Russian occupation and transferring them to Russia where they are sent to foster families to be transformed into Russians.”
Close to 400,000 children. To be transformed into Russians. Let that sink in. Close to 400,000 children. To be transformed into Russians.
The war crimes initiated in the Stalinist era a lifetime ago have found a new champion today—in Vladimir Putin.
Russians captured 12-year-old Sashko and his mother, Snizhana, in Mariupol in March 2022. They separated them in a “filtration” camp, not allowing them to say goodbye to each other. Sashko was sent to the hospital with an eye injury. Later, they said, they would place him in an orphanage until a Russian foster family adopts him. However, thanks to the boy's courage, his grandmother Lyudmyla's efforts and the coordinated work of a large team of governmental and non-governmental organizations and services, he was returned to the territory controlled by Ukraine.
Good story. DeSantis needs to read it.