[itssme]

I have relatives in Lithuania...took me a long time to find these relatives, and I worry greatly for them. One of my Lithuanian relatives was a freedom fighter for Lithuania in WWII. He refused to join Stalin's Red Army when they marched into Lithuania, as the Nazi's were running out of Lithuania. The soviet soldiers rounded up all the freedom fighters who wouldn't fight with the soviets and shot them in front of their families. They then desecrated their bodies. After the war ended, the townspeople dug up the remains of these brave fighters and buried them in a common grave, with a headstone listing all of their names. I have a picture of that headstone.

[IndispensableDestiny]

The Lithuanian partizans (including the Forest Brothers) kept fighting the Soviets until the mid-1950s. The last one was caught (and executed) in the early 1960s.

Lithuania has the lowest percentage of Russians in all the Baltics. As Lithuanians were deported to Siberia or sent to the Gulag, the Soviets relocated their own Russians. The Lithuanians kept killing the Russians, so eventually they stopped coming.

My father was among those deported. He returned in 1957. My grandfather was among those sent to the Gulag. He did not return.