Lithuania marks 78 years since the largest mass deportation in its history

Lithuania on Friday commemorated the 78th anniversary of the largest mass deportation in its history, when Soviet occupiers and local collaborators forcibly removed over 40,000 people in cattle wagons to Siberia, LRT reports.

The operation, codenamed “Vesna” (“Spring” in Russian), took place between May 22 and 27, 1948. Families of Lithuanian partisans and resistance supporters were targeted, loaded onto trains and sent to remote regions of Siberia under brutal conditions.

More than 5,000 deportees—including nearly 1,000 children—died in exile due to forced labour, starvation, harsh living conditions, and disease.

Commemorative events were held in Vilnius to honour the victims of the Soviet-era repression.