THE VOICE OF INTERNATIONAL LITHUANIA
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Dominican Father David O’Rourke, one of the two priest producers of “Red Terror on the Amber Coast.” Father O’Rourke is director of The Tatra Project (www.tatraproject.org), which provides educational resources and media on life under the former Soviet Union.
I lived and worked on and off in Vilnius, from 2000 until about 2009. Part of my work involved research in the film and photo archives that led to the documentary film, Red Terror on the Amber Coast. I was the writer and producer. I have only one point I want to make here, but I think it is important.
From the time that the Soviets first occupied the Baltics after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact until the fall of the Soviet system, essentially all the information about life in the Baltic Republics came from the occupying governments – Soviet and Nazi. Occupiers have their own agenda. Telling the truth about what they were doing in the countries they occupied was not one of them. To the contrary, both the Soviets and the Nazis were expert in producing self-promoting propaganda. So I believe it is both naïve and foolish to look to news and information reports produced by either of these regimes about the occupation years as though they were reliable. My own view is that relatively little concerning life during these years is known today outside these countries and their several diasporas. And very little is known because historians in the West don’t think that the Baltics and their people are important enough to their own studies to worry about.
David O'Rourke
California, USA.
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Further on "Bloodlands", Snyder's research states that the vast numbers of mass executions By the Soviets and Nazis were carried out west of Moscow and east of Berlin. The gross genocidal numbers in the millions point to the 20th Century as the most murderous century in the history of mankind, His numbers claim that Poland as a targeted nation and nationality suffered the highest number of systematic executions and murders of any group from the 1930's through WWII by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The goal of both Stalin and Hitler was the annihilation of Poland as a nation and its population. The millions of those murdered in the "bloodlands" included Poles, Ukrainians ( significant numbers 1933-1934), Jews from all Europe, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, and other ethnic minorities in the USSR. We must all objectively review all historical aspects of that period. Unfortunately we see no effort demonstrated by contemporary Russia to cleanse itself of the murderous history of the Soviet Union and come to terms with its own history.
I agree completely with Fr, O'Rourke regarding the historical agenda of both contemporary Russia and Germany today. The worst scenario is casting blame on the grandchildren and survivors of the Baltic Nations on behalf of other genocidal victims of WWII. Lithuania in no way seeks to minimize the extinction of any national, racial, or religious groups during or before that period. I would highly recommend that people read the best seller Bloodlands written by Timothy Snyder. Extensive research and interviews by the historian points to genocidal policies carried out first by Stalin prior to WWII and Hitler starting 1939.