Events dedicated to the Days of Mourning and Hope and the Days of Occupation and Genocide are taking place in Vilnius on Sunday. They honor the victims of Soviet repressions and commemorate the 85th anniversary of the first mass deportations of Lithuanian residents to Siberia. On June 15, 1940, the Soviet Union began the occupation of Lithuania and a year later, on June 14, 1941, carried out the first mass deportations of Lithuanian residents to Siberia. During the Soviet occupation, Lithuania lost a total of about 800,000 people. population. About 300 thousand people experienced the horrors of the communist regime – prisons, camps, exile in Siberia and the far north.
