There are dates in the history of every nation which are deeply engraved upon the collective memory of the nation. Through the irony of fate, the grievous dates of the 15th of June, 1940, and the 14th of June, 1941, are close to one another.

Although these dates are close to one another accidentally, they are linked very tightly. It was one year after the occupation of our country on 15 June 1940 that the deportations of our nationals started on 14 June 1941.

Unfortunately, the occupation and annexation were not enough for our eastern neighbour.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the destruction of the state of Lithuania, the Soviet occupation power began a campaign of incomprehensible atrocity. It was aimed at deporting the most educated and best performing professionals from their homeland and condemning them to death by starvation and cold. Teachers, doctors, officials, lawyers, priests, journalists and well-off farmers were deported for a good reason. They would have hindered the invaders from building the “bright communist future”.

Unaware of what was going on and not realising that they had already been condemned to death, those innocent people were jammed into cattle carriages and taken to Russian territories unfit for human habitation. Soviet executioners spared neither time nor money to take our countrymen as far north as possible to the land of permafrost. Unfortunately, many of the Lithuanians did not return from exile. It is our sacred duty to never forget those deportees.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I invite us all to observe a minute of silence in memory of our fellow countrymen who perished from the Soviet occupation and genocide. Thank you.

Today, we are commemorating not only the Day of Occupation and Genocide but also the Day of Mourning and Hope. Hope is an incredible feature of human spirit. It helps people to withstand the most difficult tests of life and overcome multiple hardships.

What could help the deportees, who had to fight for their lives in the roughest natural conditions? Places with no traces of human presence, no shelter, no trees, no bushes, and no grass, only permafrost tundra with a thin cover of moss became a home for the deportees. It was the hope for survival that kept people alive.

What could help our people in exile who saw their parents, children, brothers and sisters die? It was hope. It was hope alone that helped the deportees to survive even when this did not seem possible. It was hope that supported the starving and freezing people and gave them strength.

Hope, however, is not only a spiritual quality of an individual. It is also the quality of nation’s collective consciousness, helping the nation to survive in crucial moments of its history.

People of older generations recall their parents, who were born in the interwar period, referring to ‘the times of Lithuania’. The awareness about the existence of the two-decades-long independence of our state helped us to keep the nation’s spirit high throughout the five decades of occupation and keep alive the hope that the Soviet empire will collapse one day.

We have lived in the independent state, or, ‘in the times of Lithuania’, as it was used to say earlier, for three decades now. The collective hope of our nation has now gained a new content. We now hope that no other occupation or genocide against our nation will ever be repeated and that our people will never again face deportations and executions.

Fulfilment of this hope depends not only on our state of mind but also on very specific endeavours, such as our ability to govern the country, educate our young people, and take good care of our army and national defence.

May we be guided in these endeavours by the lasting memory of those who perished as a result of the Soviet occupation and genocide.

May they forever have our everlasting respect.