At a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet mass deportations of citizens of the Baltic states held in Los Angeles June 12, Latvian consul in California Dr. Juris Bunkis spoke out strongly for remembering the Jews in the Baltics who were murdered during the Holocaust.

“We are here to commemorate evil–evil like the mass shootings that took place earlier today in Orlando,” Dr. Bunkis said. “We gather today to commemorate a brutal event in our histories, the mass deportations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians from their illegally and forcefully occupied countries to Siberia by the Soviet Union that began on June 14, 1941. Unfortunately, this was just the first in a series of mass Soviet deportations of tens of thousands of victims from the Baltics, occupied Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova,” he continued.

“…It puzzles me why most Balts today tend to turn a blind eye to the fascist murders that happened on our soil. I do not recall a single commemoration or even a mention of this second evil at any of our Baltic events. As horrible as deportations of June 14th were, they were not the only atrocities to occur in the Baltics during the War years. Prior to WWII, there were 4,300 Jews in Estonia, 94,000 Jews in Latvia and 210,000 in Lithuania. Latvia also had 4,000 Gypsies prior to the War. 95% of these people, along with train loads of others shipped in cattle cars from Germany and other countries, along with thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, were also murdered on Baltic soil because of their ethnicity, because of their religion, because they were prisoners of War. I read a statistic that in Lithuania, Germans assigned to these murders numbered only 139 personnel, of whom 44 were secretaries and drivers. I did not find a similar comparison for Estonia or Latvia. Historians attribute the efficiency of these murderers to the massive collaboration in the genocide by Baltic locals who eagerly participated in the rounding up and murdering of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. In Latvia, these murders were assisted by Perkonkrusts and Viktors Arajs Commandos. Yet some like Jonas Noreika in Lithuania are considered heroes today and have had building and streets named after them!” honorable Latvian consul Dr. Bunkis told the audience comprised mainly of Baltic Americans and consuls from the other Baltic states.

“Memory is what shapes us. Memory is what teaches us. The gruesome killings of WWII should have been a lesson for humanity, one to help us avoid a reoccurrence of such evils. And then I think about what happened in Bosnia, what happened in Rwanda, what happened in Darfur, Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and this morning in Orlando. To this day, millions of people are being persecuted because of their ethnicity, religion or sexual preference. We as a human race should be able to do better than this, to learn to love and to live in peace through strength. May God keep the Baltics free and in peace forever. God bless the Baltics!” he concluded.