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Remebrence of deportation/genocide of latvians

Remembrance event for the few hundred thousand people that forcefully where deported to Siberia after Soviets occupied us. My own great grandmother was one of them with her family.

Operation Priboi was a mass deportation carried out by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin starting on March 25, 1949. It targeted the Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — which had been occupied by the USSR after WWII.

In just a few days, around 90,000 people were forcibly deported to Siberia and other remote regions. These weren’t just individuals — entire families were taken, often in the middle of the night, given little time to pack, and transported in freight trains.

The goal was mainly to crush resistance (like the Forest Brothers) and force collectivization by removing people considered “unreliable,” especially farmers. A large portion of those deported were women and children.

It’s still remembered today as one of the most traumatic Soviet-era events in the Baltics, and March 25 is commemorated annually, especially in Latvia.