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Copyright © 1956 Lithuanian Students Association, Inc.   December, 1956  No.4(9)

LITHUANIAN AFFAIRS IN THE AMERICAN PRESS

A Big Nyet for Soviet Propagandists
Agents of the Soviet intelligence apparatus in the U. S. have been operating in Los Angeles and have provided the Soviet the names and addresses of 70% of former Lithuanian refugees living in this area.
Former refugees here are receiving material mailed directly to their homes from the Red zone of Berlin urging them to go back to their "free fatherland." It has been coming now for over a year.
Soviet agents conducting this war of nerves in Los Angeles are using as blandishment a paper called "Return to the Fatherland."
It contains crude propaganda articles, a number of heavily retouched pictures, and the inevitable photos of peasants and tractors—long a Soviet propaganda trademark of alleged idylis joy.
"Come Back To Your Fatherland" is the head on one article. "Your Relatives Await You" is another. A third proclaims "The Powerful Soviet Regime Has a Heart Filled with Goodwill."
Refugees here say that Poles, Latvians and Estonians have been receiving this material.
Testimony just released by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee has disclosed that the propaganda paper "Return to the Fatherland" is published in the Soviet zone of Berlin and is run by a Red Army general, N. P. Michailov.
So far the Soviet campaign in Los Angeles has resulted in no volunteers for the Soviets—and in a good many cases of nerves and tension among the former refugees who can't forget Communism in action with all its coercion and force.
Lithuanians here estimate that about 90 per cent of the former refugees are American citizens—which adds up to a big Nyet for Soviet propaganda.
    — THE TIDINGS, Los Angeles, Calif., June 15, 1956.

Horrible Deportations
Khrushchev said Stalin's favorite boast was to sneer: "I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito.. ." or name whoever he wanted exterminated.
Stalin shook his little finger again in 1940 and the Red army swept over the Baltic States. A year later, that finger shake touched off horrible mass deportations all over the Baltics—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The fifteenth "blac" anniversary of this inhuman deed is being marked by surviving relatives in Europe and in the United States this week.
When the "little finger" in the Kremlin moved from June 14 to 21, 1941, the Soviet secret police dragged off to Siberia 10,205 persons from Estonia, 22,831 from Latvia and 34,260 from Lithuania.
The secret police goons followed instructions implicity. Families were torn apart; the deportees amidst screaming were thrust into freight cars; the windows were nailed with boards, and the doors tightly closed. There was no water, no food, no air and no toilet facilities. The babies, the aged and the sick perished in the closed cars.
Anybody under the delusion that the taskmasters who learned their murder trade under Stalin and now ruling the Kremlin have given up this "little finger" process should read authentic reports from the Baltic States on the "volunteers" so enthusiastically "rushing off" to Siberia.
    — Pierre J. Huss, NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN, June 24, 1956.

Persecution of Church
In every country where Communists are in power the Church of Christ is in chains. Persecution is sometimes subtle and hidden and sometimes open and savage. Everywhere it is relentless.
We speak of what we know. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and the Ukraine—not to mention Eastern Germany and Far East—pastors of the Church are arrested without reason and punished after mock trials. The attack is made on Catholic schools, hospitals and orphanages. The voice of freedom is suppressed. The slightest protest against injustice is regarded as an act of treason.
    —Paul Burton, THE TIDINGS, Los Angeles, Calif., March 30, 1956

Yalta Remembered
For instance, it can be argued with whatever vehemence that Franklin D. Roosevelt committed hii country to outrageous conduct at Teheran and Yalta, but no anger will return the Polish people, to take two examples, their independence, or to the people of Latvia or Lithuania, their country.
    —George E. Sokolsky, THE LOS ANGELES HERALD-EXPRESS, March 30, 1956

Fight for Freedom Continues
The freedom spark which kindled Hungarian revolt spread to the Soviet Union itself tonight. Reports of unrest came from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the free Baltic States forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940.
    —THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, December 12, 1956