Long before Ukrainian deportations, Soviets abducted Baltic citizens

"It was a foggy morning, March 25. I could see a line of soldiers in long coats. And then they came and said, 'Get ready to go . . ."

"And the teacher came and said, 'Please don't take the children.' In 25 minutes, it was all done. And we were taken in 11 trucks . . ."

Thus spoke two survivors of Operation Priboi, the code name for the forced deportation by the Soviet authorities of more than 40,000 Latvian men, women and children on March 25, 1949.

Those nightmarish memories might also have issued from the hundreds of thousands of Estonians and Lithuanians who were likewise swept up that day by flying squadrons of Soviet troops and dispatched to Siberia. A total of half-a-million residents of the three Baltic states were deported between 1941 and 1952.