Cattle wagon used for deportations – museum at Skrunda train station
Muziejus

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To commemorate the deportations of June 1941 and March 1949, a memorial stone and a four-axle wagon, which also serves as the museum dedicated to deportations, was erected at the Skrunda railway station. This is the first wagon-type museum in Latvia that holds a permanent exhibit of photos, letters, memoirs, documents and various items made by the people deported from the Skrunda station. Skrunda station was a location where deportees were gathered, and one of the three stations in the region to which people from the Skrunda and the Kuldīga area were brought. In 1941, the family of the first President of the restored Republic of Latvia, Guntis Ulmanis, was deported from here to Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia.

With the help of deportations, the Soviets dealt with supporters of the national partizans’ and at the same time intimidated the remaining rural population, forcing them to join the collective farms.

Panaudoti šaltiniai ir literatūra:

www.skrunda.lv/lv/turisms/apskates-objekti/skrunda-un-pagasts-/deportaciju-pieminas-vagons-muzejs/

https://enciklopedija.lv/skirklis/108424-1949-gada-25-marta-deport%C4%81cija-Latvij%C4%81

Link to Gulag and Gulag map: https://enciklopedija.lv/skirklis/36530-Gulags

 

Susijusi istorija

The life of General Jānis Balozis after returning from deportation

When the Russians tried to force a military base agreement from the Latvian government in 1940, which would make the Latvian army's resistance to the Red Army almost impossible, General J. Balodis tries to get some amendments to this agreement. But it fails. But the general's bad guys use this circumstance to later correct J. Balodi almost as a traitor. After a conflict with the Prime Minister of the State and Prime Minister K. Ulmanis, on April 5, 1940, the General was relieved of the post of Minister of War. Then J. Balodis decides to participate in the Saeima elections from the Democratic Bloc, but nothing comes out of it, because only one list may stand for election - the list of communist candidates. Latvia becomes the 14th Soviet republic.

Deportation echelon secretly photographed at Skrunda station in 1949

On 25 March 1949, Elmārs Heniņš, a pupil in Skrunda, witnessed his classmates being taken away. He took his camera and climbed a pine tree on a nearby hill to document what was happening, later hiding the pictures.