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Didžioji str. 17/1, LT-01128 Vilnius, phone +370 5 231 4139, fax. +370 5 279 1033, e-mail centras@genocid.lt
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On June 15, 1940, after the Soviet Army crossed the border of the Republic of Lithuania, the independence of the State was ruined. The period of occupations that lasted for 50 years took start. During mass repressions, Lithuanian citizens, in spite of their social status, estate or stratum, were arrested, murdered, and deported to Siberia. The resistance to the occupational authorities that started in the autumn of 1940, turned into the uprising of 22 June 1941. At that time, the tragedy of the Lithuanian residents – Jews – the Holocaust began. In July 1944, the second Soviet occupation of Lithuania started. Thousands of Lithuanian patriots continued their fight for the re-establishment of Lithuania’s statehood. A large-scale partisan war broke out. Without any support from outside, the Lithuanian nation resisted the brutal occupational policy for the whole decade. From the spontaneously formed partisan squads, the military structure covering the whole of Lithuania was formed. In 1944–1949, the following partisan commands were created: Algimantas, Dainava, Didžioji Kova, Kęstutis, Prisikėlimas, Tauras, Vytis, Vytautas and Žemaičiai. They constituted Jūra, Nemunas and Kalnai area. On February 2–22, 1949, the conference of All-Lithuanian Conference of Partisan Leaders was held, and it rallied the military anti-Soviet resistance units into a united organization – the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania (MSFL). This organization under the leadership of partisans’ general Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas prepared military-political documents, legalizing the Sajūdis (Reform Movement) as the organization, guiding the political and military liberation struggle and representing the idea of independent Lithuania in the occupied country. During the conference – on February 16 – a political declaration was adopted, where the restoration of the independent parliamentary Republic of Lithuania was declared as the final objective of the partisan struggle. The military abilities of partisans and the selfless struggle for independence became expressed in thousands of fights and confrontations with the occupational military forces. The partisan leaders like the leader of the MSFL Armed Forces, partisans’ colonel Adolfas Ramanauskas, Southern Lithuanian partisan leader Col-Lt Juozas Vitkus, Major Juozas Lukša, who made the break through the “iron curtain” to the West and many others. The occupants used the most brutal methods of fight: destroyed the partisan families and farmsteads of their supporters with mortar fire, disgraced the bodies of the killed in public in the squares of towns and townships, and prepared the provocations of agents stormtroopers. Over 20 thousand Lithuaniana were killed holding weapons in their hands or were tortured by the occupants. In 1953 alone the partisan war was over. The MSFL Presidium Chairman J. Žemaitis-Vytautas was arrested, the headquarters of the areas were crushed, and communications destroyed.
After suppressing the gunfight, the Lithuanian nation yearned for independence. Those aims became fulfilled on March 11, 1990 when the Supreme Council–Reconstituent Seimas of Lithuania promulgated an Act on the Re-establishment of the State of Lithuania, whereby “the execution of the sovereign powers of the State of Lithuania, abolished by foreign forces in 1940, is re-established, and henceforth Lithuania again is an independent state.” On January 12, 1999, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania passed the Law “On the Declaration of 16 February 1949 of the Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania” and promulgated that declaration as the legal act of the Republic of Lithuania. The year 1999 was proclaimed as the Year of Commemoration of the Fights for Freedom.”
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