Next stop Siberia

In Naujoji Vilnia, a satellite town East of Vilnius, stands a memorial to the Soviet deportations in the 1940s, in the form of a vintage locomotive and a couple carriages. Along with the mass execution of Jews during the Nazi occupation 1941-1944, this is one of the great tragedies of the history of Lithuania that runs deep in the country’s veins. In two waves, from 1940-1941, and again from 1944-1953, approximately 300,000 Lithuanians were carted off on these trains, funneled via the Naujoji Vilnia station to settlements or Gulag camps in Siberia. Only a fraction made it back.