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At the end of WWII in the Baltic forests a drama unfolded behind closed doors: the resistance of a handful of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian partisans against the Soviet Union's stranglehold on their territory.
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00:00On the very edge of the European Union, bordering the vast expanse of Russia, the forests of
00:15Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are a wild and sacred realm. Eighty years ago, in the
00:22time of the USSR, this impenetrable massif was a bloody theater of a little-known war.
00:27The base of the resistance movement known as the Brothers of the Forest.
00:35The forest is our life. That's why we were called the Brothers of the Forest.
00:45In times of danger, the people of these small Baltic nations have always sought refuge in
00:49these stretches of conifer and oak, of which they know all the secrets. These mysterious
00:55expanses still carry the memory of a heroic and vital sacrifice.
01:03In the aftermath of World War II, a handful of partisans went underground into these forests
01:09in order to resist the violence of the Soviet regime.
01:15This foreign power was like a wall that we had to knock down, that we had to resist.
01:23The word partisan has a magical power.
01:31By attacking Ukraine, Russia has shown it hasn't given up on its former empire.
01:37Today, as the specter of war once more hovers over Europe, the time has come to remember
01:41the combat of these Baltic partisans, who made their forests a sanctuary from which they defended democracy and freedom.
01:51This foreign power was like a wall.
02:05Along here, we'll come to the bunker.
02:07Jonas Katsiones is 96. He is one of the last survivors of the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance.
02:17One of 11 children in a family of poor peasants, he was only 20 when, following his older brother,
02:23he joined the brothers of the forest.
02:29There are crosses like this all over Lithuania.
02:33In the space of three days, here in Simony forest, 30 partisans were killed in an NKVD ambush,
02:55and 10 were taken prisoner.
03:05The bunker is a bit further along.
03:07To the indifference of the West, the resistance of the brothers of the forest continued long after the end of the war,
03:23in spite of its bloody repression.
03:2575 years ago, right here in their underground hideaway, comrades of Jonas chose to blow themselves up,
03:35rather than be taken alive by the NKVD, the Soviet political police.
03:39There was a widespread uprising by the Lithuanian people,
03:53everyone from teenagers to grandfathers.
03:55This is all that remains, memories and holes.
04:09For Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the tragedy began on the 23rd of August 1939.
04:15On that day in Moscow, the two totalitarian powers, Nazi Germany and the USSR,
04:27thwarted the intentions of the democratic nations.
04:30They signed a cynical treaty, the German-Soviet pact, which subverted the balance of power.
04:36With war now inevitable, Stalin enjoyed his caviar.
04:46In exchange for his neutrality, he obtained from Hitler, by means of secret protocols,
04:51a free hand in the Baltic states.
04:54The three countries had seized their independence from the Empire of the Tsars in 1918.
05:00Now by means of fixed referendums, they were forcibly reintegrated into that empire's successor,
05:05the USSR, and the Soviet steamroller got moving.
05:27Over the following months, tens of thousands of enemies of the people, politicians, military personnel, priests,
05:34were arrested and deported to Siberia with their families in cattle trucks.
05:50At the time, Ruben Lombur was 16.
05:53His family was very involved in the patriotic movement.
05:57He's the last survivor of the Estonian brothers of the forest.
06:00What happened to my family was that during 1941, two of my brothers, older brothers, were deported to Russia.
06:09They were tried and sentenced to death, and were executed by firing squad in Kazan prison.
06:15So when they came to arrest my father, we fled into the forest.
06:27For that year, 1941, all we did was hide.
06:31We just stayed away, so that we wouldn't get arrested.
06:34And that was as far as it went.
06:36The first resistance groups started to form in the shelter of the forest.
06:43But in June 1941, Hitler laid his cards on the table.
06:58Breaking the German-Soviet pact, he launched the program laid out in Mein Kampf and deployed his troops to attack the USSR.
07:05In Tallinn, Kaunas, and Riga, the people welcomed the Germans as liberators.
07:14Thanks to these timely Nazis, they'd be getting their independence back.
07:19But of course, this was just a new occupying army, determined to make these newly conquered territories part of the Reich.
07:29As the prisons like this one in Riga, Latvia, were opened up, the scales of the Germans were built.
07:34But the Germans quickly accused the Jews of being the accomplices of being the accomplices of the NKVD torturers.
07:54They had no trouble recruiting local collaborators, police officers, and nationalist militants to help them exterminate in just a few months the local Jews.
08:09200,000 in Lithuania, 70,000 in Latvia, and 5,000 in Estonia.
08:13And it was in the name of resistance to the Soviet oppressor that many youngsters in Estonia and Latvia donned the black uniform of the SS legions, linking their fate to Germany's.
08:28The German soldiers were fighting for the Igaunia and Latvia.
08:34This was to be a force to mobilize the next to the other reserves.
08:44Early in 1944, the Red Army had gained the upper hand along the entire front line.
08:50Stalin was determined to seize back the territories annexed after the 1939 Pact.
08:54As the Germans retreated, many Baltic citizens fled westwards out of fear of reprisals.
09:01Those who remained were summarily reabsorbed into the USSR under the control of the political police, the NKVD.
09:10They were an entire army by themselves.
09:14And they immediately started hunting people down, arresting them, harassing them, torturing them, and often killing them.
09:24Lots of people knew what families in Lithuania had gone through in 1940, with teachers and so on being deported.
09:34But the Atlantic Charter had been issued by the Allies.
09:38And this stipulated that after the war, every country would have its former borders restored.
09:46We thought the war was coming to an end, that we just had to wait it out in order to be free again.
09:54Despite its promises, the West did not intervene to restore the independence of the Baltic states.
10:04At the same time, the Red Army, having suffered great losses in the war, launched a huge conscription drive.
10:09For the Katsionis family in Lithuania, it was time to choose.
10:16Our mother said to us,
10:18My boys, my children, you have to make a sacrifice for your family, because you know what it means to be a partisan.
10:26You know what could happen to you.
10:28And my brother replied,
10:30We know that mother, but I am not going to die under the red flag.
10:39Freedom, being free and independent, and staying true to your principles.
10:47It was at that moment that the real movement of rebellion and resistance by the brothers of the forest began.
11:04In the northwest of Lithuania,
11:07Albinus Kentra, from a family of farmers, had just turned 15 when the Soviets returned.
11:11My brother, Rutenis, was listening to the radio, and he heard Lithuania no longer exists.
11:26We were a close-knit family, and we all left to take refuge in the forest.
11:32My family was deported to Siberia, to the region of Krasnoyarsk.
11:53But as I wasn't at home at the time, I wasn't deported, even though I was on the list.
12:00And I sobbed like a child.
12:05The only choice I was left with was to join the partisans.
12:12So there I was, walking through the forest, when a couple of partisans popped up, like mushrooms.
12:21I told them that, if possible, I'd like to join them.
12:25They said, okay.
12:28And off we went together.
12:32Peasants, teachers, junior army officers, the brothers of the forest organized themselves into combat units, determined to put up a resistance from the undergrowth and marshland.
12:46There was no unified command.
12:50Now that this iron curtain had come down, cutting Europe in two, this movement was about proving that their countries did still exist.
12:58When joining up, new recruits swore an oath on the Bible, sometimes in the presence of a priest.
13:03At the same time, they adopted a nom de guerre.
13:08I was told that I have to have a nom de guerre.
13:13And they'd already chosen one for me.
13:16Something like the youngster or the young warrior.
13:20But I said, no, gentlemen, my nom de guerre is Beda.
13:27Beda means problem.
13:29And it isn't a very nice nickname.
13:32So they were a bit surprised.
13:35They found it funny.
13:37And they asked me why I chose that as my name.
13:39I explained that I had scabies.
13:43And now that I'm with you, you'll get scabies too.
13:48Isn't that a big problem?
13:50They burst out laughing and the name stuck.
13:54In the aftermath of the war, there was no shortage of small arms, and the partisans got a proper military training.
14:18They carried out guerrilla operations, attacks on convoys, and executed collaborators.
14:25They printed underground newspapers, including the famous Laisves Varpas, the bell of freedom.
14:37When they could, they had uniforms made, with insignias, and the officers awarded decorations.
14:42The movement included plenty of women.
14:49The women partisans had the same rights as the men.
14:54And it has to be said that they were braver.
14:58That's a hard thing to admit.
15:00But when they were captured, they never gave anyone up.
15:05Although that did sometimes happen with men.
15:12These women partisans were mostly the wives of men partisans.
15:19They were also the movement's contacts on the outside.
15:23Who'd been found out.
15:25But then had to join the partisans.
15:28Otherwise they'd be arrested, sent to Siberia, or killed.
15:32Or killed.
15:36At first, the head of the NKVD and Stalin's right-hand man, Beria, thought he'd make short work of these Robin Hoods.
15:48But in Lithuania, there were thousands of these Brothers of the Forest, and they launched pitched battles against the invaders.
15:54Rattled by the determination of these partisans, the NKVD chief upped his game, mobilizing troops from all over the USSR.
16:15Now outnumbered 10 to 1, the Lithuanian brothers of the forest risked being completely wiped out.
16:23So, as their comrades in Estonia and Latvia had already done, they split up into smaller groups and dug bunkers in which to hole up.
16:32The bunkers were just holes covered with logs.
16:45There were bunkers like this, and hidey holes, all over Lithuania, in all sorts of places, in farmyards, under bedrooms, under tables.
16:56Our family secretly made a bunker just outside of Lankuba, not far from Silale.
17:15The NKVD turned up to arrest my family.
17:18We heard them looking for us.
17:23We heard them say,
17:25where are the Kentra family?
17:28They stopped to listen,
17:32but we didn't make a sound.
17:35I was three meters away from them,
17:39and I was afraid I might sneeze.
17:42Then we can open the hatchet, and at first glance, if you look into it, then you can see only total darkness.
18:04At first it might be actually frightening.
18:11So basically you're living underground, you're very well hidden,
18:15but also the same problem is that you don't know what's happening on the outside,
18:19because you can't see, you can't hear.
18:22So the bunker was the place to kind of like rest and survive.
18:26It was not built in purpose of having the constant battles with the enemy.
18:30We wouldn't have held out for as long as we did.
18:52Ten years, if the villagers hadn't supported us,
18:57provided us with food,
19:01warned us of enemy incursions.
19:04Practically the entire population was on our side.
19:14And after the war, things were pretty tough,
19:19for the villagers and everywhere else.
19:21But what they had, they shared.
19:22The people provided us with food.
19:36Sometimes we'd make soup in the bunker.
19:41We ate mostly dry foods.
19:46Ham and smoked bacon.
19:51Sometimes all we had was a piece of bread and some milk.
19:56We just had to make do.
19:58Maybe we'd have a gherkin on the side.
20:00Among the trees, the brothers of the forest took plenty of photographs.
20:08They wanted to prove to themselves that their nations were still alive.
20:12That they were resisting the occupation.
20:15They wanted the West to see them too.
20:18And stronger than their fear was the irrepressible urge to leave a trace.
20:21For their nearest and dearest, and for those who would come after.
20:29One way of hiding the photos was to roll them up and put them in a container
20:33to protect them from the humidity.
20:35This would usually be a bottle.
20:38It was dangerous.
20:40It was ignoring a vital need for secrecy.
20:44If such a photo ended up in the hands of the KGB,
20:46in the hands of the oppressors,
20:49it would be proof that the person was involved in the resistance to the Soviet occupation.
20:56By appearing on a photo, you were risking serious problems for yourself.
21:02A ten year stretch in Siberia, at the very least.
21:09In winter, the partisans spent most of their time in the bunkers
21:12because it was very risky to leave footprints in the snow.
21:16So they made the most of any time spent outside the bunker.
21:20Here you can see that it's a sunny day,
21:22there's snow on the ground,
21:24and they're wearing camouflage.
21:26But what you can see above all is their joy at being in the sunshine
21:30after spending all that time in the dark.
21:34Here we see that the entire group has quite long hair
21:37to protect the people who supported them,
21:40to differentiate them from the fighters,
21:43the partisans let their hair grow.
21:46These guys look quite hardcore.
21:49If you replaced the rifles with electric guitars,
21:53they'd make a pretty believable rock group.
21:55We partisans were never ill because we were young.
22:05And as we had right on our side,
22:09we were hopeful that God was with us,
22:12that victory was within our grasp,
22:16and that we'd get there eventually.
22:19Even in our despair, we had lots of hope.
22:25I managed to keep it up for three years.
22:29I got wounded twice.
22:32In 1945 I got shot in the leg.
22:35No field dressings, no medicine, nothing.
22:38Our main treatment was a natural remedy
22:42that has been used by peasants since time immemorial.
22:45Chamomile.
22:49Chamomile tea and chamomile compresses.
22:53One day my friend got wounded more seriously than me.
22:58I was hit here, but he got a bullet behind his ear.
23:04He tore off a lump of bone and his eye.
23:10He had a big piece of his face missing when I found him.
23:13And I nursed him successfully.
23:17With nothing but chamomile tea.
23:24To strangle the partisans,
23:26the Soviets took to burning the farms of peasants,
23:29who helped them.
23:31And families were once again deported.
23:33Between 1945 and 1953,
23:36some half a million Baltic citizens,
23:38most of them peasants,
23:40were deported to Siberia.
23:41And to Sovietize the Baltic region,
23:44the authorities encouraged Russians to move there.
23:47The countryside underwent accelerated collectivization,
23:51with the setting up of kolkhozes,
23:53collective farms, which were easier to control.
23:55Those not in the sights of the Soviet authorities,
24:07or not being looked for, for whatever reason,
24:11managed to enjoy a relative sort of freedom.
24:14They could even go to university and live a fairly normal life.
24:25I can give you an example.
24:29In 1946, there was a singing festival in Estonia,
24:34attended by lots of people.
24:37But at the same time,
24:39the security forces were being boosted with reinforcements.
24:43And fierce battles were underway in the forest,
24:47not far from where this festival was being held.
24:50That was Stalinism.
24:52The Soviet authorities sought to tarnish the image of the Brothers of the Forest,
25:03portraying them as bandits or former Nazi collaborators.
25:06They knew that some among them had been involved in the massacre of the Jews.
25:13Anyone who had anything to do with the extermination of the Jews was despised.
25:21There was even an article in the underground press,
25:25which said that the shameful crime of those who'd murdered Jews
25:29had to be expiated by the blood of the Brothers of the Forest.
25:41For the Soviets, the important thing was to create division.
25:45They applied counter-insurrection methods,
25:48giving this colonial war, as it was in all but name,
25:51every appearance of being a civil war.
25:54Battalions comprising not only Russians but also Baltic soldiers
25:57were deployed to hunt and flush out the Brothers of the Forest.
26:06One morning at dawn,
26:09two partisans got back from the village
26:12and said,
26:14Beda, let us get some sleep now.
26:16You go on guard.
26:18So I went on guard,
26:21and I heard a noise.
26:22Crack.
26:23Crack.
26:25Crack.
26:26But it was very faint,
26:28as though a tiny bird had broken the twig that it had landed on.
26:41To alert your comrades,
26:43you'd wake them up by kicking the soles of their feet.
26:47If you were kicked like that,
26:51you knew it was a matter of life or death.
26:54So I woke everyone up,
26:57they all got up,
26:59and our district commander said that
27:01someone had betrayed us.
27:03Then he said,
27:06Since this partisan war began,
27:09this is the first time I've found myself in a situation as desperate as this.
27:16And since we're practically out of ammunition,
27:20and we have no hope of escaping,
27:23I suggest we all commit suicide here together,
27:28under this tree.
27:29So I said,
27:39maybe we can wait a bit longer.
27:42To which the commander said,
27:45very well then,
27:48in that case,
27:50let's just go straight at them,
27:52no turning back.
27:54And,
27:57that's what we did.
28:00After the fighting,
28:13we came to this area here.
28:15At the time,
28:17there was a barn here,
28:19and that provided us with somewhere to hide,
28:22in the straw,
28:24in the hay.
28:26I got up against the wall,
28:28and cleared the straw away with my legs,
28:31to make myself a space to sleep in.
28:35And then,
28:37all of the sudden,
28:38I felt another person,
28:40alongside me.
28:41I grabbed ahold of them,
28:43and it was Malvina,
28:45who wasn't yet my wife at that time.
28:48I had no time to react before she said,
28:52is that you, Jonas?
28:54I said, yes.
28:56And that was how that decisive moment came about.
29:00To put it in another way,
29:02that was when my dreams became a reality.
29:11It sounds like a fairy tale,
29:13but I promise you,
29:14that's just how it happened.
29:16In order to protect their families,
29:31when the brothers of the forest committed suicide,
29:34they had no choice but to pull the pin of a grenade next to their head.
29:37After a battle,
29:39when you saw your friend lying there on the ground, dead,
29:45that was a very difficult moment,
29:48seeing that final anguished look of a comrade,
29:52who's been killed in combat.
29:54And you carry that in your soul for the rest of your life.
30:01If they were unlucky enough to be captured alive,
30:03the partisans were taken to the NKVD headquarters.
30:07In Vilnius,
30:09the nerve center of the security services
30:11had formerly been used by the Gestapo.
30:14The building is on Gediminas Avenue,
30:16the Champs-Elysées of Vilnius,
30:18where the Soviet authorities like to organize demonstrations
30:21for propaganda purposes.
30:23Behind the building's facade,
30:25there were 400 offices and thousands of employees.
30:28It was a veritable state within the state,
30:30its whole purpose to control society.
30:33The basement had been transformed into a high-security prison,
30:37with some windows looking directly out onto the avenue.
30:40During the USSR era,
30:43some 34,000 people were imprisoned there.
30:50Here, we're in the central corridor of the prison,
30:54which had 58 cells.
30:55It was Lithuania's main prison,
31:00as well as its most secret.
31:02There were prisons like this in Latvia,
31:05Estonia, and Ukraine.
31:07The aim was to break the Lithuanian people's resistance,
31:11to break the people,
31:14and force them to believe in communism and the Soviet government
31:19by ridding them of any resistance.
31:21One of the torture methods was to stand the prisoner on a metal disc,
31:37surrounded by icy water.
31:39When he fell asleep,
31:41he'd fall into the water.
31:43After three days of this,
31:46his heart would give out,
31:47or he'd go insane.
31:48These practices continued until 1953.
31:50I was tortured too, for almost a month.
32:03I wasn't allowed to go to sleep.
32:05I was kept awake.
32:07They'd kick me and ask me,
32:10well, do you remember now?
32:11Do you remember now?
32:13Where are the bunkers?
32:15I lied and told them I didn't know,
32:18that I was alone,
32:20that I didn't know anything about any others.
32:23They didn't believe me,
32:26and they'd start beating me again.
32:28They'd kick me,
32:30knock me down,
32:32punch me in the face,
32:34and wherever they could.
32:36Then they'd take a rest.
32:38But after a while,
32:40they'd start again.
32:42At times, I'd lose consciousness.
32:45They'd throw me into my cell,
32:47throw water over me,
32:49and leave me there,
32:51lying on the floor.
32:53I'd come around slowly,
32:55and gather my spirits.
32:57I was young.
32:58I was only 20.
33:00And I'd toughened up a lot
33:02during my three years in the forest.
33:05So it didn't really affect me that much.
33:08New looks.
33:11In Latvia,
33:1318% of the prisoners died while being interrogated.
33:16On the map of the prison in Vilnius,
33:18one room is marked kitchen.
33:21This was the room in the cellar
33:23where hundreds of Lithuanians were executed,
33:24often without any sort of trial.
33:27The End
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34:12In the countryside, the whole of society was subject to the totalitarian lockdown.
34:25In southern Estonia, not far from the Russian border, the Motus family hunkered down in several bunkers.
34:32You did everything in the bunker.
34:35There were even some weddings that took place in it.
34:38And some divorces too.
34:40People gave birth, others died.
34:44You quite simply couldn't live without a bunker.
34:47The fear which spread here after the war, well, it was total horror.
34:52And they just keep coming and searching.
34:56They could show up at any time, night, day, morning, evening, and you'd be scared the whole time.
35:02Week after week, month after month, year after year.
35:06In the village, they'd burst in everywhere, even into the sauna.
35:12That's just how it was.
35:14And the people were frightened.
35:16You'd be frightened the whole time.
35:17As the 50s got underway, the Soviets started specifically targeting women.
35:26Included in the repertoire of violent acts, rape was of course used by the Russian troops as a means of repression.
35:31Because of the communists, my grandmother, on the mother's side, hanged herself.
35:40She'd hidden brothers of the forest.
35:43She'd hidden her son-in-law, members of her family, her husband.
35:47And that's why they interrogated her in that cellar.
35:50And then she hanged herself.
35:57And yet, she was far from being a weak example of Estonian womanhood.
36:03So what horrors did they inflict on her in that cellar?
36:07I don't know.
36:09It wasn't something you talked about at the time.
36:12You just didn't talk about it.
36:15You didn't talk about it.
36:20By the end of the 1940s, the USSR had seen to it that the Baltic states were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.
36:36In Lithuania, the various partisan commanders managed for the first time to meet.
36:41Having traveled on foot through the forests, they set up a unified command around a former army officer, Jonas Semaitis, known as Vytautis.
36:50With a solemn declaration, this handful of survivors reaffirmed the democratic and parliamentary nature of the Lithuania to come, in which they continued to believe.
37:04And on the 5th of March, 1953, the news from Moscow brought them a glimmer of hope.
37:09The death of the tyrant caused floods of official tears in the Kolkhozas and a pause in the repression.
37:28In the Baltic countries, an amnesty was offered to those brothers of the forest who hadn't shed any blood.
37:36Some took this opportunity to quit the harsh life of the forest.
37:41But Jonas and Malvina, the last partisans in their region, kept up the fight.
37:45In 1953, one spring night, we met some fake partisans.
37:54Well, they were former partisans, actually, who'd been turned by the NKVD.
38:01They asked me to go with them to a meeting of partisans and suggested that my wife shouldn't come with us.
38:13I told them that she didn't want to stay on her own.
38:16At which point they grabbed me by the arm and arrested me.
38:25I heard my wife saying,
38:27What are you doing?
38:30What are you doing?
38:33But they seized her too and tied her hands behind her back.
38:40And that was how we ended up in the hands of the NKVD.
38:46Benefiting from this period of relative detente,
38:53Jonas and Malvina were not tortured.
38:55In the security services headquarters,
38:58the captured partisans were tried by a special military court.
39:02Among the thousands of files meticulously archived,
39:05we found that of Jonas Katsionis.
39:15Not in there.
39:16This is the file of his case.
39:19His fingerprints,
39:21the photo of him taken by the NKVD in prison,
39:24the reports of the interrogations,
39:26and the various other documents of the penal procedure.
39:32A lot of the papers here came into the possession of the security services
39:36during the various military operations,
39:40while destroying bunkers,
39:42arresting partisans, contacts,
39:44searching homes.
39:45In 1954, the NKVD changed its name,
39:59becoming the KGB.
40:00In Lithuania,
40:08one of the last brothers of the forest still at large
40:11was none other than the commander-in-chief Adolfas Ramanouskas,
40:15a former teacher known as Vanagas,
40:18with a reputation as a leader of men.
40:20Considered enemy number one by the Soviets,
40:24he was hiding under a false identity with his wife and daughter in the town of Kaunas.
40:30In 1956, the year Soviet tanks crushed the Budapest insurrection with much spilling of blood,
40:36Vanagas was betrayed by a former comrade.
40:38In 1956 alone, the Soviet security services recruited 30 agents,
40:45purely with the aim of finding and arresting Ramanouskas.
40:49Once arrested, Adolfas Ramanouskas and his wife were immediately taken to Vilnius,
40:54to the KGB prison, where he was photographed.
40:57He was brutally tortured.
41:05They tore off his testicles,
41:07and one of his eyes was stabbed with a spike.
41:12It was the investigators who committed these sadistic acts.
41:15For when the KGB agents were worried that he wouldn't survive the torture he'd suffered
41:22during the first session of interrogation,
41:25so he was transferred to Lukiszka's prison hospital.
41:28But that wasn't the end of the torture.
41:33For a year, Adolfas Ramanouskas was subjected to torture
41:37like something out of a nightmarish Middle Ages.
41:40He was finally dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head
41:43on the 29th of November, 1957, before being buried in a secret location.
41:48With his death, armed resistance in Lithuania was decapitated once and for all.
41:55The Russians had achieved their objectives.
41:59Even if they escaped death,
42:00the brothers of the forest ended up in Siberia,
42:03serving long sentences of 14-hour days of forced labor
42:06in the freezing cold on insufficient rations.
42:13Jonas Katsionis and his wife were sentenced to 25 years in a gulag
42:20and five years of exile.
42:22After 10 years, Malvina was allowed to go home.
42:25But Jonas refused to carry out the self-criticism
42:27which could have earned him a reduction of his sentence.
42:30There were lots of Latvians, Estonians, and especially Ukrainians.
42:41The Ukrainians and the Lithuanians had beautiful voices
42:46and sang really well.
42:49And they sang partisan songs, of course.
42:52It was forbidden, but
42:53they couldn't do anything more to punish us.
42:57Deported to Spass Gulag, beyond the Eurons,
43:18Albinos Kentra found himself in prison there
43:20with a certain Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
43:22As for Ruben Lombur, he was held in Vorkuta Gulag
43:27in the Komi Republic, north of the Arctic Circle,
43:30and then in Mordovia.
43:33The gulag archipelago in the Soviet Union was immense,
43:37with tens of millions of political prisoners.
43:41They were slaves,
43:42because the Soviet Union needed to rebuild its heavy industry,
43:46which had taken a heavy beating in the war
43:48and hadn't been very consequential,
43:51even before.
43:57And I had to try to survive that.
44:01We were even stripped of our names,
44:04not to mention our human rights,
44:06which weren't respected at all.
44:09In Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,
44:17it seemed nothing could halt the Sovietization.
44:20The authorities did everything in their power
44:22to erase the memory of the Brothers of the Forest.
44:24On the banks of the Lohandu,
44:36an old man of 70 was fishing.
44:39All of a sudden,
44:40he was approached by two KGB agents
44:42who took his photo.
44:45The man's name was Auguste Sabe,
44:47and he was a brother of the forest.
44:49For 25 years,
44:51he'd been living a ghost-like existence
44:52discreetly supported by the people.
44:54It seems that the old resistor
45:02refused to comply with the agents,
45:03and he died during the arrest,
45:05probably drowned.
45:14News of this spread beyond the USSR,
45:17and the world got a shocking reminder
45:19that the KGB neither forgot nor forgave.
45:24And yet the people of the Baltic nations
45:31were finally freed from fear.
45:34In 1989,
45:35taking advantage of perestroika,
45:37the citizens formed an enormous human chain
45:39along the roads from Vilnius to Tallinn
45:41and sang partisan songs.
45:45Refusing the official history,
45:47they demanded that the USSR
45:48acknowledge the existence
45:49of the secret protocols
45:50of the German-Soviet pact,
45:52that cursed document
45:53which had left them denied
45:54of their sovereignty since 1939.
45:58Carefully sidestepping the pitfalls
46:00laid in their path by Moscow,
46:01they soon hereafter
46:02declared their independence.
46:05I can now say,
46:06let's create a Commission of the Supreme Council,
46:08let's make the inventory
46:10of what we have here
46:11and how we have here
46:12and how we have here
46:13and we will understand
46:14and we will be able to discuss it
46:15and we will be able to understand it.
46:16Gorbachev, although well-liked in the West,
46:21was determined not to give in
46:22and he ordered KGB troops
46:24to retake control of the situation.
46:28In Vilnius, Lithuania,
46:31in January 1991,
46:32thousands of people came out into the streets
46:34to protect the new parliament,
46:36the press house
46:37and the TV headquarters.
46:40Wielding a camera
46:41and right there on the front line,
46:42despite the gunfire,
46:44was Albinis Kentra,
46:45more a brother of the forest than ever.
46:50I am alone with my camera.
46:57In front of me was the press house
47:00and I just acted like nothing was amiss
47:03and I filmed.
47:06In front of me were Russian soldiers
47:09armed with automatic weapons.
47:10I was one meter,
47:15a couple of meters,
47:16in front of the tanks.
47:19There we were,
47:20face to face.
47:21And it was a miracle
47:44that they didn't shoot me
47:45because I was doing all this quite freely.
47:50I remember another experience
47:53just like this.
47:55I was walking once
47:57through the Nemensin forest that night
47:59and I came across two wolves.
48:03The two wolves looked at me
48:04and I stared back at them.
48:08I knew that if I tried to run,
48:11they'd jump on me.
48:13In the end,
48:14they just left.
48:16And at that moment,
48:18as they left,
48:19I wanted to pet them.
48:29If you look in the eye of a man
48:31without fear,
48:33even wolves can understand that.
48:36it will come.
48:37It will come.
48:37It will come.
49:06The Japanese wanted to see
49:18the film I'd taken.
49:21They offered me
49:22a huge amount of money.
49:25I said,
49:26it's free.
49:27Make as many copies
49:28as you wish.
49:29Make as many copies
49:31as you wish.
49:33And that very evening,
49:36they showed the attack
49:38on the press house
49:38to the entire world.
49:41And that wrong-footed the Kremlin.
49:43I think that I prevented Lithuania
49:46from disappearing.
49:50From that moment on,
49:52the Kremlin had to change its policy.
49:58During these demonstrations,
50:0114 Lithuanians were shot
50:02by Gorbachev's soldiers.
50:05But by seizing back
50:06their independence,
50:07the Lithuanians had delivered
50:08a fatal blow to the USSR.
50:11For the former brothers
50:12of the forest,
50:13this was the culmination
50:14of a lifetime's fight,
50:16the final stage of a conflict
50:17in which more than 50,000 people
50:19lost their lives.
50:26I spent the best part
50:27of 20 years,
50:2818 years, in fact,
50:30in those death camps,
50:32the Gulags.
50:34Millions of people died in them.
50:37There are hundreds
50:38of mass graves
50:39with no memorial,
50:42which will forever
50:43remain hidden
50:44from the world.
50:45We're all just passing
50:59through this life.
51:01We're merely guests.
51:03We come to it with nothing,
51:05and we leave with nothing.
51:07Only the things we achieved.
51:09What gives one man
51:11the right to attack another,
51:13to take his life,
51:14to take away his possessions,
51:16to deport him,
51:17to humiliate him,
51:19to cause babies
51:20to starve to death.
51:22These are terrible crimes.
51:24It's nothing short
51:25of Satanism.
51:29Even a little bird,
51:31a tiny creature,
51:32defends itself
51:33when it's attacked.
51:35When I ended up
51:37in the Gulag,
51:38I had only one regret.
51:39I hadn't fought
51:41hard enough.
51:42Professional Revolutionary,
52:09gangster, terrorist,
52:11mass murderer,
52:12who really is
52:13the man of steel,
52:14who became,
52:15after defeating Hitler,
52:17both the most feared
52:18and admired man
52:19on the planet.
52:20Apokolips Stalin
52:21is here on PBS America.
52:24Next.
52:24SITKAUSU PIE KAUSA KASKAN
52:34RIT KAUJĀ
52:36IR JĀDODAS MAN
52:38Lai uzdziedām skaļāk
52:41šotram,
52:42tā ir randu,
52:43pret tādiem,
52:44kā mēs pauzīs vienai,
52:45niek sprandu,
52:46ar nāvi mēs esam uz to.
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