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Latvian National Foundation – LNF - was founded
in year 1947 in Stockholm, Sweden.
The initiative was taken by the national poet Andrejs
Eglitis and together with other exiled Latvians LNF got its important task as a politically independent
global information center to provide the free world information about Latvia, its loss of freedom, the
situation in Latvia under Soviet rule. In the first
years after World War II more objective information about Stalins
Soviet Union was rare. Moscows aggression, the
occupation of the Baltic States was rarely mentioned in the western press. LNF
gathered all possible information – documents, photographs, films,
letters etc to expose the crimes of the Soviet Union against the recently free Baltic States.
In 1950 a petition
was directed to the UN: The Soviet should immediately leave the Baltic States and democratic elections should
be held.
In the name of Human Rights political
prisoners should be freed and all deported persons should be brought back
home.
The guilty of the occupation and the
deportations should be put on international trial.
One of the most important tasks the first
years was to gather information about the deportations of thousands of Latvians
to the forced labor camps in Siberia.
1951 LNF released ”These names accuse” a book of 677
pages with names of persons deported from Latvia to Siberia in 1940-41. The occupant deported
without discrimination even babies and grandmothers. This document was
presented to the ambassadors of the free world among others President Truman,
how named the book a most important document of a cruel regime.
Stalin is told to have been very stressed by
the book and called it a pile of lies and accused LNF
of treachery to the nation.
During all the years up to 1992 LNF published many
books, booklets about the situation in occupied Latvia some of them in
other languages – English, German, Spanish, Swedish (see under
publications of LNF). A lot of materials were
smuggled out of Latvia and LNF
gave publicity of these materials to the world. LNF participated in expositions, in demonstrations against illegally
arrested persons, wrote to the leaders of the free world – the
mission was always the same: never to let the world forget about Latvia and the other occupied nations
and to claim for the lawful right of Latvia to independence.
1967 LNF presented the book “Latvia; country and people” which was also spread to ambassadors, global
organizations as UN, libraries, schools etc
When Latvia regained its freedom and again
became a free nation 1991 the goals for the work of LNF
were altered to support of the
democratic process. Books and other information was
offered to the government institutions of Latvia, to schools, libraries etc.
Knowledge of the true nature of the occupation of the Soviet power was more
or less efficiently withheld from the people during the long years of
occupation. Another main task was and
still is to give support to families and students to stimulate and enable the new generation to get
education so that they can take an active part in the reestablishing of a democratic nation and to safeguard the
interest and culture of Latvia.
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