FIGHTERS FOR FREEDOM Lithuanian Partisans Versus the U.S.S.R. by Juozas Daumantas
This is a factual, first-hand account of the activities of the armed resistance movement in Lithuania during the first three years of Russian occupation (1944-47) and of the desperate conditions which brought it about.
The author, a leading figure in the movement, vividly describes how he and countless other young Lithuanian men and women were forced by relentless Soviet persecutions to abandon their everyday activities and take up arms against their nation’s oppressors.
Living as virtual outlaws, hiding in forests, knowing that at any moment they might be hunted down and killed like so many wild animals, these young freedom fighters were nonetheless determined to strike back with every resource at their command.
We see them risking their lives to protect Lithuanian farmers against Red Army marauders, publishing underground newspapers to combat the vast Communist propaganda machine, even pitting their meager forces against the dreaded NKVD and MGB.
JUOZAS DAUMANTAS
We also see them gradually becoming aware of how little the free world cares about their plight, and we cannot help but admire their determination to go on fighting just the same. Unheralded, unknown, and abandoned by the Western Democracies in which they had placed so much faith, these young people were destined to share the fate of the Hungarian freedom fighters who came after them—a fate which the author of this book also shared. After having broken through the Iron Curtain in 1947 to plead his cause before the West, he returned to Lithuania in 1950 and was killed by the Soviets a few months later
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