Pope honors victims of Soviet and Nazi crimes in Baltics
23/9/2018 17:52
Pope Francis paid tribute Sunday to Lithuanians who suffered and died during Soviet and Nazi occupations on the day the country remembers the near-extermination of its centuries-old Jewish community during the Holocaust. Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania's second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation. During Mass in the lush Santakos Park under a brilliant autumn sun, Francis honored both Jewish victims of Nazi-era executions and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.
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