Riga  - The three small Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania paid moving tribute on Saturday to the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who were rounded up and deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities.

In the early hours of June 14, 1941, some 10,000 Estonians, more than 15,000 Latvians and between 16,000 and 18,000 Lithuanians were herded onto cattle trains and transported to the far eastern reaches of the Soviet Union, where many of them died.

The expulsions were carried out "to persecute and silence" opponents of Josef Stalin's regime, which occupied the three Baltic states first in 1940, and again at the close of World War II following a few years of the Nazi occupation.

"Words cannot express the despair felt by the people sent off towards an unknown destination, with nothing but ephemeral hope of surviving and returning to homeland," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves along with Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Parliament's speaker Ene Ergma said in a joint statement in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

"What must the mothers and fathers have felt, seeing their children crammed in cattle wagons alongside themselves? These mothers and fathers, women and men had little chance of seeing their loved ones again," said Ilves, who himself was born in Stockholm to a family of Estonian refugees.

They were the first of a series of mass deportations that lasted until the early 1950s and saw hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians sent to prison or exile in Siberia as Moscow put in motion a plan to occupy the Baltics.

In the Latvian capital, Riga, a group of former political prisoners and leaders laid flowers at the city's Freedom Monument in the drizzling rain.

Maroon and white Latvian flags with black ribbons of mourning tied to them fluttered about as Latvian President Valdis Zatlers told a crowd of several hundred people not to forget those who were deported to their death in Siberian gulags.

"It is a painful day in our history ... we can never forget those who remained in Siberia, those who were killed there. We have to tell the world that our nation suffered from many occupations." Zatlers said.

The Soviet occupying force sent Balts to camps and prisons in the most disadvantaged regions of the USSR in on June 14, 1941. The deportations recommenced after the Soviets reoccupied the countries from Nazi Germany and then again after World War II during the partisan resistance movement that lasted until the mid-1950s.

In Lithuania, leaders marked the Day of Mourning and Hope by laying flowers at a special memorial.

"More than 60 years ago, occupiers took our country, launched their plan to rid Lithuania of Lithuanians. For thousands of our citizens it meant death, deportations, broken health, and broken lives," said Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus at the monument to victims of Soviet oppression in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Some 50,000-60,000 Lithuanians - every third prisoner or deportee - died in exile. Only half of the deportees returned home decades later.

In all, Soviet authorities deported about 150,000 people from Lithuania, most of whom died. (dpa)