Lithuanian Dp Camp In Germany

Here is a very interesting souvenir sheet .The sheet states the years 1940 to 1946 ,the problem is it wasn't a DP camp until the end of the war 1945 . If the year 1940 is something then ,it was work camps for the Nazis ,so is it celebrating the work camps or better called slave labor camps ?

It may be that the Lithuanian refugees were referring to, or commemorating the years of their country's occupation by the Soviets, and then the Germans.

The souvenir sheet commemorates the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania which started on June 15, 1940. The deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia labor camps started on June 14, 1941.

The Soviet authorities forcibly deported some 130,000 people – the men, women and children from the Lithuanian territory under their control. During 1940-1953 period, another 200,000 residents were thrown into prisons in Lithuania and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Some 150,000 of them were sent to forced labor camps (the Gulags), situated mostly in Siberia. More than 10 percent of the population of Lithuania has been forcibly resettled by the Soviets.

A large number of WWII refugees running from the second Soviet occupation in 1944 ended up in Germany in Baltic DP camps.