Litene (German: Lettin) is the center of Litene Parish, in Gulbene Municipality, in north-eastern Latvia. Other names: Lytene, Myza Lytene.[1] A notable building is Litene Manor.[2]
Litene (German: Lettin) is the center of Litene Parish, in Gulbene Municipality, in north-eastern Latvia. Other names: Lytene, Myza Lytene.[1] A notable building is Litene Manor.[2]
Litene became infamous in the summer of 1941, the "year of terror" of the Soviet occupation. Eleven hundred Latvian army officers were arrested by the Soviet NKVD in 1941. For it was at Litene Army camp that most of them were arrested under the pretext of a "training exercise".[3] Two hundred Latvian officers were shot in Litene, 80 in Riga and 560 were deported to Siberian gulags. Only 90 of them returned from Siberia after Joseph Stalin's death.[4][5][6]
In the spring of 1941, units of the disbanded Latvian Army now called the 24th Territorial Corps of the Red Army were sent for summer training to the former Latvian Army base at Litene.[7] On 14 June 1941, the remaining officers, while on a supposed training mission, were disarmed, arrested and deported to forced labor at Norillag, north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia, where they were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment.
In 1988, excavation was undertaken at the former Latvian Army summer camp in Litene. The excavators uncovered the remains of 11 individuals, evidently officers of the 24th Territorial Corps.[5]
During commemoration ceremonies on 14 June 2001 at Litene fraternal cemetery Latvian Defence Minister Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis unveiled a memorial to the Latvian officers killed in 1941.[8]
