On the recordJanuary 25, 2011
during the recent 2-week recess, I was invited to speak to the Parliament of the nation of Lithuania in the capital of Vilnius. It was a great honor. This country holds a special place in my family. My mother was born in Lithuania. One hundred years ago this year, my grandmother brought her, her brother, and sister to America. My mother was 2 years old. They landed in Baltimore, and somehow our family found its way to meet up with my grandfather in East St. Louis, IL, where a lot of Lithuanian immigrants were coming to take jobs--hard, manual labor jobs, which immigrants took in those days and still do--manual labor jobs that gave them a chance they did not have in the old country. I was asked to speak to the Parliament on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of what has come to be known as bloody Sunday. It recalls the time, 20 years ago, when Mikhail Gorbachev, as head of the Soviet Union, made his last, desperate, violent effort to stop Lithuania from breaking away from the Soviet Union. I recall that period because I followed it closely as a Member of Congress. You can still see some details of what life was like in Lithuania under the Soviets. The old police headquarters, the KGB headquarters, has been preserved as a museum--basically, a horror museum to show and catalog the torture and killings that took place during Soviet rule. In February 1990, the people of this tiny nation on the Baltic decided they had had enough.…
