Memorial plaque to those deported to Siberia in 1949

The deportation of 25 March 1949 in Latvia involved 44,271 people, 95.4 per cent of whom were Latvians. 29 030 were deported as kulaks and 13 095 as nationalists. A total of 5182 of those deported in 1949 died on the way to and in the special camp.

The inhabitants of Plavinas municipality were affected by the wave of deportations, especially the municipalities of Vietalva, Odziena, Aiviekste and Klintaine. On the morning of 25 March 1949, more than 50 families, young and old, women, children, infants and the elderly, had to leave their family homes and, accompanied by armed soldiers, go to the railway station, where train carriages were waiting to take them to the distant regions of Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk or Omsk.

They were taken with the aim that the people would never return to their homeland.

On 25 March 1990, a memorial plaque was erected at the Plavinas railway station in memory of the victims of the deportations and in respect for all that they endured in distant Siberia, the unveiling of which was attended by historian, LTF member Odysseus Kostanda.