Emine Ganieva

I am Ganieva Emine. My parents lived in Bakhchysarai.

My brother, sisters were there when the expulsion took place, not expulsion, dispossession of kulaks, he left and came to Asan Bai. He bought two rooms and lived there, and then moved to Sollar. In Sollar my brother was taken for the army. He served in Sevastopol in the Black Sea Fleet.

When the war started he was defending Sevastopol. And when the Germans took over Sevastopol, they went into the tunnel. They were in the tunnel more than 300 days, the whole division. The top was bombed, but it didn’t work out. And then the Germans, thought of drowning them in the sea. Stalin heard about it and said “Give up.” They gave up. There were a lot of them, not 10 or 20 people, but the whole division of soldiers was there. I’ll tell you what… There was one edge in Sevastopol, and the other in Simferopol. That’s how many prisoners they took, and chased them up to the town. I don’t know which exactly. They were exhausted, hungry, they died every day. They were dying and dying, and there used to go a dump truck in the morning and take away the dead somewhere. And my brother pretended to be dead he was also loaded on the dump truck and taken out. And then he escaped from there. He ran away at night among the dead, and went back to his squad.

What about us, we lived in Sollar. There, in Sollar, when the war began the Germans were there during the day and the guerrillas – at night. And somehow, the guerrillas managed to keep Sollar for a week and they didn’t let the Germans in.

My father was hard working man, a healthy man. He used to slaughter lamb for them every other day. And my mother cooked for them. For the guerrillas. When in was time to go one of the guerrillas with the orders, maybe a commander he wanted to give my dad money I don’t know, maybe 30 rubles, maybe 300 rubles, but my father didn’t take it. The commander lived with you. Yes, commander. And when my father didn’t see he put the money behind a coat rack. And then two days later my mother found it. And father said, that “They tried to give me the money, and I didn’t take it, so they put it there. This is their money.” My grandpa, your father gave commander the pipe. I don’t remember that. When they wanted to burn Sollar, my father moved to Bahcheli.

There we lived two, three or four months and one night, there was a knock on the door. Dad asked “Who’s there?” there was Fedya Yablonsky. Fedya Yablonsky, he was a volunteer. They called him “Fedya Volunteer”. He asked to change his clothes. I don’t know whether my father let him in. and again in the morning there was a knock on the door. It was 4 o’clock a.m. “We have to get up now.” He got up, got dressed, and there were two soldiers. They asked: “Why don’t you open the door?» With a threat: “Are you hiding the guns?” “What gun? Look for a gun if you find one, kill me, shoot me.” They opened up the dresser, looked for it. Dad’s razor was there, they took the razor. And a belt, to sharpen that razor. They took it away and said: “You have fifteen minutes to get ready.” And my father said: “How’s that? “My son’s at war, and my family’s being deported?” This one said: “None of our business. Stalin’s order. Stalin deports all the Tatars”. Father said: “I’ll go find the commander, I’ll tell him.” And he went. And the commander said: “This is Stalin’s order, we have no right to cancel. All Tatars are being expelled”. He said: “I’ll give you the car. Load what you can, except for the furniture. All you can do is load it up.” And my father, of course, loaded as much as he could in the car, then the car was unloaded in the tobacco shed, and wagon car was here at 12 o’clock, Six families in one wagon. My dad already gave it away, there were other cars there. And then we set off.

There’s a house left, there’s a cow left, and it’s just that night, the cow was calving, and the cow was left there. 20… 26 beehives, boxes were left. Eight baskets of beehive left. All the furniture, vegetables left. Mother was crying: “My son is in the army, my daughter married in Koktash (Sinekamenka), and my second daughter is studying in Karasuvbazar (Belogorsk), there’s no one home, how do I live?” She was crying: “They’re going to shoot us, too.” Well, that’s okay. When we were already loaded and they were taking us to Dzhankoy Mom’s screaming: “Nurie, Nurie.” When we arrived to Karasubazar (Belogorsk): “Nurie, Nurie, Nurie, Nurie, Nurie!” Nurie heard her, and when we got to Dzhankoy, she was looking for us in every wagon. “Ana-Ana!” And she found us. And she was with us.

I don’t know how long I’m not going to lie, we got to Volgovskiy region, to Molotov, and there we were loaded on a barge. Kama, Lake Kama. The river. And my father fell ill. I don’t know, he was very nervous and worried and got sick. And my father was about to be thrown into the river, and we started crying: “He’s not dead, why, Commander?” My father raised his head and said: “I’ve got Tsar Nikolai’s fat on my heart, I’m not going to die. I still have a family, I still have to take care of them!” We got to Gayn, and there’s a village called Chertan. They brought us to Chertan, unloaded us in the barracks, And in the barracks there’s so many… There were lice, all sorts of things. Fleas! The commandant liked my father, he came and said: “Medzhit, what can you do? Can you work as a blacksmith?” Father said: “I can.” He was a blacksmith.

I was a little girl, I burned little sticks, and my older sister, she studied, was a receptionist in the warehouse. Then she took me to her place as a marker, and I was marking the woods. Then I was working as an express. There weren’t any phones at the time, and the summary had to be carried. From Chertan I was the only one who carried it on foot, 25 kilometers, through three villages. I used to carry it 25 kilometers, and then I found out a shortcut in the woods. Only in the woods 15 kilometers, I used to go back and forth. Then they gave me the cards, and every 15 days they gave us dependant cards, work cards, and workers’ salary, I carried them all in a bag. I carried money and cards, and all the people knew that I would bring money, cards. A lot of people were waiting for me. And no one had ever robbed me. And they gave me cards, money. I’m poorly-educated, and when I wasn’t counting I’d never been cheated, not a ruble, not a single card. Sometimes I counted, sometimes I didn’t…

Once I was counting and a card fell under the table, I didn’t see it, and the accountant said: “Emine, your card fell under the table!” That’s what honest people were like back then. That’s how we lived. And then, when my brother was looking for us in Uzbekistan after the war, he didn’t find us there. He found out we were in the Urals, and called to pick us up. Mother had died, she was 55 years old, in 1947, and father died at the age of 70. He heard the call, but Mom didn’t hear it. Mom cried, she used to say: “If only I knew he was alive.” But she never found out he was alive, but Dad knew he was alive. One day he sent me and my older sister a parcel, and I went 25, 30, 50 kilometers for the parcel. I was 17 years old then, I walked 50 kilometers. Snow, about 40 degrees below zero. I took the parcel. It weighed 8 kg. I carried it on my back through the woods. Well, what can I say? I said what I know, Maybe I forgot something.

Can you say something? I forgot something, of course, I was a little girl. I don’t remember everything, but now I’m writing, here’s a whole notebook. I’m writing and writing… So what I’m about to say is… “Ural Mountains”

I wrote the poem “Ural Mountains”

I had to live in the Urals,
Work on the ground, work hard.
I was starving,
But survived.
I had to live in the Urals,
Hunger and cold to survive.
So my youth is over.
Our fathers and brothers defended our homeland,
They didn’t spare their lives, they died.
They went to battle for the Motherland,
and they died for the Motherland.
Separated the old and the young from their homeland,
Stalin destroyed families.
He tore the roots of the people out of their homeland,
Exiled without pity and in cold blood.
My children and old men.
They put us in the cars.
All the hearths were destroyed,
And everyone was crying.
We were separated from our Homeland,
Separated from home,
Separated from my mother, my father,
from the graves of our ancestors.
We suffered,
We’ve lost thousands of lives.
It’s been days and years
The tears of the Crimean Tatars have not dried up.
They hurried to declare,
Write in the papers,
And without shame
They were saying: “There is no such nation on this Earth!»
But those speakers are not alive anymore,
But the nation is alive.
Thank you, Gorbachev,
The people are not forgotten.
He said: “There are such nation,
and there is a history of the Crimean Khanate».