Murvet Ganieva: “A policeman lives in our house”

The house where Murvet Ganieva was born is still in Yalta. She even managed to visit it after the exile, but it already had other owners. And Murvet herself never moved home after all these years of exile. After all, her own [...]

Nadyr Aziyev: ‘We treated soldiers who later evicted us’

Nadyr Aziyev was born in 1935 in the village of Saraymen near Edy Kuyu in a family of teachers. ccording to the recollections of Nadir bey, the village of Saraymen was large: it had both a madrasa and an orphanage, and a plac [...]

Shevkiye Azizova: ‘We were told to marry soldiers so that we would not be evicted’

Shevkiye Azizova from the village of Arbat tells about the terrifying days of the war and horrible exile. Those events will remain etched in her memory for the rest of her life. On the day of the exile, her father was not at [...]

Lenure Belialova: ‘We were helped by an Uzbek who was one of the soldiers who deported us’.

Lenure Belialova’s father was the head of the collective farm in his village. When the Germans came to Crimea, he went into the forest and became a guerilla. Yet his family was not saved from exile. On that day, May 18, mothe [...]

Zeki-Bey: ‘Crimean Tatars were growing tobacco in the village of Kokkoz’.

The trials in the life of Zeki-bey and his family began long before the deportation. First, they were forced to resettle from their native village Yancu (now Putylivka), and in 1941 the war came to Crimea. On May 18, 1944, Ze [...]

Clara Azyzova: ’We were the last ones to be taken out’

The Soviet soldiers who knocked on the door of Klara Azizova's parents' house at 5 a.m. on May 18 knew that they were guerrillas. Nevertheless, they were not able to escape a monstrously unjust deportation. They were only all [...]

Adile Rustemova: ‘The road to exile took 18 days’

Adile Rustemova was born in 1931 in the village of Kokkoz. She was the fourth child in a family of seven children. Adile khanum remembers the occupation of the Crimea peninsula by German troops, as well as the exile by Soviet [...]

Najiye Fazylova’s Stolen Childhood

At the age of 12, she was deprived of her Motherland and sent far off to Uzbekistan. Her life path is full of losses: the war took her older brother, and in the early years of the exile she lost her parents and sister. Today [...]