1/11
I am a Crimean
On this day (May 18) at 4 in the morning 79 years ago, the mass deportation of my people began.
In our family, only my grandfather and I were born in Crimea. I am from 1998. And he1940, but it is not accurate, because most of the documents were destroyed or lost
2/11
Grandfather did not even know the exact date of his birth. His older sisters and brothers said that he was born when the snows started to melt.
That's how they recorded it - on March 1, 1940.
Every year the family welcomed him, and every year he joked about it. An incredible person. Was
3/11
My ancestors are wealthy people. They owned large estates in the foothills of the Crimea (Sudak and Stariy Krym). They "transported" this experience and knowledge with them to Central Asia.
Imagine people whose meaning in life was farming and their native land. People from whom absolutely everything was taken away.
4/11
No money, no house, no documents, no food, no water, no future because of the stigma of traitors. Only silent prayers in freight cars, in which everyone was driven under the muzzles of machine guns.
And hope to return, not even to them, but to their children or grandchildren.
5/11
Yes, with hard work, they were able to make a living where they were not happy. They were able to do more, better, more powerfully.
The great-grandmother talked about how Tajiks and Uzbeks were afraid of the Crimeans, looked askance at them, because the "Soviet apparatus" described them as murderers and marauders with demonic horns
6/11
80-90s. The first news about the possibility of returning HOME is beginning to appear. Grandfather went first to "reconnaissance."
At that time, a civil war began in the city where my family lived. A mother with a one-month-old baby (my brother) runs to the plane under fire.
7/11
They are selling their estates in Central Asia as soon as possible.
Moving to Crimea. Inflation.
With the money for which they sold their entire farm, upon arriving in Crimea, they were able to buy a pack of butter.
This is the course: life for a pack of butter.
8/11
And all over again.
People who look askance at you and consider you traitors, no money, no house, no food, only prayers and a great hope that everything will be fine. Not even with them, but with their children and grandchildren.
9/11
There are not a few or dozens of such stories, there are hundreds of thousands of them. It affected EVERY family of the Crimea.
It is important to talk about it. This is important to remember. This is GENOCIDE of my people.
People died in freight cars. It was impossible to bury the bodies. How many? It is unknown.
10/11
Interestingly, in the city where I lived, the descendants of those "Soviet law enforcement officers" still live in old and already dilapidated Crimean Tatar houses.
While the Crimeans, who returned only in the 90s, built new ones. Better, more beautiful, more.
11/11
I remember how in my childhood, when I was first told about this tragedy, I sometimes imagined at night how strangers with weapons would break into my house, threaten and tell me to gather only documents and things for the first time.
And I, a small child, sobbed with fear imagining it.
