On this day in 1944, at around 5 am, the Soviet authorities began an operation to evict the Crimean Tatars from the Crimean peninsula, which was carried out with the use of violence. In most cases, the Crimean Tatars were not explained what was happening, where exactly they were being taken, and were given no more than 15 minutes to gather. The Crimean Tatars left their homes unprepared for the long and exhausting journey, let alone settling in a foreign land. A total of 47,885 families were deported. This number did not include almost 6,000 Crimean Tatars imprisoned in the Gulag directly during the deportation.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatar people is the culmination of the colonialist policy of the Russian Federation (at that time the RSFSR) towards the Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Ukraine, which was initiated by the Russian Empire and continues to this day.
Materials on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People: