Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

In May 1944 the Soviet government under Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population from Crimea to Central Asia, mostly to Uzbekistan, within a matter of days. The authorities accused the Crimean Tatars as a whole of collaboration with the German occupiers, although only some had collaborated and thousands of Crimean Tatars had served in the Red Army. People were loaded onto freight trains with little food and water, and many died on the journey and in the harsh conditions of the special settlements that followed; estimates of the death toll range from roughly a fifth to nearly half of the deportees. Return was forbidden until the late 1980s, when many families began to go home. The Ukrainian parliament recognized the deportation as genocide in 2015.

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