The following quotation comes from Tenzile Ibraimova, a Crimean Tatar woman who survived deportation to Uzbekistan and the harsh conditions of the special settlement regime. The testimony appeared in the Crimean Tatar Appeal to the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1966. This English language excerpt is taken from Amnesty International, trans., Chronicle of Current Events, no. 31, 17 May 1974 (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1975), pp. 140-141.
We were expelled from the village of Adzhiatmak in Fraidorf district on 18 May 1944. The expulsion took place very cruelly; at three o'clock in the morning, when the children were still asleep. Some soldiers came in and said that we should get ready and be out of the house in five minutes. We were not allowed to take with us either possessions or food. They treated us so roughly that we thought they were taking us to be shot...My husband was fighting at the front; I was alone with three children.
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