Eyewitness accounts of the Surgun

The International Committee for Crimea has recently added a new section called "Surgun Stories" to the page "Surgun: Deportation of Crimean Tatars (18 May 1944)." This section consists of six personal accounts of the deportation and exile of the Crimean Tatars as well as a story by a Turkish journalist of Crimean Tatar heritage about meeting returning deportation survivors in Crimea. Four of these narratives are by survivors of the deportation including one by a Crimean Tatar soldier in the Red Army. The series also includes an eyewitness account of the deportations by one of the NKVD soldiers involved in the operation and a short memoir by a Russian woman who lived in a mixed Crimean Tatar - Russian village and witnessed the events of 18 May 1944 first hand. I hope this section will be expanded to include more accounts by survivors in the near future.