Crimean Tatars living in Baku have visited the Alley of Martyrs, Report informs.
The visit is timed to the Day of Remembrance of the victims of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars on May 18, 1944.
“Today is a black date in the memory of every Tatar,” said Elvina Murzaeva, who lives in Baku. “Every year, part of the Crimean Tatars living here gather on the Alley of Martyrs, because those who died for the freedom of Azerbaijan are martyrs, just like those who died during the deportation in 1944.”
About 200,000 Crimean Tatars were deported at that time. “There were mostly old people, children and women, because the men were all at the front. Some 46% of the deportees died. The men who returned from the front were looking for their families in the places of deportation for a long time. My grandparents were also deported, I myself was born in Uzbekistan,” said Murzaeva.
One of the witnesses of those events is a resident of Baku Mammad Ibrahimov. At the time of his deportation from the Crimea in 1944, he was only two years old.
Ibrahimov and his parents were expelled from the Crimea to Uzbekistan. In 1975 he moved to Baku and worked at various institutes of the Academy of Sciences.
“I remember what the bombings were like in those years, we lived in dugouts right on the front line. My parents told me that when bombs were thrown and planes flew, I shouted “Explosions! Explosions!... And in the train cars, when we were transported in trains, there were a lot of diseases, I had rickets, there were sores all over my body,” he recalls the events of those days.