Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Crimean Tatars

I got another two pages on the cotton paper done today. I am making very good progress. I think I can get it sent off before I migrate to Arizona.

Today I wrote some on the Crimean Tatars. In a mere three days, the 18th, 19th and 20th of May 1944, the Soviet NKVD forcibly deported over 180,00 Crimean Tatars from their homes to special settlements in the Urals and Uzbekistan. At the time of the deportations, Uzbekistan was experiencing a full blown epidemic of malaria. The Crimean Tatars had no immunity to this disease. The Soviet Union had no stockpiles of anti-malarial drugs either for prophylactic or treatment purposes at this time. Internal Soviet reports make it clear that the regime knew that there was a malaria epidemic in Uzbekistan and that there were no anti-malarial drugs in the USSR or means to import them. Despite this fact they deported over 150,000 Crimean Tatars to malaria infested areas of Uzbekistan. Over 15% perished from this disease in less than a year.

I have grown tired of trying to fight with people who try and minimize these types of crimes because the victims were Muslims and not Jews and the perpetrators were mostly Russians and not Germans.

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