The Crimean Tatars deportation is the forced eviction of the Crimean Tatar people outside the Crimean Autonomous Republic, which was carried out on May 18-20, 1944. It was "justified" by the Soviet government as a punishment for the "collaboration" of the Crimean Tatars. According to the decree of the USSR State Defense Committee, issued on May 11, 1944, the entire Crimean Tatar population was to be deported to special settlements. According to official figures, 183 155 people were evicted from their homes in just a few days. Most of them were evicted to Uzbekistan. Smaller groups - to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, the Mari Autonomous Republic, the Urals and the Kostroma region. In the period 1944-1945, 15-25% (according to official figures) and up to 46% of deportees (according to the Crimean Tatar movement activists) died of starvation and disease. Massive return to their Homeland became possible only after 1989.

In the Museum, as part of the exhibition "Tragedies of the 20th century. There is not anyone other's pain", the first permanent exhibition in Ukraine dedicated to the deportation of Crimean Tatars and other Crimean peoples opened in 2015. The most valuable exhibits of this exhibition are photographs and documents of the deported family. Adzimelek Kurdaeva was born in Korbek village of the Alushta district in 1906. She worked as a nurse. On June 29, 1941, she was mobilized as a health worker. Her daughter Alie Ablaeva, who was 9 years old, stayed with her aunt. Adzimelek Kurdaeva worked as a surgical nurse in a front-line hospital. In the autumn, it was completely destroyed as a result of the bombing by Nazi forces. The survivors, among whom was Adzimelek, were surrounded. She was rescued by local residents who helped to find civilian clothes. She survived the Nazi occupation with her daughter in Simferopol. Adzimelek's elder brother Mustafa Kurdaev was shot by the Nazis for participating in the partisan movement.

On May 18, 1944, Adzimelek Kurdaeva, like all Crimean Tatars, was deported from Crimea. First, she was in the Urals, in the town of Staraya Lyalya. She worked on a timber rafting, later she managed to get a job by profession. Adzimelek's other relatives were deported to various deportation places, and they did not have any information about finding each other. Only in the late 1940s, almost all members of the large family were able to reunite in the Uzbek SSR. This was made possible thanks to the efforts of Kurdaeva's nephew, who at the end of World War II was demobilized and returned to Simferopol and did not find any relatives there. By his many requests and statements, he managed to find and gather relatives in Uzbekistan.

Adzimelek Kurdaeva and her daughter devoted their lives to medicine. They returned to Crimea in the early 1990s.

The Museum's library offers to get acquainted with such publications about the Crimean Tatars deportation and the Crimean Tatar national movement:

• Bazhan O. G., Bazhan O. V. Crimea in the conditions of socio-political transformations (1940-2015). Collection of documents and materials. Kyiv: The Klio Publishing House, LLC, 2016. 1092 p.
• Bekirova G. "Special settlers are not provided with clothing and shoes, they make the impression of ragged people, and yet many of them wear orders and medals on their chests..." Interethnic consent: a common past - a common future. All-Ukrainian scientific and practical conference, January 18, 2002. 2002. P. 102-139.
• Bekirova G. Deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide. Modern discussions about World War II. Collection of scientific articles and reports of Ukrainian and foreign historians. 2012. P. 101-106.
• Musaeva S., Aliev A. Mustafa Jemilev. Indestructible. Kharkiv: Vivat, 2017. 272 p.
• The sixth process of Mustafa Jemilev. Materials of the investigation and the record of the trial. 1983-1984. Tashkent: Simferopol, 2001. 496 p.
  
  Dilfuza Hlushchenko