J. Otto Pohl writes about the deportations of the Crimean Tatars, which took place 62 years ago: “In the early hours of 18 May 1944 some 32,000 members of the NKVD and NKGB began the systematic round up the entire Crimean Tatar population. These armed units went from house to house and rousted the still sleeping victims and informed them that the Stalin regime had decreed that they were traitors to the Soviet Motherland. This false and slanderous accusation carried a sentence of permanent banishment from Crimea to Uzbekistan as special settlers.”