Coming Back--English video on Crimean Tartar deportation and return

On June 5^th, the well-known Arabic news service Al Jazeera aired Coming Back, an in depth program on the deportation and subsequent return of the Crimean Tatars to Crimea. Produced by Turkish filmmaker Ahmet Seven, this 45-minute program relies on personal interviews to tell the story of the devastating deportation of the Crimean Tatars on May 18, 1944, and the conditions they faced on their return to the peninsula fifty years later.

A special feature of the film is the little known story of the village of Arabat on the Asov Sea in northeastern Crimea. Two hundred Crimean Tatars lived in this village at the time of deportation, mostly women, children, and old people, as, like in all Crimean Tatar communities, the men were away serving in the Soviet army. A bureaucratic oversight resulted in the villagers being bypassed in the massive deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population that took place on May 18^th. The story goes that several weeks later when Stalin was arranging a ceremony to mark the successful execution of the deportation plan, the Soviet Army officer in charge of the deportation heard of the Crimean Tatar villagers still remaining in Arabat. Wanting to show a 100% percent successful campaign, he ordered the villagers to be herded onto barges, and the barges taken out to sea and sunk. There were no survivors.

Though there is no actual proof of this horrendous crime, it is widely accepted as true across Crimea. In the Coming Back video, the filmmaker tells this story and documents the attempts to find evidence to authenticate it. 

Coming Back is narrated in English, and all interviews are subtitled in English. It is, as far as I know, the only English language documentary about the tragic story of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and their return to their homeland.  Though I was disappointed to see that the film only painted a bleak picture of current Crimean Tatar life in Crimea and overlooked the many vibrant aspects of Crimean Tatar society, I do think it is a very important attempt at educating the broader world of a  little known piece of history.

You can find a link to the video on the sidebar. Please take a few minutes to watch this story of the Crimean Tatar people.

With my cousin Sara Paretsky in Istanbul

I was fortunate enough to spend the first weekend in September in the amazing city of Istanbul. I had travelled there to meet my cousin Sara Paretsky. Sara is a well-known mystery writer in America.(www.saraparetsky.com). Her novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and recently into Turkish. She came to Istanbul to meet with her Turkish publishers and also for us to have a chance to spend some time together, something we were unable to do while I was in America.

With Sara in Hagia Sophia

We rented an apartment in the Galata district of old Istanbul. The historic Galata Tower was right outside our door, and we had a wonderful time exploring the district and the Sultanahmet area—the location of the famous Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace. We also had dinner with Inci Bowman (www.iccrimea.org) in the lovely garden restaurant of the Hotel Yesil Ev, behind the Blue Mosque. It was a special treat while we were there to hear the beautiful voices of the famous (according to the waiter) muzzeins on two different minarets of the mosque, calling back and forth the ezan (call to prayer).

Sara at her publisher with a copy of Hardball, translated into Turkish

On the last day of our visit, we traveled across the Bosphorus strait to the Asian side--less like a tourist city and more the heart of where Istanbul citizens live and work. The delightful staff of Artemis, Sara’s Turkish publisher, welcomed us to their office where a stack of Sara’s hot-off-the-press 13th V.I. Warshawski novel, Hardball, translated into Turkish, was awaiting her autograph.

Ferry building on the Bosphorus where we met for tea

Later in the afternoon, we also had a chance to meet with Isenbike Togan. I had become acquainted with Isen when she came to Simferopol for an international conference celebrating the work of her father, the famous Turkologist Ahmet-Zaki Validi Togan (see Nov. 9, 2010 blog post). We have since been in touch via email, and she continued to extend her invitation to visit Istanbul. As it turned out, her daughter who lives in America was also visiting and so Isen’s time was limited, but it meant we had the opportunity to meet Sara, a lovely and talented young woman. 

From left: Isen's daughter Sara, Sara Paretsky, Barbara Wieser, Isenbike Togan

We sat in a café in a historic building overlooking the dock where the ferry boats from the European side of Istanbul arrive and depart. Sharing a cup of tea with companions whose backgrounds span both America and Turkey while looking out on the boat traffic crisscrossing this waterway connecting the continents of Europe and Asia, was a perfect ending to a wonderful three days in Istanbul with my beloved cousin Sara.

I return to Crimea

The cool weather of autumn has returned to Crimea and so have I. I spent six weeks in America this summer, visiting friends and family, and wrapping up my life there, though in anticipation of what, I am not sure, but certainly a different life than the one I had before the Peace Corps brought me to Crimea.

One of my “wrapping up” projects in America was to sell my home and most of my belongings. I decided to have a fundraising garage sale and donate the proceeds to the library’s Kindness Campaign (see blog post March 16, 2012). I sent out an email to all my friends and acquaintances and to the mailing list of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers organization in Minnesota. It was a great success—a chance to see many of the people in my life and to talk with different RPCV’s from Minnesota. Many people were generous with their purchases when they understood that all the money was going to support my Peace Corps project.  When I returned to Crimea, I was able to present the library with $1100, the proceeds from the sale.

The nephew of Ukraine Peace Corps Director and I pose in front of my house with the sign advertsing my garage sale.

Shortly after my return to Crimea, I had the opportunity to meet with Inci Bowman from the International Committee for Crimea (ICCrimea.org) who was in Simferopol for a conference. We spent an enjoyable two hours together, discussing the possible collaborations between ICC and the library and other Crimean Tatar organizations in Simferopol. Later, I also met with her in Istanbul where I traveled to see my cousin (see next blog post).

I also had the opportunity to attend a seminar organized by the Information Resource Center of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine at the Honchar Library in Kherson, a city of about 350,000 six hours north of here.  The seminar was titled “Providing Library Access to the Visually Impaired and Blind: Current Capabilities and Experience.”  It was attended by library directors from across Ukraine along with representatives from organizations for the blind and companies providing adaptive equipment and software.  The Gasprinskiy Library was invited to make a presentation about our current Peace Corps sponsored project, “Improving the Lives of the Visually Impaired in Crimea,” which was well received.

Seminar participants in front of the Honchar Library.

Though the seminar was conducted mostly in Ukrainian, and therefore I understood very little, I still appreciated the opportunity to meet with librarians in Ukraine and also to see what technologies are now available to increase the accessibility of visually impaired people to the internet and the other resources of a library. I also met with the Peace Corps Volunteers located in Kherson and learned of their various projects.

The morning after my return I flew to Istanbul to meet with my cousin, American writer Sara Paretsky. I will tell about our adventures in my next post.

MNRPVC project begins

Work on the project funded by a grant from the Minnesota Returned Peace Corps Volunteers organization (MNRPVC) is underway.  The MNRPCV grant will allow the library to bind its collections of newspapers into permanent folders in order to preserve them and make them more accessible to library users. The library was particularly concerned about the deterioration of the Lenin Banner, the only Crimean Tatar language newspaper published when the Crimean Tatars were in exile in Uzbekistan.  The library has one of the few existing complete collections of the newspaper. See the May 11^th post for more information.

Alime from the Acquisitions Dept. shows the cards printed on the new printer.

The Acquisitions Department purchased a small printer, allowing them to print the necessary annotation and labeling. The next step was to sort the newspapers into volumes for binding. Many of the library staff gathered on the front veranda and began the work of getting the newspapers out of storage and arranging them by date and volume.  Eventually the stacks of newspapers will be taken to a bindery area where they will be hand bound into volumes.

Lenur starts pulling out the stacks of old newspapers.

Sorting through the newspapers on the library's veranda.

Gulnara Yagyaeva, Director of the library.

Off to America!

In just a couple of days, I am off to America for six weeks, visiting my friends and family. I also will be holding a garage sale while I am there to raise funds for the library’s “Kindness Campaign” (March 16^th blog post). If any of you happen to live in the Twin Cities, Minnesota area, please stop by. Here’s the info:

Saturday, July 14^th

10am – 5pm

3910 16^th Ave. S. Minneapolis

I will try to post some pictures.

19th International Library Conference in Sukak

Last week was the 19th International Library Conference in Sudak. Sponsored by the National Library of Russia and held at a beautiful conference center in the Crimean Black Sea resort town of Sudak, this 5-day long conference attracts participants from all over the world, including the United States, Canada, and England. Professional translation is available in several languages, including English, insuring full access to conference workshops and events for all participants.

Since the conference began nineteen years ago, the Gasprinskiy Library has hosted an annual seminar for conference participants from the Turkic-speaking countries. This year the theme of the seminar was "The organization and maintenance of rare and valuable document collections in the national libraries."

A representative from the Republic of Azerbaijan spoke on the necessity for information security in libraries. Representatives from the national libraries of Tartarstan and Kazakhstan described the collections of rare books and manuscripts in their libraries.

Representatives from the Gasprinskiy Library also contributed to the seminar.  Medine Alimova, head of the Archives Department, presented the archival collection program at our library which has become the main repository for the archives of famous Crimean Tatar artists, writers, and political leaders. Our information technology specialist, Lilya Emirova, talked about book digitization and its importance in preserving the literary heritage of the Crimean Tatars.

Medine Alimova from the Archives Department

I also gave a presentation about my work at the library, particularly the acquisition of book donations for the library and the steps I take in that process.

I have a translator!

More than fifty representatives of Turkic-speaking countries attended the seminar. There was much discussion at the end about proposals for future seminars and also about the possibility of creating an organization of libraries from Turkic-speaking countries, an idea which had been proposed before, but this year seemed to be finally taking hold. 

Participants wearing their shawls, a souvenir gift from the library.

Refat Kurtiev Archives Donated to the Library

Refat Kurtiev, 1925 - 2012

On May 15^th, the Gasprinskiy Library hosted an event in the Reading Hall celebrating the transfer to the library of the books, manuscripts and documents of famous Crimean Tatar historian, ethnographer and activist, Refat Kurtiev.

Refat Kurtiev was born in 1925 in Crimea. He received a military education and was a special officer in the Soviet army. In 1944 when his family was deported from Crimea, he was away fighting in the war. It wasn’t until 1951 that he was able to find his parents, “living in a barn in appalling conditions.” He described the conditions of deportation in his book, Life in the Deportation: How it was- 1944-1956.

In Uzbekistan he became an activist in the Crimean Tatar National Movement, resulting in his being fired from the Soviet army. He returned to Crimea in 1985 and began to actively study and write about the history of the Crimean Tatar people. Refat Kurtiev was a delegate to the II, III and IV Kurultay (Congress) of the Crimean Tatar people and a member of the Audit Commission of the Kurultay from 1996 to 2007. Throughout his life, Refat Kurtiev continued to play an active role as a leader of the Crimean Tatar people to revive their native language, culture, and religion, and served as a “demanding and thoughtful” mentor to many young people who entered the national movement in Crimea.  He died at the age of 87 on March 3, 2012.

Refat Kurtiev during interview with library methodologist

The library event opened with a showing of a recent interview with Refat Kurtiev by library methodologist Elmaz Emerova, taken only a few weeks before his death. His widow and lifelong companion, Leila Belyalova, spoke of his passion for books and that "wherever he was, he always brought home a bag of books, frequently spending his pension on the purchase of new publications."  His entire collection of 1575 books was donated to the Gasprinskiy Library.

Library Director Gulnara Yagaeva opened the event.

Many Crimean Tatar famous figures attended the event and gave tribute to this beloved Crimean Tatar leader. Vadim Erinyak, First Deputy Minister of Culture of AR Crimea, said “This is a momentous event for all of us…Refat Kurtiev is a man who did much for his people…unfortunately he is no longer with us but his work will live on.”

First Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, spoke of the bequeathment of Refat Kurtiev’s personal library as “a great service for scholars and historians and for the younger generation to be aware of the difference he made during his lifetime.”

Other public figures  who attended the event and paid tribute to Renat Kurtiev were:  Aziz Abdullaev, Vice Chairman on the AR Crimea Council of Ministers; Remzi Ilyasov, AR Crimea Verkhovna Rada Deputy and  Chairman of the Standing Committee on International Relations and the Problems of Deportees; Eden Dudakov, Chairman of the National Committee for Relations between Peoples of Crimea; Safura Kadzhametova, AR Crimea Verkhovna Rada Deputy; and Safinar Dzhemilev, Chairman of the League of Crimean Tatar Women.

Aziz Abdullaev assists Kurtiev's widow, Leila Belyalova.

Following the speeches, a special ribbon cutting ceremony was held to officially open the library collection of Kurtiev’s books and manuscripts.

Three days after this event at the library, on May 18^th, was the annual Day of Memory of the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars. In his memoir published in 2007, Refat Kurtiev spoke of this day: “I always go to this rally, and I believe that such events bind together our people. And I want to say again, we are not ethnic minorities…we are the people of Crimea.”

The library display of Kurtiev books and momentos.

(Information for this blog came from the Gasprinskiy Library website and the QHA news service.)

The Library receives a MNRPVC grant!

Last week, the library received the wonderful news that they had been awarded a grant from the Minnesota Returned Peace Corps Volunteer organization (mnrpcv.org). MNRPVC gives small grants of up to $1000 to support the projects of Peace Corps Volunteers from Minnesota. As a 20-year resident of Minneapolis, I was happy to hear of this program and eager to apply.

Alime and Nadjie from the Acquistions Department sort through the copies of Lenin Banner.

A copy of Lenin Banner showing the deteriorating condition.

Nadjie and I look at a bound copy with Elvira from the Reading Hall.

In this project funded by the MNRPVC grant, the Gasprinskiy Library will continue their work of preserving historical documents about Crimean Tatar culture. The MNRPVC grant will especially help the preservation of the originals of Crimean Tatar language newspapers in the library collection. In particular, the library is concerned with the deterioration of the newspaper, Lenin Banner (a name which allowed the newspaper to be published with minimum scrutiny by the authorities). Published in the Crimean Tatar language in Uzbekistan during the Crimean Tatar exile, Lenin Banner is one of the most important documents to give a detailed description of the daily life of Crimean Tatar people in Uzbekistan, and thus is an invaluable resource in understanding this period in Crimean Tatar history. The Gasprinskiy Library possesses one of the few complete collections of the Lenin Banner, but because of the lack of funding to properly bind and protect the newspapers, the collection is deteriorating. Funds from a MNRPCV grant will allow the library to purchase the materials necessary to bind the newspapers into volumes that will lessen their deterioration and make them more usable for library patrons.  Funds from the grant will also allow the library to purchase a small printer capable of printing the necessary labeling and annotation of the newspapers.

We are very grateful to the Board of Directors and grant review committee of the MNRPVC for recognizing the importance of the work of the Gasprinskiy Library in preserving the cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatar people and agreeing to support that work with their MNRPVC Grants Program.