IN MEMORIAM

23 February 1944 more than half a million people from Chechnya and Ingushetia were deported from their homes to Kazakhstan and Siberia, by order of Stalin and Beria. They had been falsely accused of collaborating with the Nazis. More than 150,000 were killed outright or died on a ten-day train ride in cattle cars or at their destinations, where nothing was provided for them. Seven hundred died in one aul (village) when they were forced into a barn and the barn was set afire.

In 1957-59 many of the survivors returned to their homes after Stalin was denounced by Khrushchev. Unfortunately for the Ingush, much of their land had been given to other republics and other people were living in their homes.

In 2004 the European Parliament described the deportation as genocide.