From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 2/19/2006 2:51 PM FEBRUARY 23 THE DEPORTATION DAY 23.02.2006 - 00:55:50
´´On the 23 February 1944 the Soviet Union set in motion the immediate deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush peoples to the steppes of Central Asia. In the depths of winter they were subjected to summary massacres and food shortages: it was a solution no less final or less brutal that the one being inflicted at the same time in Europe on the Jews. By conservative estimates half of the population died; the proportion that perished is probably much greater...´´
In early January 1944, tens of thousands of NKVD troops had started to arrive in the tiny mountainous republic, and fanned out to almost every settlement in the region.
On Red Army Day, February 23, in every town and village the men were summoned to meetings in the local Soviet building.
None suspected the calamity that was about to befall them; all came willingly.
Instead of commemorating the Day, the crowds were read the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which announced the complete deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people for treason and collaboration with the German enemy.
There was no evidence to support the claim of Chechen collaboration with the Nazis, which Stalin used as a pretext for disposing of a population that had continually refused to submit to Moscow's will.
In fact, the German advance had never reached Chechen soil, stopping just short of the border.
Moreover, Chechen soldiers had distinguished themselves in major actions throughout the Second World War, and been awarded a larger number of medals than was proportional to their numerical weight in the Soviet army.
However, in the end even soldiers were not spared: they were removed from their units and sent directly to the deportation camps in Central Asia.
In each town Studebaker trucks (provided by the United States to her wartime ally under lend-lease) rolled up to be loaded with Chechen men, women and children at gunpoint.
The trucks transported their cargoes to the nearest railway points, where the people were crammed into bare cattle-trucks with no food and utterly inadequate clothing.
Villagers from the remote mountain settlements were forced to march down to the plains.
Stragglers were shot, as was anyone who resisted.
Pregnant women, elderly people and others deemed to require too much effort to transport were killed.
One documented example of this is the instance of 700 women, children and old people who were burnt alive in the mountain village of Khaibakh.
However, massacres like this took place all over the republic, and the Auls (mountain villages) smouldered for weeks after.
Within days, with ruthless efficiency, an entire people had been erased from the land of their ancestors.
Overnight Chechnya and Ingushetia were entirely depopulated; cartographers were instructed to expunge all references to them from official maps, records and encyclopaedias.
On February 29 Lavrentii Beria, Chief of the NKVD Secret Police, wrote to Stalin:
"I report the results of the operation of resettling Chechens and Ingushi.
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