Mr. Speaker, today, May 18, we commemorate the 1944 forced deportation campaign conducted against Ukraine's indigenous Crimean Tatars under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
There are still people alive today who remember the day when the entire population of Tatars was given 30 minutes' notice to leave. Most would never see their homes again. There were 240,000 who were deported, and nearly 100,000 of the exiled men, women, and children loaded onto cattle cars died en route or shortly after their arrival in the Urals, Siberia, and central Asia.
Ukraine's Crimean Tatars have been returning to their homeland over the decades. However, today we should recall this tragic history and think of them currently experiencing the heavy hand of Russian occupation, exile, and worse.