2016-05-19 Thu

On 12th May, two new coins were issued by the National Bank of Ukraine to mark the anniversary of the forced deportation of Crimean Tartars during the Second World War. Josef Stalin (1878 – 1953) had commanded this action to punish the community for its alleged collaborations with the Nazi regime in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine, from 1942 to 1943.

The Crimean Tartar community basically belonged to a Turkic tribe who later migrated to the Crimean peninsula from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Immediately after Crimea found freedom, on 18th May, 1944, the U.S.S.R. forcibly asked the remaining population of the Tartar community from Crimea to quit the country. More than 230,000 people with many families were relocated to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Finally, the complete ethnic group was removed. After the deportation, more than 100,000 died from starvation or disease. On November 12, 2015, the Ukrainian parliament declared May 18th as a day to remember these victims and condemn this inhuman event.

The obverse depicts a Tartar family behind the barbed wire window of the boxed train cars used during the deportation. Other inscriptions include ‘18/05/1944’ and ‘QIRIMTATAR HALQININ GENOTSIDI’ which translates to “the genocide of the krymsko-tatarski people.”

The reverse features the train wheels and track, the map of Crimean peninsula and Ukrainian shore along with inscriptions ‘Ukrainian National Bank’ and the coin’s denomination.