Yuri Gempel, the head of the Vidergeburt Republican Society of Crimean Germans, said on Monday after mourning at the 73rd anniversary of deportation of Crimean Germans to Simferopol that over a thousand German families deported from the peninsula in the 1940s wanted to return. 400 of them currently live in Germany, RIA Novosti reports.
Their return started in the early 1990s but the Ukrainian government could not provide enough support for the process. About 9,000 Germans lived in Crimea at that time, many started moving to Germany.
The Russian president’s decree on rehabilitation of Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German peoples and state support for their development gave Germans a chance to return.
According to the latest census, 2,500 Germans live in Crimea.
About 20 nationalities were deported from Crimea during the Great Patriotic War due to suspicions or accusations of treachery. Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians and Germans suffered from deportation the most.
