Adzhykadyr, Eishe and Jafar Kurtievs

The Crimea Tatars’ family of Kurtievs lived in the village of Eiman-Kuiu, not far from the city of Kerch, Crimea Peninsula. There were six children in their family. One week before the occupation the father of the family came back from war physically disabled. So his older son Jafar was helping him on the farm.

On November 12, 1941, Germans occupied these territories.  A few days after that, the unknown woman with two daughters came to the village. She asked Kurtievs to host her for having a rest. On the same evening, the woman told that her real name was Nina Bakhshy (or Tsypa Bakhshy). She also told them about their escape from Kerch after their house was destroyed during the German air raids and her husband was killed.

There were a lot of factories and plants in Kerch, so the city was under heavy bombardments. Due to the disastrous warfare actions city was almost totally destroyed. During the Nazi's occupation of the city more than 15 thousand citizens died, near 7 thousand of them were exterminated in the Baherivskyi trench.

There were rumors about the mass shootings, but Kurtievs decided to hide the Bakhshy family anyway. Kurtievs offered them to stay in their house. On the next day, Adzhykadyr told the head of the village, that his niece with her children is staying in his house.  Nina and her children openly stayed in Kurtievs house, but few weeks after local men start wooing. Also, in December of 1941 Germans posted headquarter in Kurtievs house. In order to avoid the danger, Nina decided to leave them and went to Kerch.  

On a cold rainy night, Jafar escorted Nina to the city. Her children stayed with Kurtievs until the first coming of the Soviet forces to Kerch on 30 of December 1941. Then Nina took them and they were evacuated to deeps of Soviet territories.

Then Germans occupied these territories again and Jafar was deported to Germany. In 1945 he was drafted into the Red Army but later deported to Uzbekistan. His family was deported to Middle Asia earlier – in May of 1944, together with all Crimea Tatars. Adzhykadyr and Eishe Kurtievs died there, but Jafar with his family returned to Crimea.

Bakhshy family returned to Kerch in 1945. They lived in Sevastopol after the end of the war. In 1977, after decades of searching Nina Bakhshy finally found her saviors and visited them in Samarkand.

On May 31, 1999, Adzhykadyr and Eishe Kurtievs were named “Righteous Among the Nations”. In 2001, their son Jafar also got this honorable award.