Saide Arifova

Who is Saide Arifova?

Saide Arifova was a Crimean Tatar woman from Bakhchisaray, Crimea, Ukraine who saved more than 88 Crimean Jews in 1942–1943, for which she was honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

During the Nazi occupation of Crimea during World War II, she worked as a kindergarten director and managed to forge documents, sourcing Jewish children's ethnicity. She also managed to conceal children from Kerch orphanage, who were prepared to be sent to Germany for inhuman medical experimentation. Nazis considered her suspect and tortured her.

Despite her heroism during the occupation and the Holocaust, she was deported to Uzbek SSR during Sürgün, as the Crimean Tatars were founded collectively guilty of collaborationism. Only after Perestroika did she return to Crimea.