World’s oldest woman, 129, remembers Stalin’s WW2 deportation
Koku Istambulova is 129 according to her Russian passport and pension papers which show her date of birth as 1 June 1889.
Now in lucid and deeply shocking testimony, she has spoken emotionally of the appalling day her native Chechen people were deported en masse by Stalin to the steppes of Kazakhstan almost 75 years ago and says the only happy day in all her years was when she entered a home built from her own hands back in her native land.
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