From 18 – 20 May 1944 he was permitted to take a three-day vacation from combat to visit his family in Alupka , not long after the Soviets retook control of Crimea . During the visit , he witnessed the deportation of his people and learned his brother Imran was wanted by the NKVD . While he had been risking life and limb to expel German invaders from Crimea , Imran had been suspected of joining the German auxiliary police . After the Soviets retook Crimea , Imran was tried and sentenced by a military tribunal in 1946 for his activities as a guard at a concentration camp . Leaflets describing the feats of Amet-khan Sultan against the Germans had been airdropped over Crimea while it was occupied by the Germans , resulting in the Gestapo finding the leaflets and tracking down his parents for execution . The only thing that saved his parents from being murdered by the Gestapo was Imran 's presence in the Schutzmannschaft . During the deportation an NKVD officer who entered the household attempted to force Amet-khan and his parents to leave Crimea , but they fought and a struggle ensued ; after Amet-khan identified himself as a Hero of the Soviet Union to the NKVD officer who had attacked him , and his status as a war hero was confirmed by Hero of the Soviet Union , Pavel Golovachev who was present at the scene . The NKVD officer began questioning him about his ethnic background , decided that Amet-khan was technically Dagestani , and said that there was an order to deport the Crimean Tatar people . The NKVD continued to deport the Crimean Tatar people , and his mother , who was a Tatar , was sent to a transportation point , but after other members of the Air Force who were friends of Amet-khan made it clear to the NKVD that she and the rest of her immediate family were exempt from deportation because she was married to a Lak and hence no longer considered a Crimean Tatar in the eyes of the law , she and her husband were not sent to Uzbekistan ; Imran was sentenced in 1946 but the rest of Amet-khan 's immediate family was not subject to the collective punishment of the deportation in its entirety . They still had to leave Crimea for the remainder of the war , but they were given more time to pack and drove to Dagestan instead of Uzbekistan
deportation of his people
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
Amet-khan Sultan