Abduramanov was deployed to fight in the German-Soviet war shortly after the start of Operation Barbarossa ; he had previously fought in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol . He saw action in the Battle of Stalingrad before advancing on to Byelorussia . During the fighting in Novye Tereshkovichi , Gomel Region in 1943 he was one of the seventeen sappers tasked with building a bridge across the icy Sozh river for advancing Red Army troops . The crossing lasted nine hours , and only three of the sappers survived . The sappers had stayed in the ice water the entire time and continued to lay support beams even under heavy enemy artillery and machine-gun fire . For his resilience and bravery at the Sozh crossing he was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union by decree of the Supreme Soviet on 15 January 1944 . He had been previously recognized for his bravery in the Sev and Desna crossings . After the end of the war , Abduramanov was forcibly deported to Uzbekistan solely on the grounds of his Crimean Tatar ethnicity , despite having been a decorated veteran of the Red Army . His entire family was subject to the deportation in 1944 , during which his grandmother died . After the death of Stalin the Crimean Tatars were not permitted to return to their homeland , despite other exiled groups being given the right to return in the Khrushchev era . He never returned to his native Crimea despite being individually given permission to return since he would not be allowed to bring his whole family . As an active member of the Crimean Tatar rights movement he was frequently harassed by the KGB . After several years of poor health he died in the city of Navoiy in 1991
forcibly deported to Uzbekistan
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
Uzeir Abduramanov