https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...r-Two.html
A woman who claims to be the oldest person in the world has told of the brutality of her deportation into Soviet internal exile by tyrant Stalin during World War Two.
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.
She married late when a man was chosen for her from another village.
'I didn't know him at all,' she said.
'But then I started to love him.
'What else could I do if I got married? I had to endure.
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Kinda puts the shitty trivialities of my day to day life in perspective. I'm grateful that I didn't suffer any crazy traumatic events at a young age. I didn't have a perfect family and lost touch with my father in adult age but nothing like what this lady has experienced. She survived all three of her children and all other friends/relatives of her age.
I remember reading that one of the worst things about getting old is seeing all of your friends and people who knew you pass away. With nobody to share your memories with you start to fade away as the younger generation takes over and builds their own memories. Maybe such is the circle of life.
A woman who claims to be the oldest person in the world has told of the brutality of her deportation into Soviet internal exile by tyrant Stalin during World War Two.
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.
She married late when a man was chosen for her from another village.
'I didn't know him at all,' she said.
'But then I started to love him.
'What else could I do if I got married? I had to endure.
---
Kinda puts the shitty trivialities of my day to day life in perspective. I'm grateful that I didn't suffer any crazy traumatic events at a young age. I didn't have a perfect family and lost touch with my father in adult age but nothing like what this lady has experienced. She survived all three of her children and all other friends/relatives of her age.
I remember reading that one of the worst things about getting old is seeing all of your friends and people who knew you pass away. With nobody to share your memories with you start to fade away as the younger generation takes over and builds their own memories. Maybe such is the circle of life.