total over 22,000 locals�mostly Jews, Russians, Krymchaks, and Gypsies. On one occasion, starting December 9, 1941, the Einsatzgruppen D under Otto Ohlendorf's command killed an estimated 14,300 Simferopol residents, most of them being Jews.
In April 1944, the Red Army liberated Simferopol. On 18 May 1944 the Crimean Tatar population of the city along with the whole Crimean Tatar nation of Crimea (except the families of the Red Army soldiers) was forcibly deported to Central Asia in a form of collective punishment. On 26 April 1954 Simferopol, together with the rest of the Crimean Oblast, was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
A minor planet 2141 Simferopol discovered in 1970 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova is named after the city.
After Ukrainian independence
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Simferopol became the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine. Today, the city has a population of 340,600 (2006) most of whom are ethnic Russians, with the rest being Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar minorities.
After the Crimean Tatars were allowed to return from exile in the 1990s, several new Crimean Tatar suburbs were constructed, as many more Tatars returned to the city compared to number of exiled in 1944. Land ownership between the current residents and returning Crimean Tatars is a major area of conflict today with the Tatars requesting the return of lands seized after their deportation
