older iCloud photos deleted without permission

Why is iCloud deleting any stored photos that are older than nine years? Or is there a way to recover them? For many years now I have been paying monthly for generous iCloud storage for exactly the purpose of protecting these older images, yet iCloud erases important historical documents and memories without asking my permission?? Could you have warned me when I took out the icloud storage subscription that this would happen? Because if I'd known I would have backed them up old-school on a memory stick. Why are you playing God with peoples' lives and memories, Apple?