Pyatigorsk

Jews apparently first settled in Pyatigorsk in the mid-19th century. In 1877 the Jewish population of the city was 469 or 3.6 percent of the total. During the period of the civil war Mountain Jews were expelled from their villages as the result of pogroms and fled to Pyatigorsk. In 1926 the city had 1,500 Jews (including 52 Mountain Jews), who comprised 2.8 percent of the total population. Pyatogorsk was occupied by German troops on August 9, 1942. 1,500 Jews from Pyatigorsk, together with Jews who had escaped there from Ukraine and other places in 1941, were murdered on September 10, 1942, at the glass factory in Mineralnyye Vody. The remaining Jews from Pyatigorsk, as well as from nearby villages, were either shot to death or gassed in a number of murder operations between October and late December 1942 at the different murder sites in the vicinity of the city. According to some sources some Jewish families were murdered later, in early January 1943 Pyatigorsk was liberated by the Red Army on January 11, 1943.