Ust Labinskaya

The town of Ust Labinskaya lay outside the Pale of Settlement prior to the Russian Revolution. For this reason, there were no Jews living the town, even in the Soviet period. However, in the aftermath of the German invasion of the USSR, a large number of Soviet civilians, including many Jews, were evacuated, or fled, to the Krasnodar Kray District. German forces occupied the town on August 8, 1942. The occupiers ordered all the residents to be registered, and they immediately set up an auxiliary police force. Under the occupation, the Jews who had found refuge in Ust Labinskaya had to perform forced labor in agriculture and road construction. On December 15, 1942, the Germans and the local policemen ordered the Jews to show up at the local police station. They were then shot to death at the Ust Labinskaya Fortress (since renamed the Aleksandrovskaya Fortress). On that day, the Germans murdered more than 400 residents of Ust Labinskaya, 383 of whom were Jewish. The Red Army liberated Ust Labinskaya in January 1943.