Staro Minskaya

Starominskaya County was outside the Pale of Settlement and also a former Cossack settlement. For those reasons no Jews were living there after 1917. However, with the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, Starominskaya County became a destination of civilian evacuation or flight and many of the refugees who arrived there were Jewish. German forces occupied the town on August 5, 1942. The German administration ordered the Jews to appear at the police station in three days. When the Jews turned up, they were taken by truck to a pit at the local brick factory, where 63 Jews were shot to death. The Red Army liberated Starominskaya on February 3, 1943.