Georgiyevsk

The town of Georgiyevsk had beeen outside the tsarist Pale of Settlement and only 116 Jews, or less then one percent were among the residents of Georgiyevsk in 1939. Following the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Stavropol Kray District became a region for civilians, including many Jews, fleeing the western regions of the USSR. The number of Jews in the town then increased, reaching between 1,000 and 2,000 in the summer of 1942. Germans entered the town on August 14, 1942. Soon after the arrival of the Wehrmacht Einsatzkommando 12 established there its headquarters. Several murder operations took place in the town - the first on August 27, 1942. On August 25 the local Jews on the pretext of sending a less populated region to were ordered to appear at the German headquarters with their valuable possession. However, approximately 700 Jews who had assembled were brought by trucks to a sand quarry and shot to death. At the end of August the Germans killed 351 people, including a number of Jews, in an anti-tank trench near the village of Nezlobnaya, located 12 kilometers from Georgiyevsk. On September 8 and October 25, the Germans killed at a farm in the area a number of residents, 25 of whom were identified as Jewish. On September 19, 1942, the Germans killed number of Jews they found in the area in the place located between Georgiyevsk and the town of Mineralnye Vody. In the area of a glass factory, they killed also between 200 (according to German sources) and 500 people (according to Soviet sources). Among those victims were also Jews from Georgiyevsk. Another mass murder of 132, most of whom were Jews, was carried out in December 1942 on a former Machine-tractor Station (MTS). After the liberation of the town, several internal passports of Jews were found next to the murder pit at the MTS. The Red Army liberated Georgiyevsk on January 10, 1943.