Mikhaylovskoye

The Voroshilovskoye County was part of the Ordzhonikidze District, which had lain outside the Pale of Settlement prior to the Russian Revolution. Therefore, no Jews lived in this area before World War II. However, in the wake of the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the Ordzhonikidze District came to house a large number of civilian evacuees, including many Jews from Ukraine, Bessarabia (present-day Moldova), and Belarus. With the beginning of the German summer offensive in late June 1942, the Wehrmacht launched its invasion of the North Caucasus. German troops occupied Mikhaylovskoye in early August 1942. As soon as the village came under German control, the occupiers began to comb the area for Jews. They were aided in this task by the local police force. In mid-August, the German authorities arrested 13 Jews and shot them at the cemetery. Later, in September 1942, German soldiers and local policemen arrested 200 Jewish evacuees, killed them in gas vans, and buried the bodies at the nearby aerodrome. That same September, sixteen Jewish evacuees from the Russkiy farmstead were killed at the cemetery in Mikhaylovskoye. In November 1942, the Germans arrested another ninety Jewish evacuees. These, too, were killed in a gas van and buried in pits at the aerodrome. The Red Army liberated Mikhaylovskoye in late January 1942.