Goryachevodskaya

The Pyatigorsk County was part of the Ordzhonikidze Krai, which had lain outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement prior to the Russian Revolution; therefore, no Jews lived in this area before the Second World War. However, following the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the Ordzhonikidze Krai came to house a large number of civilian evacuees, including many Jews from Soviet 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, occupying Goryachevodskaya on August 9, 1942. As soon as the village was occupied, the German soldiers began to hunt for Jews and Communist Party members. With the help of the local police force, they arrested several Jews and Communists, imprisoning them in a POW camp in the area of the rural council of the village of Konstantinovskaya. On January 7, 1943, the Germans killed nine civilians, including five Jews, in a pit used for beetroot storage. The Red Army liberated Goryachevodskaya on January 11, 1943.