Spitsevka

In 1939, the village of Spitsevka and the Spitsevsky County were 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, following the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the Ordzhonikidze District came to house a large number of civilian evacuees, including numerous Jews from Soviet Ukraine, Bessarabia (present-day Moldova), and Belarus.

The Wehrmacht occupied Spitsevka in August 1942.

Upon entering the village, the Germans began to search for Jewish evacuees from all over the county. German soldiers and local police officers arrested 174 Jews and held them under guard in a school building on Krasnaya Street. On December 19, 1942, all of them were killed in a gas van.

The Red Army liberated Spitsevka in the last days of January 1943.