Zelenchukskaya

The Zelenchuksky County was part of the Karachay-Cherkessia Autonomous District, which had lain outside the Pale of Settlement before the Russian Revolution. Therefore, no Jews lived in this area prior to World War II.

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 Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Belarus.

With the beginning of the German summer offensive in late June 1942, the Wehrmacht launched its invasion of the North Caucasus, occupying Zelenchukskaya in August 1942. Subsequently, the German mobile killing squads entered the village, arrested the Jewish evacuees, and imprisoned them at the local collective farms. On December 7, 1942, German soldiers and local policemen shot 180 Jewish evacuees at a pit north of the village.

The Red Army liberated Zelenchukskaya in January 1943.