Grigoropolisskaya

In 1939, the village of Grigoropolisskaya and the Novoalexandrovsky County were part of the Ordzhonikidze District, which had lain outside the Pale of Settlement prior to the Russian Revolution. Thus, there were only four Jews living in Grigoropolisskaya prior to the Second World War. 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 Soviet Ukraine 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 Grigoropolisskaya in early August 1942. On October 13, 1942, the German military, the auxiliary police, and the local police force killed 150 people, most of them Jews, in a pit at the Pravda collective farm. The Red Army liberated Grigoropolisskaya in late January 1943.