Tbilisskaya

Since the town of Tbilisskaya had lain outside the Pale of Settlement in pre-Revolutionary Russia, no Jews lived there. However, following the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the Tbilissky County came to house a large number of civilian evacuees, including many Jews. German troops occupied the town on August 8, 1942. Immediately after the onset of the occupation, the German military began to look for Jews in Tbilisskaya and the surrounding villages. According to Soviet documents, the Jews were killed in two separate operations: in the Kuban River in Tbilisskaya, and in an anti-tank trench near the village of Vannovka. The Germans murdered a total of 213 Jews in these two operations, which took place in August 1942. The Red Army liberated Tbilisskaya on January 29, 1943.