Residents of Stavropol Territory commemorate Holocaust victims

The Stavropol Territory has held broad-scale commemoration events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the mass extermination of the Jewish population of the territory during the Nazi occupation in late August and early September of 1942.

The organizers of the actions are the Russian Jewish Congress, the Scientific and Educational Centre (SEC) "Holocaust" and the Jewish community of the Stavropol Territory.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed by Alexander Nesterov, the chief rabbi of Stavropol and Stavropol Territory, the community established contacts with the "Holocaust" Centre a few years ago.

According to Nesterov, this year Ilya Altman, the chairman of the SEC "Holocaust", offered the community of Stavropol to organize large-scale commemoration actions. "The Jewish community has reacted to these proposals and became the main organizer of these actions in the territory," said Nesterov and added that according to the archives, almost 32,000 people were assassinated in the territory - mostly Jews.

According to the rabbi, in the area of the glass factory in Mineralnye Vody, more than 11,000 people were executed. By the number of casualties, this place is the second after the Zmieva Balka in Rostov-on-Don; therefore, it was decided to hold the main memory ceremony there.

According to Alexander Nesterov, Holocaust memorial ceremonies took place in other towns of the Stavropol Territory.

On September 8, the village of Arzgir opened a plaque in memory of 675 Jews murdered there by the Nazis, which was established on the money of the local administration.

The Arzgir House of Culture opened an exhibition presenting photos and documents related to the perished Jews.

On September 9, the commemoration ceremony of Holocaust victims in Northern Caucasus was held in the city of Mineralnye Vody. The members of all-Russian Jewish organizations and Jewish communities of Stavropol, Mineralnye Vody and Pyatigorsk, and representatives of the authorities, who gathered at the glass factory, walked for almost three kilometres to the monument - a stele erected in the field in 1943.

Ilya Altman, the co-chair of SEC "Holocaust" has noted that there is no decent road to the monument to the victims and expressed hope that the administration of Mineralnye Vody would follow the agreement reached at the ceremony to build a road and keep the territory around the monument in due order.