The Ministry of Wheasts will open a memorial at the site of one of the largest burials of the Holocaust victims: in 1942, 7 thousand Jews were shot at a glass factory

In June 2019, in the mineral waters, the Russian Jewish Congress (rivers) will open a memory memorial of about 7 thousand Jews executed by the Nazis at the local glass factory. The rivers received permission to build the memorial on the eve after the completion of the coordination process, which lasted since 2017.

A long delay was caused by the fact that since the Soviet times, a memorial stone recognized as an object of cultural heritage has been on the site of the execution. According to the approved project, this memorial sign will now be inscribed in the composition of the new large memorial corresponding to the scale of that tragedy. The memorial will be created within the framework of the "return dignity" program.

The glass plant in mineral waters is one of the largest burial places of the Holocaust victims in Russia. The executions at the glass factory of Jews evacuated from Ukraine, Belarus, Leningrad (among them there were many doctors, students, as well as the wounded) continued from September 6 to 9, 1942.

Since 2010, rivers have been working to restore the names of these victims. Based on information from the Russian archives, the archives of the Search Center for the Names of the Institute "Yad Vashem" (Israel) and the list collected by the Jewish community of Stavropol, it was possible to restore 1034 names. The Nazis sought not only to kill the Jews, but also to erase the names of the dead from the story. Now these names will be carved in granite on a new monument.

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Also, in the framework of the “return dignity” program, the Russian Jewish Congress plans to return the names to be shot in the Zmiyiv beam in Rostov-on-Don-the largest burial of the victims of the Holocaust in the Russian Federation. Among the 27 thousand victims of that tragedy, most of whom were Jews, 4004 names were found today, and the approval of the installation of plates with these names continues.

In addition, the rivers believes that this project should become the beginning of large -scale search work to restore the names of everyone who is buried in the Zmiyiv beam. The initiative of the river was supported by the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov.

The program "return dignity" is devoted to perpetuating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Russia. The rivers and the Holokosta Center carry out it with the support of the Eve -Evez Gospel Christian Fund, representatives of regional authorities, public organizations, and local activists. Since the creation of the program in 2009, 65 monuments were installed in Russia in the place of mass executions and burials of Jews during the war years, thousands of names of the dead were restored. In total, in Russia there are more than five hundred such places, most of which have not been noted in any way. The task of the program "Return dignity" is to erect monuments on each of them.

The execution of the glass factory in the memoirs of eyewitnesses and writer Alexei Tolstoy

In early September 1942, in the area of ​​the glass factory under mineral waters, the Nazis destroyed about seven thousand evacuated Soviet citizens.

What happened in those days in the Ministry of Wheels is evidenced by the document preserved in the State Archive of the Stavropol Territory - the testimony of the deputy head of the Zhelzovodsk railway station Evgenia Kovnatnaya:

"At the end of August 1942, the German command repeatedly summoned me to work, but I was not, but I was forced to go to work on September 5. During my duty at the Khudny-Rylovodsk station on September 9, 1942, the Germans were loaded with Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality. From the words of the Germans, they took Soviet citizens to the" sparsely populated areas of Ukraine. "Subured Jews to Echelon from Echelon from Echelon from Echelon 20 wagons, of which there were only two covered, and the rest of the open platforms.

For several days and nights in a row, Jews were taken to an anti -tank moat. Those who tried to run were shot with automatic bursts. The rest were forced to completely undress, after which they drove into the moat and shot.

Some, in groups of 15-20 people, were loaded in the murderer and took per kilometer to the other end of the anti-tank ditch. The corpses were dumped into a moat in several layers, a little sprinkled with earth and rolled up with cars.

For several days and nights, the execution place was announced by the heartbreaking cries of women who were waiting for the inevitable death of their children.

The leadership of the USSR appointed the chairman of the Extraordinary State Commission to establish and investigate the atrocities of the Nazi invaders of the writer Alexei Tolstoy. He arrived in mineral waters immediately after the liberation of the city, which occurred on January 11, 1943. Already on January 20, the medical commission gave a conclusion about the causes of the death of people.

In August 1943, the newspaper Pravda published an article by Alexei Tolstoy's Brown Ducaman :

“The train went on the backup and stopped at the glass factory of the mineral waters.“ Get out, jump to the ground! ” - the Germans -Konvoirs shouted. Then anxiety began. The members of the Jewish committee, among whom were four famous doctors and elderly writer Bergman, reassured:“ The Germans are enemies, the Germans are harsh, but they are cultural people, we must believe the promise command ... "The order followed to take jewelry. They hastily removed earrings, rings, hours and threw the guards into the caps. A staff car with the head of the Gestapo Velben and the military commandant of the field drove up. The order was heard:" to undress all the naked "...
People realized that now is the end of life, now - execution. People began to scream, rushed about and shouted so that they crawled out their eyes and many went crazy. The guards drove the crowd of these people across the airfield field to the anti -tank moat, a kilometer from the glass factory. They were shot from hour to evening. "

"The testimonies of witnesses and a medical study of corpses can be established that for death the Germans used, in addition to execution, also strangled by carbon monoxide in hermetically closed, especially for such a murder of constructed machines."

"The excavations of the anti -tank moat carried out under my observation in the mineral waters found a dense mass of corpses for one hundred five meters. We determined the figure of the dead: more than 6,000 people, it was somewhat reduced in comparison with the testimony of witnesses for the export of the Jewish population from Kislovodsk, Essentuki and Pyatigorsk."

A resident of mineral waters, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War Mikhail Dmitrievich Sitnikov, who witnessed those terrible events, said the following:

"We, the boys, who were then 14-15 years old, played at the Bugre, where the stagloboy section belonging to the plant is now.
The territory around was empty - no buildings, no houses, only a clean field. Then the railway staff stopped. People began to leave the wagons, they were immediately surrounded by German machine gunners with shepherds and local policemen. The eldest of the traitors was our glass Zashka Gusarov. The barking of the dogs mixed up with the cry of women, the weeping of children, the prayers of the elderly, who realized what a terrible fate was destined by his fate. Everyone was ordered to sit on the ground.

Nearby stood four cars similar to bread trucks. People undressed and put things in a common pile, after which they were driven into booths of cars ... After a while, the bodies were dumped into the moat, and new victims were driven into cars ... ".