The Germans and collaborators from the local police ordered all the Jews and some non-Jewish Communist activists to assemble on December 15, 1942, at the town police station. They were asked to bring food for three days and their best clothes and valuables for evacuation to a better place. Immediately afterwards the Jews and non-Jews gathered at the police station, where they were imprisoned. The local police took their possessions. At the same time Soviet POWs were ordered to dig a pit near Naberezhnaya Street, on the bank of the Kuban River, at the kolkhoz there at the site of the Forshtadit Fortress (today the Aleksandrovskaya Fortress). At 3 p.m. the victims were divided into two groups of about 200 persons each and then taken to the murder site. According to Soviet sources, the Germans started by killing the children, whom they poisoned with a green poison paste. Then the adults were shot to death. The same sources reported that among the Jews was a boy named Abram Pinkenson (a refugee from Bălți in Moldova), who asked to be allowed to play his violin. When the local police gave him permission, he began to play "The Internationale." A German soldier immediately shot him to death. On that day the German perpetrators and their helpers murdered between 300 and 400 Jews, as well as a number of non-Jewish Soviet activists.

More information: Yad Vashem