KRASNODAR

KRASNODAR (formerly Yekaterinodar), capital of Krasnodar Territory (N. Caucasus), Russia. Until 1917 the city was outside the pale of Settlement, and only demobilized soldiers, professionals, highly skilled artisans, and wealthy merchants were allowed to settle in the city, so in 1897 only 562 Jews (0.8% of the total population) lived there. By 1926 their numbers had increased to 1,740 (1.1%), and by 1939 to about 5,818 persons in the entire territory except for the Adygei Autonomous District. Probably most of them lived in Krasnodar. Apparently the majority of the Jews succeeded in escaping before the town was occupied by the Germans on August 12, 1942. Those remaining, about 500 persons, were executed on August 21–22, 1942, at a kolkhoz outside the city. The Jewish population was estimated at 1,500 (300 families) in 1970. The only synagogue was closed by the authorities in the 1950s and there was no Jewish cemetery. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Special Committee for Documentation and Research of German-Fascist Crimes…, Dokumenty obvinyayut (1945). (Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)