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1 Execution site(s)
Ludmila S., born in 1930: "[…] When the prisoners of war were released the Germans gave an order to bring all the detainees [from the basement] to a slaughterhouse. Back then there was a gutter where people used to throw the rest of the animals, the skin, and blood. All the detainees were brought to this gutter and shot. I didn’t see the shooting, but I remember which day it was. It happened on the Old New Year Day [January 13]." (Witness n°861, interviewed in Konstantinovsk, on November 15, 2018)
The stanitsa, Konstantinovsk, was created in 1835, as a result of the merge of two stanitsas, Babiy and Venernikovskaya, created by the Don Cossacks in 16th and 17th centuries. In 1859, there were 156 households. The majority of the residents were Russian and Cossasks. There was one Jewish officer who lived in the stanitsa. He worked at the Recruitment Office. He was married to a Russian woman Nina; they had two children. The stanitsa Konstantinovsk was granted urban-type settlement status in 1941, and town status in 1967. The main occupation was agriculture.
Konstantinovsk was occupied by the Germans in July 1942. According to the local witness and local historian, about 40 Jews and communists were shot in the slaughterhouse territory in January 1943. The shooting happened shortly before the village was retaken by the Red Army. The victims were first detained in a basement of the prison and then taken to a gutter behind the slaughterhouse and shot. There was also a camp for Soviet prisoners of war created in the airfield under the open sky. According to the witness, those prisoners who survived were released just before the execution of the Jews and the communists.
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