A Simferopol charitable Jewish center "Khesed Shimon" opened October 8 on the 11th km of the Feodosian highway a stele and menorah in memory of people fascists had killed in December 1941.

The chairman of the "Khesed Shimon" board Alexander Glubochansky told the journalists the idea to construct a monument had emerged back in 1998. In June 2001 at the Jewish festival "Song of renaissance" fundraising for this monument was announced. Almost two thousand people donated their money - "often 1-2 hryvnas", though there also were much bigger sums, the center's director Victoria Plotkina said at the meeting.

The monument is created after the project of a center's volunteer designer Yelena Andreeva.

Two neighboring stands bear nearly a thousand names of those killed in this terrible place, and this is only one tenth of all names, - added V. Plotkina. She called on everybody who knows about other executed to bring materials to "Khesed Shimon" preparing a Book of Memory.

"These peaceful inhabitants threatened nobody, were guilty of nothing. Their awful fate and terrible death appeal to us alive today. We should ask ourselves a question: have we done everything necessary for fascism to remain in the gloomy past? That's why I consider the opening of this modest but, genuinely, great monument to the tortured Jews and Krymchaks a big step towards annihilating Nazi filth", - declared the chairman of ARC Verkhovna Rada Boris Deitch.

December 11 - 13, 1941 in the ravine on the 11th km of the Feodosian highway the fascists shot dead, after various data, up to 16 thousand people, 12 - 14 thousand of whom were Jews and Krymchaks. Partisans, members of underground organizations ad ordinary peaceful inhabitants of different nationalities were also executed here. Shootings in that terrible ravine near Simferopol went on till 1943. After the war, following lengthy efforts, a memorable sign to "Soviet partisans" was erected in the shooting place, though not indicating the cause of death.

In Yalta a local community erected a monument to the victims of Holocaust already 4 years ago. According to V.Plotkina, similar monuments will soon appear in Yevpatoria, Kerch, Sebastopol.

The Jewish community has the following evidence: Germans shot dead nearly 40 thousand Jews and 6 thousand Krymchaks in Crimea in 1941-1943.