The occupation of Zvenyhorodka, a small regional center in the Cherkassy region, which before World War II belonged to the Kyiv region, began at the end of July 1941. As in other occupied territories, in the very first days of the occupation the Nazis began implementing their program to exterminate the Jewish population.

Almost immediately, the Germans organized a ghetto in Zvenyhorodka, the so-called “Jewish Residential Quarter”. It was located between the then streets of Cominterna, Zhdanova, Shevchenka, Pionerskaya and Liebknechta. It was an open ghetto, with the possibility of leaving it during the daytime. However, being there imposed certain obligations on the Jews. 3-4 families were settled in houses; Jews had to sew yellow stars on their clothes and carry out the orders of the Judenrat appointed by the Germans, who acted as an intermediary between the occupiers and the Jewish community of the city. Jews from surrounding villages and towns were also brought into the ghetto. The executions of Jews began already in August 1941. At the end of August and beginning of September, the Germans killed two groups of Jews, the exact number is not known.

In May 1942, the Germans sent approximately 150-200 able-bodied people, mostly young men, to work in a labor camp organized in the neighboring village of Nemorozh. There they were kept in inhumane conditions, forced to work in a quarry, logging and road repairs.

According to unconfirmed reports, the Zvenyhorodka ghetto was liquidated by the Germans in July 1942. About 1,500 Jews were shot in the forests near Zvenyhorodka - in Dibrovo and Gubskaya dacha. A small part of the healthy and able-bodied were sent to the Nemorozh camp. The camp itself in Nemorozh was liquidated in November 1942.

In total, in Zvenyhorodka and Nemorozh, according to various sources, from 2,000 to 4,000 Jews died.

At the end of World War II, based on the memories of surviving Jews and local residents, a list of victims was compiled, however, about 600 people were able to be included in it, the rest remained nameless.

In memory of the victims of the Holocaust in 1981, memorial monuments were erected in Zvenyhorodka, not far from three mass graves of Jews, thanks to the financial support of the Jewish diaspora.

In the 1990s, they were repeatedly vandalized, but each time they were restored by members of the local Jewish community. Today, the territory of the mass graves is surrounded by a small fence.