The city of Pervomaisk was occupied in early August 1941. By the end of August, the city was divided into two parts. The Romanians got the right-bank part - Golta. It became part of Transnistria. The Germans controlled the left-bank part of the city (Bogopol and Olviopol).

According to the calculations of the Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad, half of the pre-war Jewish population of Pervomaisk, about three thousand people, fell into the occupation. The first extermination aktion was carried out on September 17, 1941, shooting 1.5 thousand Jews.

The Nazis drove the Jews of Bogopol and Olviopol into the ghetto. The destruction aktion took place in December 1941. The Nazis told the prisoners that they were being taken to work, and ordered them to take things and jewelry. The people were lined up in a column and taken along the Sovetskaya street to Kozareziy Yar, three kilometers from the city. There, in a trench that had been used for the extraction of clay before the war, groups of 10 people were shot, gradually filling the pit.

In Golta, the Romanian authorities established a closed ghetto. It was located in a block along the streets of Lenina, Tolstova and Marksa. Prisoners could leave the ghetto only with special passes. The able-bodied were used at work in the atelier, giving out food instead of pay.

Every day, doctors, selecting the sick and the weak, checked the ghetto prisoners. They were shot outside the city. In the first year of the occupation, according to Soviet sources, about 8 thousand Jews died.

Golta district became the center where the Romanian authorities resettled Jews from the rest of the controlled territories (Bessarabia, Bukovina, etc.). In September - October 1941, 25 thousand Jews from Bessarabia arrived in the Golta district. Some of them were located in Golta itself. For this, another ghetto and a labor camp were created at the 25 letiya Oktiabria factory. Several camps for Jews were created on the territory of the Golta district.

In mid-October 1941, Antonescu issued an order for the extermination of all Jews on the territory of the Golta district. The aktion of destruction was carried out by the Romanian military together with the German Einsatzgroup D. The shootings began on December 21 and lasted for several days. From December 24 to 26, the punishers took a break to celebrate Christmas in Golta.

The survivors were ordered to build a dam 12 m long and 1.8 m high so that the blood of those shot would not get into the Bug. After the holidays, the shootings continued until December 29, 1941. Approximately 48 thousand Jews were killed. From January 1941 to February 1942, the remaining prisoners burned the bodies of those who were shot.