The Russian Jewish Congress announced on Tuesday that it had sent a letter of protest to regional officials over the decision to replace a memorial plaque to Jews killed in the Holocaust with one that mentions only “peaceful citizens of Rostov-on-Don and Soviet prisoners of war.” The plaque was in Zmiyevskaya Balka, near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. Last November, officials removed a plaque hung in 2004, which read, “On the 11-12 of August 1942, Nazis killed more than 27,000 Jews here.” Where the old text refers to “the Holocaust,” the new one reads “mass killing by the fascists of captured Soviet citizens,” phraseology widely used during Soviet times, according to the Web site of the Russian Jewish Congress.