Murder Story of Gusino Jews at the Gusino Jewish Cemetery

... As soon as the Germans occupied Gusino, they began to carry out monstrous evil deeds on the Jews. The children, the elderly – all the Jews of the settlement – were driven into three houses surrounded by barbed wire: an old, hideous ghetto was established. They were fed with the frozen rutabaga, and diseases and deaths soon began. The local population was warned that anyone helping the Jews would be shot. Nevertheless, dozens tried to hide Jews or help the imprisoned, among them Antonina Zhirikova, an elderly teacher from Gusino. My sister, a doctor, and my mother, an elderly woman of seventy, found themselves among the imprisoned (my father had died in 1939). On February 6, 1942, an SS unit arrived, and during the night a pit was dug at the Jewish cemetery. By morning, the pit was ready. On February 7, 1942, there was a terrible snowstorm. An elderly Russian man named Glushenkov explained to me that nature itself had revolted; God was enraged with the villains. That morning, everybody in the ghetto was driven to the shooting site. The sick were put into a sleigh and brought directly to the pit. The shooting began; there was a howl, a wild howl that pierced the air. Some people were thrown into the pit alive. The pit was breathing, and then the soil settled. Thus the Jewish population of Gusino – 218 people – perished. Those who escaped were caught and shot ....