Gusino

Jewish settlement was permitted in Gusino by the Russian authorities in 1903. In the 1920s, a Yiddish primary school operated in the town. In 1933, sixteen Jewish families established the Zarya kolkhoz. In 1926, there were 427 Jews (60 percent of the total population) living in Gusino. The Germans occupied Gusino in July 1941. A number of Jews apparently managed to escape to the east before the Germans occupied Gusino. On July 28, 1941, the Germans concentrated the 200-270 remaining Jews in a ghetto. The ghetto consisted of three houses surrounded by barbed wire. In September 1941, eight Jews were murdered in Gusino, and in October 1941, a group of Jews, taken hostage by the Germans, was murdered. The Jews were assigned various forms of forced labor, such as unloading train cars and clearing the rail tracks of snow. Most of the Jews of Gusino were murdered on February 5 (according to other sources February 6-8), 1942. The exact date of liberation is unknown, but it occurred before January 1944.