Murder story of Svisloch Jews in the Virkov Forest

On October 8, 1941 a group of Jewish men from Svisloch, together with Jewish men from Yelizovo, were taken by truck to a forest between the villages of Virkov and Lenyovka, several kilometers northeast of Yelizovo, and shot there. The number of victims of this massacre is unknown. A second mass murder took place on October 14, 1941, the Russian Orthodox holiday of Pokrov. Then local policemen loaded all the Jews who remained in Svisloch onto trucks and took them to the same forest, where they were shot to death. The possessions of the victims were looted by the policemen and also by neighbors from the village and the area. During the massacre a number of Jews committed suicide; others had been killed earlier trying to escape arrest.