Murder Story of Logoysk Jews on the Gayna Road

On August 27, 1941, Germans concentrated the Jews of Logoysk in the town’s square and ordered them to collect a significant sum of money and values. A few days later, in the morning of August 30, 1941, local Belarussian policemen concentrated the entire Jewish population of the town into one large building, known as the Old School. Later, a group of Germans from Einsatzgruppe B and a unit of the SS “Reich” Division arrived. After registering the Jews on the pretext of moving them to the nearby village of Gayna, they sent three separate groups – women with children, the elderly and others – to the murder site near the sand pit, one kilometer from Logoysk near the road to Gayna. Along the way, the Jews of Gayna joined them. During the murder operation, when the last group of Jews was stripped, some men told the youth: “Children what are you waiting for? Escape!” A former university student, Shmulik Raskin, attacked a nearby German with penknife, crying: “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” Other Jews ran away in different directions. Several of them managed to reach the forest and were rescued. The rest, between 920 and 1,200 Jews (according different sources), were shot and buried in the pits. In September, between 60 and 100 Jews found in hiding by Germans and local policemen were concentrated in Logoysk, and then taken to the same murder site and shot.