Murder Story of Mozyr Jews at the Gofshtein Residence

To the competent authorities of the Republic of Belarus: I, Olga Fedorovna Telesh (née Babynina), was born in 1924 in Mozyr. My current address is 40, Pushkin Street, apt.12, Mozyr, Gomel District, 247760 Since 1941 I have been aware of the self-immolation of the Mozyr Jews. My father, F.V. Bobynin was taken to the army in July 1941. Prior to the mobilization, he took my mother, my two-year-old brother and me to the village of Yurovichi, where my mother’s sister lived. We returned to Mozyr from Yurovichi at the beginning of the autumn of 1941 and settled in our house in Pushkin Street (currently, house no. 28). In the autumn of 1941 I saw a cart, escorted by two elderly Jews, in our street. The cart was covered only on the top. Burnt bodies could be seen from both sides of the cart. All the women from the house where I lived went to the gate and saw the cart with the bodies that were thrown one over the other. The people who escorted the cart said that they received permission to bury the burnt corpses at the Jewish cemetery. I am not aware of how many people subjected themselves to self-immolation. The building was doused with kerosene and the Jews themselves set fire to it. One or two women ran from the burning house. They were severely burnt but still alive, and looked terrible. The building burned to the ground; only the base remained. The self-immolation of the Jews took place on Malo-Pushkinskaya Street (presently, Kirov Square), next to a gas container. In confirmation of the above, Olga Fedorovna Telesh Signature

There were many bodies of old men, old women, and children there. Pieces of heads, trunks, arms, and legs were scattered on the ground… Twenty old Jewish carpenters who did not wish to surrender themselves into the hands of the executioners gathered at the home of Eli Gofstein on Pushkin street, poured kerosene on the house, and burned themselves alive. Their charred bodies lay there unburied…