GUSINO
Pre-1941: Gusino, village, Krasnyi raion, Smolensk oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Russian Federation
Gusino is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) west-southwest of Smolensk on the Dnieper River and on the main highway from Minsk to Moscow. According to the 1926 census, 427 Jews resided in the town (with a total population of 706).
Units of the German 18th Panzer Division captured Gusino in mid-July 1941. Soon after their arrival, German forces established a ghetto for the Jewish population of approximately 250 people on July 28, 1941.1 Members of the 1st Company, Landesschützen (LS) Battalion 507 (later renamed Security Bn. 545), which was stationed in Gusino during the winter of 1941–1942, note that on their arrival a ghetto had already been established in the town. The Jewish population was also forced to wear Jewish stars on their clothing and was made to perform forced labor, such as the clearing of snow and the unloading of railroad cars; a few of them also worked for the German soldiers based in the town. According to some accounts, a chicken-wire fence surrounded the ghetto, with barbed wire on top. The Jews lived in all the houses on one long street. In the town there was also a local Russian mayor and a local Russian police force designated only by armbands but armed with rifles. The Russian police was subordinated to the local German commandant.
The mass shooting of the Jews from the ghetto took place on February 6, 1942. On the evening before, a small unit of the SS and SD, comprising about 10 people, arrived in Gusino and informed Captain Schmitt, in charge of 1st Company, LS-Bn. 507, that all the Jews in the ghetto would be shot. It is not precisely clear which unit the SS men belonged to, but it was probably a Security Police (Sipo) and SD squad subordinated to Einsatzkommando 8 (commanded by Heinz Richter from January 1942), probably based in Orsha or Krugloe.
A mass grave had already been prepared in advance, close to the ghetto. Because of the hard ground, the Germans used explosives to prepare a pit some 10 meters long and 3 meters deep (33 feet by almost 10 feet). The Sipo/SD unit requested that members of the LS Company cordon off the ghetto during the Aktion to prevent any escapes. Some men of the company were deployed around the ghetto during the night. However, it appears that a few Jews got wind of the operation following the explosions and managed to flee, as other company members also searched the woods vainly in the morning just prior to the Aktion, trying to find escaped Jews.
The Aktion began at 9:00 a.m., when the Jews were driven out of the ghetto and forced through a narrow cordon, formed by members of the LS Company, to the pit. The pit was only about 100 or 200 meters (328 feet to 656 feet) from the ghetto, close to the company’s quarters in the local school. Before arriving at the pit, the Jewish victims had to remove their upper clothing and their shoes. These items were subsequently distributed among the local Russian population. The Jews were then shot in the back of the neck in groups of 2 or 3 by two SS men on the edge of the pit. The German forces murdered more than 200 Jews, including men, women, and children of all ages in the Aktion, which lasted several hours. (A report by a Soviet military commission of investigation records that more than 250 people were shot altogether.)2 The Jews remained calm during the shooting. However, some soldiers in the cordon recall a Jewish girl calling out: “Please don’t shoot [End Page 1792] me, I will do any work!”3 During the Aktion at least one Russian boy tried to escape. However, he was fired on and wounded by men from the cordon, then brought back to the killing site.
The attitude of the Wehrmacht troops is hard to assess from the investigative sources, as they knew they might be prosecuted if they admitted that their participation was motivated by racial hatred. Nevertheless, the company consisted almost exclusively of middle-aged men who had no particular Nazi sympathies. Several men mentioned that one company member tried to save two young Jewish sisters who had worked for the company and received bread from their rations in return. When the SS men found out about these two Jewish girls a few days later, they also took them away to be shot. One soldier claimed that the events preoccupied him so much that he wrote to his wife about it, mentioning especially the shooting of the two sisters. Others said that they were so affected they could not eat.
About one week after the main shooting, the local Russian police carried out their own Aktion. They shot those Jews who had escaped from the first Aktion. Accounts by Wehrmacht soldiers stationed in the town mention Jews returning, but they were probably hunted down and brought in by the local police.4
SOURCES
This entry is based mainly on the statements of former members of 1st Company, Landesschützen Battalion 507, taken by the German authorities in the 1960s. This documentation can be found in BA-L (ZStL/II 202 AR 946/61). Additional documentation can be found in the following archives: TsGAMORF (2082526/264, p. 36); VHF (# 13160, 16575, and 39900); and YVA (O-33/3275, Miron Ioffe).
NOTES
1. Vadim Doubson, “Ghetto na okkupirovannoi territorii Rossiiskoi federatsii (1941–42),” Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta. Istoriia. Kul’tura. Tsivilizatsiia, no. 3 (21) (2000): 157–184, here p. 159.
2. TsGAMORF, 2082526/264, p. 36.
3. BA-L, ZStL/II 202 AR 946/61, vol. 1, p. 21.
4. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 13–109, vol. 2, pp. 333–351.
