On 26 October 1941, twelve members of the Communist underground in Minsk were publicly hung in four groups of three near a yeast-making factory in Minsk. This is believed to be the first public execution after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
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Of the four groups only one was photographed before and during the execution. This group consists of Masha Bruskina, Kiril Trus, and Volodya Sherbateyvich. Bruskina was a seventeen year-old Jewish woman who lived in the Minsk ghetto during the summer of 1941.
She was living as a non-Jew on the Aryan side when she was captured. In the months before her arrest she worked as a medical assistant in a hospital that the German army had been converted into a prison camp for wounded Soviet POWs. In league with resistance groups operating near Minsk, he smuggled in civilian clothing and false documents for fleeing Soviet officers. Follow...