Apparently in late August 1942, at the order of Erich Kassner, the Gebietskommissar of the Kowel District, the open ghetto at Ozeryany was surrounded by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen and German urban order policemen (Schutzpolizei) from Kowel. Several hundred Jews, including many women and children, were loaded onto trucks and taken under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police toward the village of Sushibaba. Upon their arrival at the abandonned clay pit near the village, the victims were forced to deepen the pit and to strip naked and, then, were taken in groups of five to the pit. There they were shot to death with machine-guns, apparently by a murder squad of Kowel's urban order police headed by Fritz Manthei. According to one testimony, Erich Kassner, Fritz Manthei, and Fyodor Shabatura, the chief of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, who were in charge of this murder operation, personally took part in the shooting. Ukrainian auxiliary police guarded the murder site in order to prevent the victims from escaping. The bodies of the Jews were covered by residents of Ozeryany, Sushibaba, and other nearby villages. The belongings of the Jews who had been shot to death were sold in local stores.

More information: Yad Vashem