Benjamin Zuskin

Zuskin was born in April 1899 in the town of Ponevezh (Panevėžys), in the then Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire, today Lithuania, a son of a tailor.

All but one daughter were killed in the Kovno Ghetto, the urban concentration camp established by Nazi Germany and their Lithuanian collaborators in the Viliampolė / Slobodke neighborhood of Kaunas.)

[3] Zuskin's performance blended with Alexis Granowsky's system of organic interrelation of a word and gesture, plastics and rhythm of movements.

His characteristic features were light humor and romanticism which gave additional tints to a controversial life of Jewish hamlet of shtetl.

As a prominent member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, he was arrested at a hospital while being treated for nervous exhaustion.

Zuskin was later executed on Joseph Stalin's orders in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on August 12, 1952.