I was doing some digging into the German side of my family and found I had a great great uncle who died during ww2 fighting for Germany while my great grandfather was trying to liberate Europe. A German website I found said he died October 15, 1943 south of Gömel. The only Gömel I could find was a town in Belarus. Anyone know of anything that was happening around that time that he may have been a part of that caused it?
That's where the front line was at the time, and 15th October was in the middle of the month-long first phase of the Gomel-Rechitsa Offensive (Rechitsa/Rechytsa is about 50km to the west of Gomel). The first phase of this operation ran the whole of October, followed by a 10 day pause, and then the second phase, which liberated Gomel (on 26th November), occupied the rest of November.
I don't know the full details of the operation, but the main thrust to take Gomel appears to have come from the south, from the region of Chernihiv/Chernigov (about 110km to the south of Gomel, in Ukraine (the Belarus-Ukraine border is about halfway between Gomel and Chernihiv)). Chernihiv had been liberated on 21st September.
The first phase had been halted by the strong German defences around Gomel - this is probably the fighting in which your great-grandfather died. The pause between the two phases was used to bring more forces to Loyew/Loev, on the Dnieper about 10km to the west of the Gomel-Chernihiv road. These forces then opened the second phase by pushing north to Rechitsa (presumably to go around the strongest defences around Gomel).
To north-east of Gomel, Soviet forces had reached the Sozh River; Vietka, about 20km NE of Gomel, had been liberated on 28th September. On 12th November, Soviet forces in this area moved to secure a bridgehead across the Sozh. Three days later, the village of Khalch (across the Sozh from Vietka) was in their hands. This attack had three goals: (a) support the attack from Loyew toward Rechitsa by preventing reinforcements from being sent south, (b) secure a bridgehead over the Sozh, and (c) move west to encircle Gomel from the north.
For the bigger picture of the fighting in the general area at this time, see:
I don't have a copy at hand, so I don't know how much it would add to the fighting around Gomel itself, but it certainly provides the broader context of the battle.
For a map of the area, to locate the named places above, see
This is centred on Gomel, and if you zoom out, you'll find the towns and rivers named above.