Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 07

by Various

Afternoon Session

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel, the Tribunal proposes to adjourn at half past four this afternoon, as they have some administrative work to do.

COL. POKROVSKY: I return to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in Smolensk and in the region of Smolensk. The greater part of this report is dedicated to the mass annihilation of prisoners of war by the Germans. I should like to read into the Record excerpts from this document, submitted to you as Exhibit Number USSR-56 (Document Number USSR-56), Page 6, Paragraph 4 from the top; you will find it on Page 58 of our document book. It reads as follows:

“The German fascist invaders systematically exterminated the wounded and captured Soviet citizens. Physicians A. N. Smirnov, A. N. Glasunov, A. M. Demidov, A. S. Pogrebnov, and others, formerly interned in the war prisoners’ camp, stated that on the road from Vyasma to Smolensk the Hitlerites shot several thousand people.

“In the autumn of 1941 the German occupational forces drove a party of prisoners of war from Vyasma to Smolensk. Many of the prisoners were unable to stand, as a result of continuous beating and exhaustion. Whenever the citizens attempted to give any of the prisoners a piece of bread, the German soldiers drove the Soviet citizens off, beat them with sticks and rifle butts, and fatally shot them. On the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Street, on the Roslavskoye and Kievskoye high roads, the fascist blackguards opened a disorderly fire on a column of prisoners of war. The prisoners attempted to escape, but the soldiers overtook and shot them. In that way nearly 5,000 Soviet people were fatally shot. The corpses were left lying about the streets for several days.”

It is not difficult to see that this extract fully coincides with the statement in Document Number 081-PS, which has already been read into the Record, the contents of which I once before related to the Tribunal very briefly and in my own words.

We are completing the document only by factual evidence. On the same Page 6—which corresponds to Page 58 of the Document Book—two lines lower down, it is said:

“The German military authorities tortured the prisoners of war. On the way to Smolensk and especially at the camp, the prisoners were killed by tens and hundreds. In Prisoner-of-War Camp Number 126, the Soviet people were subjected to torture; sick people were sent to heavy labor; no medical assistance was rendered. The prisoners in the camp were tortured, forced to do work beyond their strength, shot. About 150 to 200 people died every day of torture, by starvation, typhus and dysentery epidemics, freezing to death, exhausting work, and bloody terror. Over 60,000 peaceful citizens and prisoners of war were exterminated in the camp by the German fascist invaders. The facts of the extermination of the imprisoned officers and men of the Red Army and of the peaceful citizens were confirmed by the testimony of physicians imprisoned in the camp; Smirnov, Shmouroff, Pogrebnov, Erpoulov, Demidov, hospital nurses Shubina and Lenkovskya, and also by Red Army soldiers and inhabitants of the city of Smolensk.

“Thousands of prisoners of war were shot in the camp under the directions of Sonderführer Eduard Gyss.

“Sergeant Gatlyn brutally avenged himself on the prisoners. Being aware of the fact, they tried to keep out of his way. So Gatlyn dressed in the uniform of a Red Army soldier, mixed with the crowd, and, having picked himself a victim, would beat him half dead.

“Private Rudolf Radtke, a former wrestler from the German circuses, prepared a special lash made of aluminum wire, with which he beat the prisoners black and blue. On Sundays he would come to the camp drunk, throw himself on the first prisoner he met, torture and kill him.

“Emaciated and exhausted Soviet invalids were forced by the fascists to work at the Smolensk power plant. Many occasions were observed when prisoners, worn out by starvation, would collapse under the strain of work beyond their strength and were immediately shot by Sonderführer Szepalsky, Sonderführer Bram, Hofmann Mauser, and Sonderführer Wagner.

“There was, in Smolensk, a hospital for prisoners of war; Soviet doctors working at that hospital stated: Up to July 1942, the patients lay unbandaged on the floor. Their clothes and bedding were covered not only with dirt but with pus. The rooms were unheated and the floors of the corridors coated with ice.”

A report of a medico-legal examination is appended, Your Honors, to the statement of the Extraordinary State Commission which I have just quoted. Experts such as Academician Burdenko, member of the Extraordinary Commission, Dr. Prosorovsky, chief medico-forensic expert of the People’s Commissariat for the Care of Public Health in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Smolianov, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Second Moscow Medical Institute, and other specialists, conducted—from 1 to 16 October 1943—numerous exhumations and medico-legal autopsies on the corpses in Smolensk and the vicinity of Smolensk. A great many mass graves were opened which contained the corpses of such persons who had been killed during the German fascist occupation. The number of corpses which were found in these graves was between 500 and 4,500 at each place where such mass executions took place.

I shall read into the Record only such excerpts from the findings of the experts’ investigation as have a direct bearing on my subject. You will find the paragraph which I am now quoting on Page 61 of your document book, corresponding to Page 9 of our Exhibit Number USSR-56 (Document Number USSR-56).

“The corpses found in the pits were for the most part either partially or completely-naked, or else clothed in worn-out underwear; only in the minority of cases did the bodies disinterred wear clothes or military uniforms.”

It is stated in Paragraph 2 on the next page of the Document Number USSR-56—page 62 of the document book—Paragraph 2:

“Identity documents were found in 16 cases only—3 passports, 1 Red Army book, and 12 military identity ‘medallions.’ By ‘medallions’ I mean the small tube-like cases, not unlike a needle case in appearance, issued to each soldier in the Red Army. A document giving the soldier’s name, his father’s name, surname, and rank, together with his home address, is slipped into this tube.

“In some cases partly preserved articles of clothing and tattoo marks alone could help in establishing the identity of the deceased.”

This circumstance confirms the fact that the Germans endeavored to make the identification of their victims impossible, as demanded in special German directives. The first paragraph on Page 11 of Document Number 56, corresponding to your Page 63 in the document book, says:

“The autopsies performed on corpses taken from graves in the area of the large and small concentration camps at Plant 35, of the former German hospital for prisoners of war, of a sawmill, and of concentration camps near the villages of Becherskaya and Rakytna, revealed that, according to the data of the autopsies, death in an overwhelming majority of cases could be ascribed to hunger, starvation, and acute infectious diseases.

“An objective proof of death from starvation, over and above the total absence of all subcutaneous fatty tissues, as disclosed during the autopsies, was the discovery, in a number of cases, of grassy substances, remains of rough leaves and plant stalks in the abdominal cavity.”

On the same page, but rather lower down, in Paragraph 4, we read:

“The considerable number of burial-pits opened (87), filled with masses of corpses, together with the estimated differences in the time of burial, differences ranging from the second half of 1941, 1942, and 1943, testify to the systematic extermination of Soviet citizens.

“The victims, in an overwhelming majority of cases, were men and men mostly in the prime of life, that is, between the ages of 20 and 40.”

Somewhat lower, on the same page:

“Special attention was attracted by the fact that the exhumed corpses, with few exceptions, regularly lacked footwear. Clothing, too, was absent, as a rule, or consisted of worn-out underwear or parts of outer garments. The natural conclusion drawn from these facts is that the removal of clothes and footwear of any value had become the usual and officially recognized procedure preceding the extermination of Soviet citizens.”

In conclusion, the commission deals with the means of extermination, that is, shooting, asphyxiation by gas, and so forth. All this is not new to us and it is not necessary at present to read this part of the conclusion.

In our document, Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (Document Number USSR-6(c)), minutes are quoted from the report of the medico-legal experts as well as the findings of the board of medical experts. We find them on Pages 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the document. I shall set forth, in brief, the contents of the minutes and shall quote a few words from the findings. According to the minutes, the Hitlerites had set up a large camp for prisoners of war in the town of Rawa-Ruska, 52 kilometers northeast from the city of Lvov. In this camp a large number of Soviet and French prisoners of war were interned, and there they perished; they were shot, died of infectious diseases, or starved to death. The commission of medico-legal experts opened up a large number of graves. Some of these graves had been camouflaged by green shrubs and grass. A considerable number of bodies unearthed were dressed in military or semi-military clothing. In some cases identity medallions of Red Army soldiers were discovered inside the clothes. The ages of the prisoners whose bodies were recovered from the graves ranged from 20 to 40 years.

It is said in the findings—the extract quoted is on Page 70 of the document book:

“The data of the autopsies performed on the exhumed bodies justify the conclusion that bodies of Soviet prisoners of war had, in effect, been buried in the forementioned graves. The burial was on a mass scale. The bodies were placed in each grave at a rate of 350-400 corpses (the grave measuring 7 by 4 meters), in layers, one layer on the other. The bodies were buried in the clothes they had worn at the time of death. The absence of footwear on all the corpses indicates that the Soviet prisoners, when alive, were kept unshod or else that their footwear was removed after death. The prisoners were interned in appallingly unsanitary conditions, since all the clothing found was vermin-infested. Judging by the clothes, death, in the majority of cases, must have occurred during the cold season of the year. Nevertheless, practically no warm clothing was found on any of the bodies. To escape the cold, the prisoners of war had dressed in two or three sets of summer uniforms, had wrapped themselves up in sacking, towels. . . .”

I omit a few sentences from this statement and wish to read into the Record the part dealing with the total number of corpses. It is on Page 70 of your document book:

“The number of graves (36), their size, and the number of bodies discovered justify us in believing that from 10,000 to 12,000 bodies of Soviet prisoners of war were buried in this area. The degree of their decomposition points to the fact that the corpses had been buried underground for about 3 years, that is, the time of burial must be placed somewhere in the late autumn or in the winter of 1941-1942.”

A special section of the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the determination and investigation of atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in the city and region of Orel—which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-46 (Document Number USSR-46)—records the mass extermination of prisoners of war carried out over a long period of time.

The prisoner-of-war camp was set up in the city jail of Orel. After the Hitlerite invaders had been driven from Orel, the Extraordinary Commission was able to secure the testimony of doctors who had been in this camp and who had fortuitously escaped with their lives. Included in this report are the personal observations of a member of the Extraordinary State Committee, Academician Burdenko, who personally examined people liberated by the Red Army from the camp, from the camp premises, and from the so-called camp hospital. The general conclusion is that in the camp of Orel and in others the Hitlerites bodily exterminated the Soviet people with characteristic German thoroughness.

The prisoners received 200 grams of bread and a liter of soup made from rotten soy beans and moldy flour. The bread was baked with an admixture of sawdust. The camp administration, doctors included, treated the prisoners atrociously. I should like to quote a few excerpts from the report of the commission, and I shall start from Paragraph 5, Page 2 of the document, which you will find on Page 72 of the document book:

“The camp commander, Major Hoffmann, flogged the prisoners and forced persons exhausted by hunger to carry out heavy manual work in the local quarries and in the unloading of ammunition.

“Boots and shoes were taken from the prisoners and replaced by wooden clogs.

“In the winter these clogs became slippery and the prisoners, when walking, and especially when going up to the 2d and 3rd floor, would slip on the stairs and be lamed.”

Dr. H. I. Zvetkov, a former inmate of the prisoner-of-war camp, testified as follows. I quote, and you will find the excerpt quoted on Page 72 and at the beginning of Page 73:

“I can only describe the attitude of the German Command towards the prisoners of war, during my stay in the camp at Orel, as one of deliberate extermination of manpower in the person of the prisoners. The food ration, which at best contained a maximum of only 700 calories, led, when work was hard and beyond their strength, to complete exhaustion of the organism (cachexia) and to death. . . .

“Despite our categorical protests and our struggle against this mass murder of the people of the Soviet, the German camp doctors, Kuper and Beckel, maintained that the diet was perfectly satisfactory. Moreover, they denied that the oedemata from which so many of the prisoners suffered were due to starvation and quite calmly ascribed the condition entirely to heart or kidney troubles. The very mention of the term ‘hunger oedema’ was forbidden in the diagnosis. Mortality in the camp assumed mass proportions. Of the total number of persons murdered, 3,000 died of starvation and of complications arising from malnutrition.

“The prisoners lived in indescribably appalling conditions. The overcrowding was incredible. Fuel and water were completely lacking. Everything was infested by vermin. From 50 to 80 people were crammed into a ward 15 to 20 square meters in size. Prisoners would die at the rate of five or six per ward, and the living would have to sleep on the dead.”

It is further said that a particularly terrible regime existed for those included in the category of recalcitrants. They were put into a special building, named the death block. The inmates of this block were shot on schedule, five to six persons being taken to execution every Tuesday and Friday. The German physician Kuper was one of those present at the shootings. Academician Burdenko established that in the so-called hospital people were exterminated in the same manner as in the rest of the camp.

In the penultimate paragraph, on Page 3, we read—members of the Tribunal will find this passage on Page 73 of the document book:

“The scenes which I had to witness defy all imagination. My joy at the sight of the liberated people was marred by the fact that their faces bore an expression of utter stupor. This made me think, ‘What is the matter here?’ Evidently the sufferings they had undergone erased from their minds all distinction between life and death.

“I observed these people for 3 days and bandaged their wounds while moving them from the camp, but the mental stupor remained. Something similar could also be seen on the faces of the doctors during the first few days.

“People perished in the camp from disease, starvation, and floggings. In the so-called ‘hospital’ prison they died of wound-infection, sepsis, and starvation.”

On the 2d day of May 1945, there was captured in Berlin a member of the SS, Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann. The son of a shopkeeper, Ludwig Waldmann, he was born in Berlin on 17 October 1914. From information received, his mother, up to the time of his capture, was living in the city of Brunswick, Donnerburweg 60.

He testified personally to facts known to him regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. He witnessed these exterminations while working as a driver in different camps and himself participated in the mass killings. His testimony is on Page 9 of Exhibit Number USSR-52 (Document Number USSR-52), entitled, “Camp Auschwitz.” He provides more detailed information on the murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen.

Towards the end of summer 1941, the Sonderkommando of the Security Police in this camp exterminated Russian prisoners of war daily for a whole month. Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann testified—you will find the excerpt I am quoting on Page 82—that:

“The Russian prisoners of war had to walk about one kilometer from the station to the camp. In the camp they stayed one night without food. The next night they were led away for execution. The prisoners were constantly being transferred from the inner camp on three trucks, one of which was driven by me. The inner camp was approximately one and three-quarters of a kilometer from the execution grounds. The execution itself took place in the barracks which had recently been constructed for this purpose.

“One room was reserved for undressing and another for waiting; in one of them a radio played rather loudly. It was done purposely so that the prisoners could not guess that death awaited them. From the second room they went, one by one, through a passage into a small fenced-in room with an iron grid let into the floor. Under the grid was a drain. As soon as a prisoner of war was killed, the corpse was carried out by two German prisoners while the blood was washed off the grid.

“In this small room there was a slot in the wall, approximately 50 centimeters in length. The prisoner of war stood with the back of his head against the slot and a sniper shot at him from behind the slot since the sniper often missed the prisoner. After 8 days a new arrangement was made. The prisoner, as before, was placed against the wall; an iron plate was then slowly lowered onto his head. The prisoner was under the impression that he was being measured for height. The iron plate contained a ramrod which shot out suddenly and pole-axed the prisoner with a blow on the back of the head. He dropped dead. The iron plate was operated by a foot lever in a corner of the room. The personnel working in the room belonged to the above-mentioned Sonderkommando.

“By request of the execution squad, I was also forced to work this apparatus. I shall refer to the subject later. The bodies of prisoners thus murdered were burned in four mobile crematories transported in trailers and attached to motor cars. I had to ride constantly from the inner camp to the execution yard. I had to make 10 trips a night with 10 minutes’ interval between trips. It was during these intervals that I witnessed the executions. . . .”

It is a long way from these individual murders to the death factories of Treblinka, Dachau, and Auschwitz, but the tendency, the line of action are identical. Methods and extent of the killings varied. The Hitlerites endeavored to discover ways and means for the rapid mass extermination of human beings. They spent much time on the solution of this problem. To realize their ambition they began to work on the solution even prior to their attack on the Soviet Union by inventing different implements and instruments of murder, while peaceful inhabitants and prisoners of war alike ended up as victims of Hitler’s executioners.

I present to the Tribunal the report of the Extraordinary Commission on the German atrocities in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. This is Exhibit Number USSR-7 (Document Number USSR-7). Here, as in other places, the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war formed part of the savage plan of the fascist aggressors. I shall quote a few sentences from Page 6 of this document. In your copy it is marked with pencil, on Page 86 of the document book:

“In Kaunas, in Fort Number 6, there was a camp, Number 336, for Soviet prisoners of war. The prisoners in the camp were subjected to cruel torture and insult, in strict accordance with the inhuman ‘directions to the supervisors and escorts attached to labor detachments.’ The prisoners of war in Fort Number 6 were doomed to inanition and death from starvation.

“The witness, Medishevskaja, informed the Commission: ‘The prisoners of war were terribly starved; I saw them pluck grass and eat it.’ ”

I omit a few sentences and read on:

“At the entrance to Camp Number 336, there still exists a board with the following inscription in German, Lithuanian, and Russian: ‘All those who maintain contact with prisoners of war, especially those who try to give them food, cigarettes, or civilian clothes, will be shot!’

“There was in the camp at Fort Number 6 a ‘hospital’ for prisoners of war which in reality served as a point of transfer from the camp to the grave. The prisoners of war thrown into this ‘hospital’ were doomed to death.

“According to monthly statistics of sickness among the prisoners of war in Fort Number 6, from September 1941 to July 1942, that is, over a period of 11 months only, the number of dead Soviet prisoners amounted to 13,936.”

I shall abstain from reading the list of graves opened; I shall merely quote the sentence indicating the sum total of the graves. “All told, 35,000 prisoners of war were buried in these graves, according to the camp documents.”

Besides Camp Number 336, in the same town of Kaunas, there existed another, unnumbered camp on the southwestern border of the airfield. It is stated, in connection with this camp, that:

“As in Fort Number 6, starvation, the lash, and the truncheon reigned in this camp. Exhausted prisoners of war, no longer able to move, were carried out every day beyond the precincts of the camp, placed alive in previously prepared pits, and covered with earth.”

The last three lines of the left column, on Page 6 of the Document. Number USSR-7—Page 86 of your document book—state as follows:

“The records, documents, and testimonies of witnesses enabled the commission to establish that here, within the precincts of the airfield, nearly 10,000 Soviet prisoners had been tortured to death and buried.”

The report mentions one more camp, Number 133, near the town of Alitus, and a few more which had been established in July 1941 and existed up to April 1943. In these camps the prisoners froze to death. When unloaded from the railway coaches, such prisoners of war who were unable to walk were shot out of hand. The remaining prisoners were tortured until they lost consciousness, hanged by their feet on chains, brought back to consciousness by having cold water dashed over them; then the whole process would be repeated all over again.

Giving the sum total of prisoners murdered, the commission writes—the few lines which I am about to quote are likewise on the same page, 86, of the document book:

“It had been established that no less than 165,000 Soviet prisoners of war were executed by the Germans in the above-mentioned camps of the Lithuanian S.S.R.”

The extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was, quite literally, carried out in every camp. Thousands of Soviet soldiers likewise perished in the extermination camp of Maidanek. The second paragraph of Page 5 of the joint Polish and Soviet communiqué of the Extraordinary Commission, which is presented to you as Exhibit Number USSR-29 (Document Number USSR-29)—corresponding to your Page 92 of the document book—states that:

“The entire bloodstained history of this camp begins with the mass shooting of Soviet prisoners of war, organized by the SS in November and December 1941. Out of a group of 2,000 Soviet war prisoners, only 80 remained alive. All the rest were shot except a few who were racked and tortured to death.

“Between January and April 1942 more transports of Soviet prisoners of war were brought to the camp and shot. Nedzelek Jan, hired to work in the camp as a truck driver, testified:

“ ‘About 5,000 Russian prisoners of war were exterminated by the Germans in the winter of 1942 by the following method: They were taken from their barracks in trucks and driven to the pits of a former stone quarry, and in these pits they were shot.’

“Prisoners of war of the former Polish Army, captured as far back as 1939 and imprisoned in various German camps, were already concentrated, in 1940, in the Lublin camp on Lipovoja Street and were soon after transferred, in batches, to the extermination camp of Maidanek, where they suffered the same fate: systematic torture, murder, mass shooting, et cetera.

“The witness, Reznik, testified as follows:

“ ‘In January 1941, we, a party of approximately 4,000 Jewish prisoners of war, were placed into railway coaches and sent to the East. . . . We were brought to Lublin, unloaded and handed over to the SS. About September or October 1942, it was decided that only those people who were qualified as skilled plant and factory workers, and therefore needed in the town, were to be left in the camp on Number 7 Lipovoja Street, while the rest, and I among them, were transferred to Maidanek Camp. All of us already knew—and knew far too well—that deportation to Maidanek meant death. Of this party of more than 4,000 prisoners of war, only a few individuals, who had managed to escape while engaged in work outside the camp, remained alive.

“ ‘In the summer of 1943, 300 Soviet officers, including two colonels, four majors, with the remainder consisting of captains and senior lieutenants, were brought to Maidanek. The officers in question were shot in the camp.’ ”

Huge camps for the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war had been organized by German fascists in the territory of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. The report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German invaders on the territory of this republic—we present to the Tribunal this report as Exhibit Number USSR-41 (Document Number USSR-41)—contains the following data on the extermination of 327,000 Soviet prisoners of war. I quote excerpts from Page 7, on the right column of the above-mentioned report. You, Sir, as well as the other members of the Tribunal, will find the excerpt on Page 97 of the document book:

“In Riga, the Germans organized a camp, Stalag 350, for Soviet prisoners of war, on the premises of the former barracks on Pernovskaja and Rudolf Streets, which existed from July 1941 to October 1944. There Soviet prisoners of war were kept in inhuman conditions. The building where they were lodged had neither windows nor heat. In spite of heavy forced labor from 12 to 14 hours a day, their rations consisted only of 150-200 grams of bread and so-called soup made of grass, rotten potatoes, leaves of trees, and other refuse.”

In my opinion, it is necessary to stress the monotony of the rations issued to the prisoners of war. Testimonies given by witnesses coincide entirely with the official directive on the quantities of food allotted to the prisoners of war, which I have already read into the Record today.

A former prisoner of war, P. F. Yakovenko, who was imprisoned in Stalag 350, testified—this is on Page 97 in your document book; forgive me, I forgot to mention it:

“We were given 180 grams of bread, half consisting of sawdust and straw, one liter of unsalted soup made of unpeeled rotten potatoes. We slept on the bare ground and were eaten up by lice. Between December 1941 to May 1942, 30,000 prisoners of war perished in this camp from starvation, cold, flogging, typhus, and shooting. The Germans daily shot prisoners of war who, owing to weakness or illness, were unable to go to work; they mocked at them and beat them without any reason at all.”

G. B. Novitzkis, who had worked as senior nurse in the hospital for Soviet prisoners of war in Number 1, Gymnastitcheskaya Street, testified that she had repeatedly seen patients eat grass and tree leaves in order to quell the pangs of hunger.

“In sections of Stalag 350, on the territory of a former brewery, and in the Panzer barracks, over 19,000 persons perished between September 1941 and April 1942 alone, of starvation, torture, and epidemics. The Germans also shot wounded prisoners of war. In addition, Soviet prisoners of war perished en route to the camp, since the Germans left them without food or water.”

A female witness, A.V. Taukulis testified:

“In the fall of 1941 a transport of Soviet prisoners of war, consisting of 50-60 coaches, arrived at the station of Salaspils. When the cars were opened, the stench of corpses spread over a great distance. Half the men were dead; many were at the point of death. Men who were able to climb out of the coaches dashed towards water, but the guards opened fire and shot a score or two of them.”

I shall not enumerate other facts which took place in Stalag 350, I shall merely read into the Record the final sentence, referring to this camp. I fear that there is a misprint in this sentence in your document book. If I am not mistaken, your document book mentions the shooting of 120,000 Soviet prisoners. This figure is inaccurate; in the original document, which I shall now read into the Record, another figure is mentioned, “In Stalag 350 and in its branches, the Germans tortured to death and shot over 130,000 Soviet prisoners of war.”

On Page 97 of your document book you can find the following part of this report:

“There was a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, Stalag 340, in Daugavpilce (Dvinsk), known among the internees and the town’s inhabitants as the ‘Death Camp,’ where in 3 years over 124,000 Soviet prisoners of war perished from starvation, tortures, and shootings.”

The butchering of prisoners of war by German executioners usually began on the way to the camp. In the summer, prisoners of war were transported in tightly-closed wagons, in winter in freight coaches and on platform trucks. Masses of prisoners perished from hunger and thirst. They suffocated in the summer; they froze in the winter.

Witness T.K. Ussenko stated:

“In November 1941 I was on duty, as signalman, at the station of Most, and I saw a transport, consisting of more than 30 coaches, move into the ‘Kilometer 217’ siding”—this was the name given to that particular part of the track—“Not a living soul was discovered in the coaches. No fewer than 1,500 dead bodies were unloaded from this transport. They were dressed in nothing but their underclothes. The corpses lay around the railway track for nearly a week.”

The hospital attached to the camp was likewise dedicated to the extermination of prisoners of war. Schoolteacher V. A. Efimova, who worked at the hospital, told the Commission:

“It was rarely that any one left this hospital alive. Five shifts of grave-diggers, selected from among the prisoners, carried the dead to the cemetery in handcarts. It frequently happened that a man who was still alive would be thrown into the cart and six to seven corpses or bodies of executed people piled on top of him. The living were buried with the dead. At the hospital sick people, tossing in delirium, were bludgeoned to death.”

When an epidemic broke out in the camp, the Hitlerites drove to the airfield all the prisoners from any barrack where typhus patients had been discovered and shot them. About 45,000 Soviet prisoners of war were thus exterminated.

Appalling facts are quoted in the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission, which investigated the crimes of the German fascist invaders in the neighborhood of Sevastopol, Kerch, and at the health resort of Teberda. I shall read into the Record some data from our Exhibit Number USSR-63(5) (Document Number USSR-63(5)). At the Sevastopol prison, the German fascist command organized a hospital for sick and wounded prisoners of war. Here the Soviet warriors perished in masses. I shall quote a few sentences, which you will find in your document book on Page 99:

“At the time the hospital was organized, the sick and wounded were not given any water or bread for 5 or 6 days by the Germans, who cynically said: ‘This is the punishment for the specially stubborn defense of Sevastopol by the Russians.’

“The wounded brought in from the battlefield were given no medical aid. Soldiers and officers were thrown on the cement floor, where they lay bleeding for 7 and 8 days on end.

“During the defense of Sevastopol, a military hospital and a medico-sanitary battalion, Number 47, were installed in the vaults of the champagne factory at Inkermann. After the retreat of the Red Army, a large number of wounded soldiers and officers were left behind in Vault Numbers 10, 11, 12, and 13, since there had been no time to evacuate them. When the German savages captured the factory, they all became drunk and set fire to the vaults.”

I omit a whole number of facts, the majority of which, strictly speaking, should have been specially reported to the Tribunal. I pass on to the description of the last crime mentioned in the statement of the commission. I pay special attention to it because it describes the brutal extermination of a very large number of wounded Red Army soldiers. You will also find this excerpt on Page 99 of your document book:

“On 4 December 1943 there arrived at the station of Sevastopol, from the city of Kerch, three transports of wounded prisoners of war belonging to the Kerch landing forces. Having loaded them on a 2,500-ton barge moored in the southern bay near the landing stage, the Germans set fire to it. The heart-rending screams of the prisoners filled the air. Women who were not far from the barge could render no assistance to the wounded, since they were driven from the site of the fire by gendarmes. Not more than 15 men were saved. Thousands perished in the fire.

“On the following day the same barge was loaded with 2,000 men from among the wounded brought from Kerch. The barge sailed from Sevastopol in an unknown direction, and all the wounded in it were drowned at sea.”

I repeat that I am omitting a considerable number of facts established by the commission.

There is but little difference in character between the documentary evidence already read into the Record and the data on the atrocities perpetrated by the German fascist invaders on Soviet prisoners of war in the region of Stalino. In our Number USSR-2(a) we find, among a lot of other documents, two documents about the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. The first document is dated Stalino, 22 September 1943, and is submitted by a special commission with the President of the Stalinozavodsk Regional Council of Workers’ Deputies at its head. I shall read into the Record that part of the document which contains items of interest to us. The official report begins in the left-hand column of Page 3 of Document USSR-2(a), and the extracts which I am reading into the Record are printed on Page 108 of your document book:

“The circumstances of the case: In the Stalinozavodsk district of the town of Stalino, in the Lenin Club, the German fascist invaders organized a camp for Soviet prisoners of war; at times there were up to 20,000 men in this camp; the camp commandant, a German officer named Gavbel, established an intolerable diet for the Soviet prisoners of war.

“Examined as witnesses, Ivan Vasilyetch Plakhoff and Konstantin Semyonovitch Shatzky, former prisoners of war who had been interned in this camp and managed to escape, testified that prisoners of war were starved; a loaf of bread weighing 1,200 grams and made of poor-quality, burned flour was issued to eight men; once a day one liter of hot liquid food was issued, consisting of a small quantity of burned bran, occasionally mixed with sawdust. The premises in which the prisoners of war were housed had no glass in their windows; in summer and winter alike, even in the coldest weather, only 5 kilograms of coal per day were allowed for heating purposes. This amount could not, of course, heat the vast premises where up to a thousand prisoners lived in a perpetual draught. Mass cases of frostbite were observed. There were no baths. Generally speaking, people did not wash for 6 months and were overrun by enormous quantities of vermin. In the hot summer months the prisoners suffered from the heat. They were left without drinking water for 3 to 5 days on end.”

The regime in the camp organized in the region of Stalinozavodsk was, as is clear from the extracts read into the Record, precisely the same as the regime in other German prisoner-of-war camps. This has been proved beyond all doubt by the discovery of general directives.

The following excerpt shows that, over and above these directives, camp commanders had opportunities for committing atrocities themselves, each man according to his own particular method, and yet remained unpunished. On Page 105 of your document book you will find the following extract which I am now quoting:

“Prisoners of war were beaten with sticks and rifle butts on the slightest provocation, and a punishment of 720 strokes with the lash was imposed for any attempt at escape; the strokes were administered over a period of 8 days—30 strokes of the lash at a time—morning, noon, and evening. At the same time, the culprits were deprived of their bread ration, while the liquid ration was halved.”

Mortality in the camp following this regime was enormous. In winter, up to 200 persons died every day. Epidemics broke out in the camp. Numerous cases of oedemata—the result of hunger and death by starvation—were registered.

The guards derived much pleasure in degrading the prisoners of war by setting one against the other. Thus Shatzky testified that he was flogged by German policemen, receiving 120 strokes with the lash and 15 with sticks, for disobeying the order to flog his fellow prisoners of war. The floggings were supervised by German officers.

Provisions brought by civilians for handing to the prisoners of war did not reach them. The commission came to the conclusion that no fewer than 25,000 Soviet prisoners of war were buried in the grounds of the camp and of the central polyclinic. This conclusion is based on the measurement and number of graves and on the evidence of witnesses.

Mass killings and murders of prisoners of war were also organized by the German fascist invaders in another town in the Don Basin, Artemovsk. A special commission, consisting of the military prosecutor of the town of Artemovsk, of the priest of the Pokrovskaya Church, Ziumin, of representatives of the intelligentsia, public organizations, and army units, drew up an official report on the mass murders of Soviet prisoners of war organized by the fascist invaders. This official report is on Page 4 of Exhibit Number USSR-2(a). It is also on Page 105 of your document book. It is said in the report:

“In November 1941, soon after the occupation of the town of Artemovsk by German fascist invaders, a prisoner-of-war camp was established in the territory of the small military town lying beyond the northern station, housing 1,000 captured Red Army prisoners of war.”

I omit one paragraph and pass on to the question of living conditions in the camp:

“In the spring of 1942 prisoners of war, driven desperate by hunger, used to leave the camp and, creeping on all fours like animals, plucked and ate grass. In order to deprive the men even of this modicum of food, the Germans fenced off the camp building by a double row of barbed wire, with a distance of 2 meters between the rows and barbed wire entanglements placed between them.”

I omit one paragraph and am preparing to read the conclusions into the Record:

“Twenty-five graves were discovered near the camp—three of them mass graves. The first grave measured 20 by 15 meters; it contained the remains of about 1,000 corpses. The second grave measured 27 by 14 meters and contained the remains of about 900 corpses. In the third grave, 20 meters by 1, the remains of up to 500 corpses were discovered; and in the remaining graves, from 25 to 30 in each, making up, all told, a total of some 3,000 corpses.”

In the neighborhood of the small farm of Vertyatchy, in the Goroditschtchensky region of the Stalingrad area, the Hitlerites established a prisoner-of-war camp. Here, as in other camps, and with their customary and characteristic sadism, they exterminated the war prisoners of the Red Army.

I present to you, as evidence, our Exhibit Number USSR-63(3) (Document Number USSR-63(3)), which contains an official report of 21 June 1943. It is duly drawn up and certified and contains the following information—this is on Page 110 of the document book:

“As a result of the atrocious regime, at least 1,500 Soviet prisoners of war perished of starvation, torture, sickness, and executions in the camp near Vertyatchy, during the 3½ months of its existence.

“The Germans forced the prisoners to work from 14 to 16 hours per day, and fed them once a day, the ration consisting of 3 to 4 spoonfuls of stewed rye or a ladleful of unsalted rye soup together with a piece of horse carrion.

“A few days before the arrival of the Red Army the Germans ceased to feed the prisoners altogether and condemned them to death by starvation. Nearly all the prisoners suffered from dysentery. Many had open wounds, but the prisoners received no medical assistance whatsoever.”

I omit one paragraph and pass on to the next, which deals with the humiliating treatment of prisoners of war:

“Germans mocked the patriotism of the Soviet prisoners of war by forcing them to work on German military constructions, to dig trenches and dugouts, and to build mud huts and shelters for military technical equipment. The Hitlerites systematically humiliated Soviet prisoners of war by making them kneel before the Germans.”

It is noted in the official report that the commission examined material evidence: tools used for the torture of Soviet prisoners of war, a leather thong and dagger, picked up among the disarmed bodies, with the well-known Hitlerite slogan “Blood and Honor” (“Blut und Ehre”). The circumstances in which the dagger was discovered give every possibility of understanding what was meant by German “honor” and for whose blood the dagger was intended.

The documents of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union relating to the town of Kerch describe the characteristic crimes of the Hitlerite invaders. I submit to the Tribunal the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission as Exhibit Number USSR-63(6) (Document Number USSR-63(6)), and I shall read several extracts into the Record. In your copy they are all marked so as to enable the Tribunal to follow the text quoted—Page 115.

THE PRESIDENT: I think we might break off now.

[A recess was taken.]

COL. POKROVSKY: On Page 115 of the document book you will find the excerpt I am about to quote from the testimony of Citizeness P. Y. Bulytchyeva:

“Citizeness P. Y. Bulytchyeva, born in the city of Kerch in 1894, testified:

“ ‘I witnessed how our Red Army prisoners of war, both soldiers and officers, were repeatedly driven along the street and how the weak and wounded were shot out of hand by Germans in the street itself when, through sheer debility, they fell out of the ranks. Many times I witnessed this terrible scene. Once, in the freezing cold, I saw a group of exhausted, ragged, and barefooted prisoners driven along. Those who attempted to snatch the pieces of bread thrown to them by the citizens were beaten up with rubber truncheons and rifle butts. Those who fell under the blows were promptly shot.’ ”

I am omitting a few sentences which, in my opinion, need not be read into the Record.

“At the time of the second occupation, when the Germans broke into Kerch again, they began to avenge themselves with even greater fury on perfectly innocent people.”

The witness testifies that the fascist butchers first of all avenged themselves on the military personnel and that they beat wounded soldiers to death with rifle butts. On the same page, 115, you will find the following excerpt:

“The prisoners of war were driven into large buildings, which were then set on fire. Thus, the Voikov school was burned down, together with the club for engineering and technical workers containing 400 soldiers and officers of the Red Army.

“Not a man succeeded in escaping from the burning building. All those who attempted to save themselves were mowed down by machine gun fire.

“Wounded soldiers were savagely tortured to death in the small fishing village of Mayak.”

Another woman witness who lived in this village, A. P. Buryatchenko, testified:

“On 28 May 1942 the Germans shot all the peaceful inhabitants who had remained in the village and had not succeeded in hiding. The fascist monsters mistreated the wounded Soviet prisoners of war, beat them with rifle butts, and then shot them. In my home, the Germans discovered a girl in military uniform, who resisted the fascists, crying, ‘Shoot, you vipers, I die for the Soviet people and for Stalin, but you, you monsters, will die a dog’s death.’ This girl patriot was shot on the spot.”

There is, in the district of Kerch, the stone quarry of Adjimushkaisk. Red Army soldiers were exterminated and poisoned by gas. N. N. Dashkova, a woman from the village of Adjimushkaisk, testified:

“I myself saw the Germans, who had caught about 900 Red Army soldiers in the quarry, first ill-treat and then shoot them. The fascists used gas.”

I omit several sentences. On the same page, 115, you will find the following quotation:

“At the time of the occupation a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, housing over 1,000 captives, was set up in the Engels Club. The Germans ill-treated them, fed them only once a day, drove them off to heavy labor beyond their strength, and shot on the spot all those who, exhausted, fell by the road.”

I consider it essential to quote a few more testimonies. N. J. Shumilova, a woman from the hamlet of Gorki, testified:

“I myself saw a group of prisoners of war being led past my courtyard. Three of them were unable to move and were promptly shot by the German escort.”

P. I. Gerassimenko, a woman living in the hamlet of Samostroy, testified:

“Many Red Army soldiers and officers were driven to our village. The area which they occupied was surrounded by barbed wire. Here, naked and barefoot, they perished from cold and hunger. They were kept in the most frightful and inhumane conditions. By the side of the living lay the bodies of the dead, and these bodies were not moved for days on end. Such conditions rendered life in the camp still more intolerable. The prisoners were beaten with rifle butts, flogged by the lash, and fed on refuse. Any inhabitant who attempted to give food and bread to the prisoners was beaten up, while prisoners attempting to hand over these gifts were shot.”

In a Kerch school, Number 24, the Germans set up a camp for prisoners of war. A. N. Naumova, a school teacher, testified as follows concerning the regime in the camp:

“There were many wounded in the camp. These unhappy people, though bleeding profusely, were left without any help. I collected medicine and bandages for the wounded, and their wounds were dressed by a medical orderly from among the captives. The prisoners suffered from dysentery since they were fed hog-wash instead of bread. People dropped from exhaustion and disease; they died in agony. On 20 June 1942 three prisoners of war were given the lash for attempting to escape from the camp. The wounded were shot. In June one of the escaped prisoners was caught and executed.”

Koshenikove, a teacher in the Stalin School, in the area of the factory kitchen and Voikov works, witnessed the execution of a group of Red Army men and officers. In 1943 the German criminals drove Red Army prisoners all the way from the Caucasus. The entire road from the ferry to the town, a distance of some 18 to 20 kilometers, was littered with the dead bodies of Red Army men. There were many sick and wounded among the prisoners of war. Whoever was unable to walk, either through exhaustion or sickness, was shot on the way.

Among other facts there is one which deserves special attention:

In 1942 the fascists threw 100 Red Army prisoners of war, alive, into the village well of Adjimushkray; their bodies were subsequently extracted by the inhabitants and buried in a communal grave in the sacred brotherhood of death. This information is contained in the same report, extracts of which I have just quoted to you.

On 29 January 1946 the witness, Paul Roser, was cross-examined here before the Tribunal. He testified that in the course of 4 months, out of 10,000 Russians, whom he had seen as prisoners of war in the German camp at the city of Rawa-Ruska, only 2,000 remained alive.

We possess evidence from yet another eyewitness of the numerous atrocities and endless tortures inflicted on the prisoners of war at Rawa-Ruska. Witness V. S. Kotchan, who was duly interrogated according to the procedure prescribed by our laws, testified before the captain of the guard of justice, Ryshov, on 27 September 1944—the minutes of his interrogation are hereby submitted to you as Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (Document Number USSR-6(c)):

“I worked under the Germans as a digger at the prisoner-of-war camp for Red Army soldiers, from December 1941 to April 1942.”

This is on Page 124 of the document book. I omit a few lines irrelevant to the matter, and I quote further:

“This camp was set up by the Germans in the barracks near the railway. The entire area of the camp was surrounded by barbed wire. According to personal statements by the prisoners of war, the Germans drove from 12,000 to 15,000 men into this camp. While we were working, we watched the Germans mock the Red Army prisoners of war. They fed them once a day on unpeeled, frozen potatoes baked in their skins and covered with dirt. They kept the prisoners of war in the cold barracks all through the winter.

“I know for a fact that, when the Germans drove the prisoners of war into this camp, all clothes, overcoats, boots, and shoes which were at all serviceable were taken from the prisoners, leaving them barefoot and in rags. The prisoners of war were taken to work daily under escort from 4 to 5 in the morning and kept working until 10 o’clock at night. Then, worn out, cold, and hungry, the prisoners were marched back to their barracks, where doors and windows had purposely been left open all day so that the frost might enter these barracks and freeze the prisoners to death. In the morning, under the supervision of German soldiers, hundreds of corpses would be taken away in a tractor by the prisoners of war; they were buried in previously-prepared pits in the forest of Volkovitch. When the prisoners were marched off to work in the morning, under escort, the Germans would place a detachment of soldiers armed with rifles and stakes by the exit gates of the camp; they pole-axed them with stakes, stabbed them with bayonets, and chased the hungry and exhausted prisoners who were unable to move properly.”

The same witness describes also some other German atrocities:

“The German camp administration brought out completely-naked prisoners of war, bound them with ropes to a wall surrounded by barbed wire and kept them there, in the cold of the December winter, until they froze to death. The air of the camp resounded continually with the groans and cries of people maimed by rifle butts. Some were pole-axed with rifle butts on the spot.

“When, starving and exhausted, the prisoners were brought to the camp, they would hurl themselves on a heap of rotten and frozen potatoes. This, in turn, would be followed by a shot from the German escort.”

I present to the Tribunal, under the same Number USSR-6(c)—Page 120 of the document book—the deposition of a French prisoner of war, Emilie Leger, a soldier of the 43rd Colonial Infantry Regiment, Serial Number 29. In his deposition the camp at Rawa-Ruska is called the “famous camp of lingering death, Stalag 325.”

It appears to me that this phrase serves, as it were, as a supplement to the testimonies of witnesses Roser and Kochau. The Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal a considerable quantity of material disclosing as well numerous crimes of the Hitlerite invaders perpetrated against prisoners of war in the territory of the Lvov district.

It seems to me sufficient to read into the Record extracts from the evidence submitted by D. Sh. Manussevitch, and I wish to state that this evidence is confirmed by the testimony of two other witnesses: F. G. Ash and G. Y. Khamaydes. I am presenting all three documents as Document Number USSR-6(c).

Witnesses Manussevitch, Ash, and Khamaydes worked for some time in the detachment which cremated the dead bodies of men shot by the Germans in the region of Lvov and particularly in the Lissenitzky camps. Witness Manussevitch states—I quote, beginning with Line 20 at the bottom of Page 2 of our Number 6(c), and on Page 129 of your document book:

“When we (the Brigade of Death) had completed the cremation of the corpses, we were conveyed at night in cars to the Lissenitzky forest, opposite the yeast factory at Lvov. There were about 45 pits in this forest, containing the bodies of people previously shot in 1941-42. There were between 500 and 3,500 bodies in the pits. These were not only the bodies of soldiers of the Italian, French, Belgian, and Russian armies, that is, of prisoners of war, but of peaceful inhabitants as well. All the prisoners of war were buried in their clothes. Therefore, when digging them out of the pits, I could recognize the dead by their uniforms, insignia, buttons, medals, and decorations, as well as by their spoons and mess cups. All these were burned once the corpses had been exhumed. As in the camp at Yanovsky, grass was sown on the site of the pits, and trees and dead tree trunks were planted so as to erase any trace of the crimes, which are certainly unprecedented in the history of mankind.”

In addition to the testimony of the victims and of many Soviet citizens we have at our disposal the testimonies of members of the German Armed Forces. I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-62 (Document Number USSR-62) a document which was signed by more than 60 persons belonging to different units and branches of the German Army. We find their signature on written protests addressed to the International Red Cross in January 1942. We also have a communication of the International Red Cross acknowledging the receipt of this document. In this letter they mentioned facts relating to the criminal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, of which they had personal knowledge. The persons who signed this protest were themselves prisoners of war at Soviet Camp Number 78. Their protest is the result of the comparison made by the authors of the document between the treatment meted out to Soviet prisoners, which they had seen for themselves, and the treatment they received at Camp Number 78. I will quote a few excerpts from this document—the text with the following words—Page 135 of the document book:

“We, the German prisoners of war of Camp Number 78, have read the note by the Peoples’ Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Government, Mr. Molotov, concerning the treatment of prisoners of war in Germany. We might consider the cruelties described in that note as impossible had we not witnessed such atrocities for ourselves. In order that truth should prevail, we must confirm that prisoners of war—citizens of the Soviet Union—were often subjected to terrible ill-treatment by representatives of the German Army and were even shot by them.”

Concrete examples of crimes known to the authors are quoted further on in the text. Hans Drews, of Regenwalde, a soldier of Company 4 of the 6th Tank Regiment, stated:

“I am acquainted with the order issued by Lieutenant General Model to the 3rd Tank Division to the effect that prisoners should not be taken. A similar order was issued by Major General Nehring, commanding officer of the 18th Tank Division. Two days prior to the attack on Russia we were told at the briefing session of 20 June that in the forthcoming campaign wounded Red Army men should not have their wounds dressed, since the German Army would have no time to bother with the wounded.”

The fact of the preliminary issuance of this order also has been confirmed by a soldier of the 18th Tank Division Headquarters, Harry Marek, a native of the neighborhood of Breslau:

“On 21 June, a day before the beginning of the war against Russia, we received the following order from our offices:

“ ‘The commissars of the Red Army are to be shot on the spot, since there is no need to stand upon any ceremony with them. Neither is there any necessity to bother ourselves unduly with the Russian wounded; they must be finished off immediately.’ ”

Wilhelm Metzick, a soldier of the 399th Infantry Regiment of the 170th Division, from Hamburg-Altona, quotes the following case:

“On 23 June, when we entered Russia, we came to a small hamlet near Beltsa. There I saw with my own eyes how two German soldiers shot five Russian prisoners in the back with submachine guns.”

Wolfgang Scharte, a soldier in Company 2 of the 3rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, a native of Gerhardtschagen, near Brunswick, testified concerning the question of exterminating the Red commissars of the Red Army:

“On the day before we opened the campaign against the Soviet Union, the officers told us:

“ ‘If on the way you should happen to meet Russian commissars—they can always be recognized by the Soviet star on their sleeve—and Russian women in uniform, they must be shot immediately. Anyone failing to do so and to comply with this order will be held responsible and punished.’

“On 29 June I myself saw representatives of the German Army shoot wounded Red Army men lying in a field of grain near the town of Dubno. After this they were run through with bayonets to make quite sure that they were dead. German officers stood nearby and laughed.”

Joseph Berndsen of Oberhausen, a soldier of the 6th Tank Division, stated; “Even before entering Russia we were told, at one of the briefing sessions, ‘Commissars must be shot.’ ”

Jacob Korzillias, of Horforst, near Treves, a German officer, a lieutenant of the 112th Engineer Battalion of the 112th Infantry Division, certified:

“In a village near Bolva, 15 wounded Red Army men were thrown out of the hut where they were lying, stripped, and bayonetted on the order of Lieutenant Kierick, adjutant of the 112th Engineer Battalion. This was done with the knowledge of the division commander, Lieutenant General Mitt.”

Alois Goetz, from Hagenbach-am-Rhine, a soldier of Company 8 of the 427th Infantry Regiment, stated, “On 27 June, in a forest near Augustovo, two Red Army commissars were shot on the order of the battalion commander, Captain Wittmann.”

On Page 3 of our Exhibit Number USSR-62 we find the following statement by Paul Sender of Königsberg, a soldier of the 4th Platoon of Company 13, Infantry Field Artillery, attached to the 2d Infantry Regiment—Page 137 of the document book:

“On 14 July, on the road between Porchov and Staraya-Russa, Corporal Schneider, of Company 1 of the 2d Infantry Regiment, shot 12 captured Red Army men in the gutter. When I questioned him on the matter, Schneider answered, ‘Why should I bother with them? They are not even worth a bullet.’ I also know of another case.

“During the battles around Porchov, a Red Army man was captured. Shortly after he was shot by a corporal of Company 1. As soon as the Red Army soldier fell, the corporal took from his knapsack all the food in it.”

To conclude the reading of excerpts from the protest of the German prisoners of war, I should like to quote two more depositions by Fritz Rummler and Richard Gillig, respectively. We find their depositions at the bottom of Page 4. Fritz Rummler, a native of Strehlen in Silesia and a corporal of Company 9, Battalion 3, of the 518th Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division, reported the following cases—this excerpt is on Page 138 of the document book:

“In August, in the town of Zlatopol, I saw how two officers of the SS units and two soldiers shot two captured Red Army soldiers after first taking their army overcoats from them. These officers and soldiers belonged to the Panzer tank forces of General Von Kleist. In September the crew of a German tank on the road to Krasnograd crushed two captured Red Army soldiers to death with their tank. This act was inspired purely by lust for blood and murder. The tank commander was a noncommissioned officer, Schneider, belonging to Von Kleist’s Panzer forces. I saw how four captured Red Army soldiers were questioned in our battalion. This happened at Voroshilovsk. The Red Army soldiers refused to answer questions of a military nature asked by the battalion commander, Major Warnecke. He flew into a rage and with his own hands beat the prisoners unconscious.”

Corporal Richard Gillig, of the 9th Transportation Platoon, of the 34th Division, stated:

“Many a time I witnessed the inhuman and cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war. Before my own eyes and on the orders of their officers, German soldiers removed the boots from the captured Red Army soldiers and drove them on barefooted. I witnessed many such facts at Tarutino. I was an eyewitness of the following incident: One prisoner refused to surrender his boots voluntarily. Soldiers of the escort beat him till he could no longer move. I saw other prisoners being stripped, not only of their boots, but of their uniform clothing, right down to their underwear.”

I omit a few sentences and go on to the end of the statement.

“I saw, during the retreat of our column, near the town of Medyn, German soldiers beating up captured Red Army soldiers. One prisoner was very tired and unsteady on his legs. A soldier of the escort raced up to the captive and started kicking and beating him with the butt of his rifle. Other soldiers followed his example and the prisoner dropped dead when we reached the town.”

The statement reads on:

“It is no secret that, in the front line of the German Army division headquarters, specialists existed whose work it was to torture Red Army soldiers and Soviet officers in order to force them, in this manner, to disclose military orders and information.”

I submit to the Tribunal the photostat of this statement. You can see that there are 60 signatures appended to it by members of the German Armed Forces, with the indication of the regiments and smaller subdivisions to which they belonged.

I submit to the Tribunal four photographs of German origin. Each of these photographs was taken by Germans; time and place when the photographs were taken are indicated. One photograph shows the distribution of food; the third and fourth are pictures of the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman.

THE PRESIDENT: Where are the pictures?

COL. POKROVSKY: If I am not mistaken, you have been given the photostat of the statement, but not the photographs.

THE PRESIDENT: This is not a copy of the photographs; these are the signatures of the 60 German prisoners.

COL. POKROVSKY: The photographs will be submitted immediately. They have evidently, by an oversight, not been included in the document book.

THE PRESIDENT: Go on.

COL. POKROVSKY: It is obvious from the first picture that the food distributed is insufficient. Men are practically fighting for the right of getting at it. The second photograph shows hungry Soviet prisoners of war wandering round an empty barn and eating the oil cakes stored for cattle food and which they had discovered. As to the third and fourth photographs, I can submit to the Tribunal important testimony by the witness, Bingel. Excerpts from his testimony have a direct bearing on the question of the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war.

I interrogated Bingel myself and I now submit the minutes of his interrogation to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-111 (Document Number USSR-111), dated 27 December 1945. Bingel, who formerly commanded a company in the German Army, testified—I quote an excerpt from Page 8 of the minutes of his interrogation—as follows:

“A: Tn one of my reports I made a statement concerning the regime inside the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman. . . . This camp was guarded by a company of our subsection of the 783rd Battalion, and I was therefore familiar with everything which occurred in the camp. It was the task of this battalion to guard the prisoners of war and to control the highways and railroads.

“ ‘This camp was calculated to hold, under normal conditions, from 6,000 to 7,000 men; at that time, however, it housed 74,000 men.’

“Q: ‘Were there barracks?’

“A: ‘No. It was formerly a brickyard and consisted exclusively of low sheds for drying bricks.’

“Q: ‘Were the prisoners of war housed there?’

“A: ‘It can scarcely be said that they were housed, since each shed, at the utmost, could not contain more than 200 to 300 men; the rest had to sleep in the open.’

“Q: ‘What was the regime like at that camp?’

“A: ‘The regime in that camp was definitely peculiar. The existing conditions gave one the impression that the camp commander, Captain Bekker, was quite unable to handle and feed so large a number of men. There were two kitchens in the camp, although they could hardly be called kitchens. Iron barrels had been placed on stone and concrete floors, and the food for the prisoners was prepared in these barrels. But the kitchens, even if operating for 24 hours on end, could only prepare food for approximately 2,000 people daily. The usual diet for the prisoner was very insufficient. The daily ration for six men consisted of one loaf of bread which, again, could scarcely be described as bread. Disturbances frequently arose during the distribution of the hot food, for the prisoners—and there were 70,000 of them in the camp—struggled to get at the victuals. In cases like these the guards resorted to clubs—a usual procedure in the camp. I obtained the general impression that in all the camps the club was inevitably the foundation of all things.’ ”

Please forgive the digression, but I have been told, Your Honor, that two photographs are attached to the Record and that their authenticity is certified. I am now submitting them to the Tribunal. The other two will be handed to you very shortly. I continue to quote from the Record:

“Q: ‘Do you know anything about the death rate at the camp?’

“A: ‘Sixty to seventy men died at the camp daily.’

“Q: ‘From what causes?’

“A: ‘Before the epidemics broke out one mostly spoke of people being killed.’

“Q: ‘Killed during the distribution of food?’

“A: ‘Both during the distribution of food and during working hours; generally speaking, people were being killed all day long.’ ”

Bingel was interrogated by us for the second time, and he was shown the photographs of the camp at Uman. These are the same photographs that you now have in your hands, Your Honors. He was then asked the following question, “The camp shown here, is it the one you spoke about, or some other camp?” After this he was shown photographs from a negative, 13×18, of 14 August 1941 and from a negative, 13×22, of the same date. Bingel replied:

“Yes, this is the camp of which I spoke. As a matter of fact, this is not the camp proper but a clay pit belonging to the camp; here the prisoners were housed as soon as they arrived from the front. Later on they were assigned to various sections of the camp.”

“Q: ‘What can you tell us about the second photograph?’

“A: ‘The second one shows the camp photographed from another angle, that is, from the right side. The buildings shown here were practically the only brick buildings in the camp. These brick buildings, though quite empty and undamaged, with excellent and spacious quarters, were not used for housing the prisoners of war.’ ”

It is difficult to say whether or not that what the Hitlerites did to the Soviet prisoners of war at the so-called “Grosslazarett” of the town of Slavuta, in the Kamenetzk-Podolsky region, should be considered as the limit of human vileness. Be that as it may, the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites at the “Grosslazarett” is one of the darkest pages in the annals of fascist crime.

I submit to the Tribunal, as Exhibit Number USSR-5 (Document Number USSR-5), the report of the Extraordinary State Commission, and I shall read into the Record several excerpts from the report itself, as well as from the appendices thereto.

“On the expulsion of the fascist hordes from the town of Slavuta, units of the Red Army discovered, on the site of the restricted military area, the establishment which the Germans called the ‘Grosslazarett’ for Soviet prisoners of war. Over 500 emaciated, critically sick men were found in the ‘Lazarett.’ The interrogation of these men and the special investigation carried out by medico-forensic experts and by experts of the Central Institute for Food, of the People’s Commissariat for Health in the U.S.S.R., led to a detailed reconstruction of the extermination of an immense number of Soviet prisoners of war in that appalling institution.”

You will find the passage I am about to quote on Page 153 of the document book:

“In the fall of 1941, German fascist invaders occupied the town of Slavuta, where they organized a ‘Lazarett’ for wounded and sick officers and men of the Red Army, under the name of Grosslazarett, Slavuta, Teillager 301.

“The ‘Lazarett’ was located about 1½ to 2 kilometers to the southeast of Slavuta and occupied 10 three-storied stone buildings. The Hitlerites surrounded all these buildings by a strong barbed wire fence. All along the barbed wire, 10 meters apart, towers were built, in which guns, searchlights, and guards were placed.

“The administrative staff, the German doctors and the guard of the ‘Grosslazarett,’ the latter represented by the commanding officer, Captain Plank (later replaced by Major Pavlisk), the deputy commander, Kronsdorfer, Captain Boye, Dr. Borbe, with his deputy, Dr. Sturm, Master Sergeant Ilseman, and Technical Sergeant Bekker carried out a mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by imposing a special regime of hunger, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, by torture and direct murder, by depriving the sick and wounded of all medical assistance, and by subjecting utterly exhausted men to heavy labor.”

The Extraordinary State Commission refers to the “Grosslazarett” as the “Hospital of Death.” I shall quote a short excerpt from a section under the selfsame name. It is on Page 3 of the Russian original and on Page 153 of the document book:

“The German authorities concentrated at the ‘Grosslazarett’ 15,000 to 18,000 severely and slightly wounded Soviet prisoners of war, together with prisoners suffering from various contagious and noncontagious diseases.

“To replace the ranks of the dead, fresh batches of sick and wounded prisoners of war were continually brought in. On the journey the captives were tortured, starved, and murdered. The Hitlerites threw out hundreds of corpses from each car of the incoming transports as they reached the ‘Lazarett.’ ”

According to data received from the investigating commission, 800 to 900 dead bodies would be thrown out of each train as it unloaded at a branch line. A further report of the Commission states:

“Thousands of Soviet prisoners on the march perished from hunger, thirst, lack of care, and the savage club-law of the German guards . . . as a routine practice the Hitlerites would greet a group of prisoners at the ‘Lazarett’ gates with blows from rifle butts and rubber truncheons, after which the new arrivals would be stripped of their leather footwear, warm clothing, and personal belongings.”

In the next section, on the same page, the State Commission reports that infectious diseases were deliberately spread among the prisoners of war by German medical officers in the “Lazarett”:

“In the ‘Grosslazarett’ the German medical officers artificially created an incredible state of overcrowding. The prisoners were forced to stand close to each other; they succumbed to exhaustion, dropped down, and died.”

The fascists resorted to various methods for reducing the living room in the “Lazarett”. A former prisoner of war, I.Y. Chuazhev, reported that:

“The Germans reduced the floor space in the ‘Lazarett’ by firing off submachine guns, since the prisoners, perforce, pressed more closely to each other; then the Hitlerites pushed in more sick and wounded and the door was closed.”

The premeditated spreading of infectious diseases in this death camp, derisively named a “Lazarett,” was achieved by extremely primitive means:

“Patients suffering from spotted fever, tuberculosis, or dysentery, severely and lightly wounded cases, were one and all put in the same block and the same ward.”

In a ward intended, under normal conditions, to hold not more than 400 patients, the number of spotted fever and tuberculosis cases alone amounted to 1800.

“The rooms were never cleaned. The sick remained, for months on end, in the same underclothes in which they were captured. They slept on the bare boards. Many were half-undressed, others entirely naked. The buildings were unheated, and the primitive stoves, constructed by the prisoners themselves, fell to pieces. There was no water for washing in this ‘Lazarett,’ not even for drinking. As a result of these unsanitary conditions, the ‘hospital’ was, to a monstrous extent, overrun by lice.”

Annihilation by the premeditated spreading of diseases went hand in hand with starvation. The daily food ration consisted of 250 grams of ersatz bread and two liters of so-called “Balanda soup.” The flour used for baking the bread for sick and wounded prisoners of war was brought from Germany. Fifteen tons of flour were discovered in one of the “Lazarett” storerooms. The factory-packed paper bags, containing 40 kilos each, bore a label with the word “Spelzmehl.” Samples of this ersatz flour were sent for analysis to the Central Food Institute of the People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the U.S.S.R.

I present the document dealing with the annihilation of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites in the “Grosslazarett” as Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), (Document Number USSR-5(a)). On Pages 9, 10, and 11 of this document the Tribunal can see the photostat of the Central Food Institute’s report.

This report was established on the one hand on the basis of an analysis made by the field military laboratory and, on the other hand, on the basis of an analysis carried out in the Central Food Institute itself. Sample bakings of bread were made from the ersatz flour and from the ersatz flour mixed with a small addition of real flour. It seems that it was impossible to bake a loaf with ersatz flour alone. The Institute’s report states:

“It is evident that the bread was made with the addition of a certain quantity of natural flour for binding the dough. A diet of this so-called ‘bread,’ in the absence of all other food and food products of a full dietetic value, inevitably led to starvation and acute exhaustion.”

The analysis proved that the “flour” consisted of nothing but straw chopped evenly though rather roughly. Some particles were 2 and some 3 millimeters in length. Under the microscope, in every optical field of vision—according to the report—we discovered, “Together with food and vegetable fiber, minute quantities of grains of starch, resembling grains of oats in structure.” The Institute came to the conclusion that “The use of this bread, owing to the irritant action of the soft crumb, resulted in diseases of the digestive tract.”

Anticipating a little, I should like to report the results of the medico-legal autopsies performed on 112 corpses exhumed from Site Number 1 and of the external examination of approximately 500 bodies. In the first instance exhaustion was proved to have caused the death of 96 victims. In the second case, as stated in the findings—see Page 7—mentioned in Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), (Document Number USSR-5(a)):

“The statement that exhaustion was the fundamental cause of mortality in the prisoners’ camp was likewise proved by the results of the external examinations of some 500 corpses, when it was disclosed that the proportion of victims dead of acute exhaustion had approached 100 percent.”

A little further on, in the same report, in Subparagraph “d” of Paragraph 5, the experts, supported by numerous witnesses, state that the diet in the Slavuta “Grosslazarett” can be characterized as completely useless for human consumption. I quote, “Bread contained 64 percent sawdust; ‘Balanda soup’ was made of rotten potatoes with the addition of refuse, rat-droppings, et cetera.”

Such prisoners of war who had survived the tyranny of the Hitler hangmen and had lived to see the liberation of Slavuta declared—I quote an excerpt from Page 4 of Exhibit Number USSR-5, Page 153 of the document book:

“In the ‘Grosslazarett’ we periodically observed outbreaks of a mysterious disease of an unknown nature, referred to as ‘para-cholera’ by the German doctors. The appearance of ‘para-cholera’ was the result of barbarous experiments by the German doctors. These outbreaks would vanish as suddenly as they appeared. The mortality rate in ‘para-cholera’ rose to 60-80 percent. German physicians performed autopsies on the bodies of some of the victims, and no captured Russian medical officers were admitted to these autopsies.”

In conclusion, it is stated in Subparagraph 8 of the medico-legal expert report—Page 7 of Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), Page 159 of the document book—that:

“No objective circumstances can justify the conditions under which the prisoners of war were housed in the camp. All the more, since it has been revealed by thoroughgoing investigations that there were enormous food supplies in the German military depots at Slavuta and that both medical supplies and surgical bandages abounded in the military dispensaries.”

The “Grosslazarett” staff included a considerable number of medical personnel. Nevertheless, according to the statement of the government commission, sick and wounded officers and men of the Red Army did not receive even the most elementary medical attention. And how could there be any talk of medical attention when the entire object of the “Grosslazarett” was directly opposed to such assistance? The administration of the “Grosslazarett” not only strove to destroy the prisoners of war physically, but they also endeavored to fill the last days of the sick and wounded with suffering and anguish.

One part of the commission’s statement is entitled “Torture and shooting of Soviet prisoners of war.” I shall read into the Record a passage taken from this part. It is on Page 4, Exhibit Number USSR-5, Page 153 of the document book:

“Soviet prisoners of war in the ‘Grosslazarett’ were subjected to torture and torment, beaten up when food was distributed and again when setting out to work. Even the dying were not spared by the fascist murderers. The medico-legal examination of the exhumed corpses revealed, among a number of other bodies of prisoners of war, the body of a prisoner who, in his death agony, had been wounded in the groin with a knife. He had been thrown into his grave while still alive, with the knife sticking in the wound, and was then covered over with earth.

“One method of mass torture in the ‘Lazarett’ consisted in locking the sick and wounded in a detention cell—a room without heat and with a concrete floor. The prisoners in this cell were left without food for days on end, and many died there. In order to exhaust the ill and weak prisoners still further, the Hitlerites forced the sick and enfeebled patients to run round the ‘Lazarett’ building; those who could not run were flogged almost to death. There were many cases where the German guards murdered the prisoners just for fun.

“A former prisoner of war, Buchtichyuk, reported how the Germans threw the intestines of dead horses on the barbed wire surrounding the interior of the camp. When the prisoners, maddened with hunger, ran up to the barbed wire, the guards opened fire on them with submachine guns. The witness, Kirsanov, saw one prisoner of war bayonetted for picking up a potato tuber. A former prisoner of war, Shatalov, was an eyewitness to the shooting of a prisoner by his escort merely for trying to obtain a second helping of ‘Balanda soup.’

“In February 1942 Shatalov saw a sentry wound a prisoner who was searching the garbage heap for remnants of food left over from the kitchen of the German personnel; the wounded man was immediately brought to the pit, stripped, and executed.”

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.

[The Tribunal adjourned until 14 February 1946 at 1000 hours.]

FIFTY-NINTH DAY
Thursday, 14 February 1946