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

by Various

Afternoon Session

COL. POKROVSKY: Point 7 of the general conclusions of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, on which I reported in the preceding session, states:

“The conclusions reached, after studying the affidavits and medico-legal examinations concerning the shooting of Polish military prisoners of war by Germans in the autumn of 1941, fully confirmed the material evidence and documents discovered in the Katyn graves.

“8. By shooting the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest, the German fascist invaders consistently realized their policy for the physical extermination of the Slav peoples.”

Here follow the signatures of all the members of the Commission.

The Katyn massacres did not exhaust the Hitler crimes against the soldiers of the Polish Army. In the report of the Polish Government, submitted by me to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-93 (Document Number USSR-93), we find a series of proofs confirming the breach by the Hitlerite conspirators of the elementary rules of international law governing the customs and laws of war; on Page 36 of this report by the Polish Government—it is on Page 285 of your document book—we find, as an outstanding part of the material collected, the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and their extermination. It is said in the report—and I quote:

“As and when the Polish officers and other ranks returned from German prisoner-of-war camps, we learn further details concerning conditions prevailing in the German camps. All these details undeniably prove the existence of a line of policy, instructions, and orders concerning the Polish prisoners of war. Ill-treatment, hardship, and inhuman conditions were of common occurrence. Murders and grievous bodily injuries were frequently encountered. A few examples confirmed by witnesses under oath are submitted later on.”

I take the liberty of reading into the record some of the examples quoted in the Polish report. As a first example, I shall quote the description of an incident which occurred in a temporary prisoner-of-war camp in the city of Belsk. This material figures on Page 285 of your document book:

“On 10 October 1939 the camp commandant assembled all the prisoners and ordered those who had joined the Polish Army as volunteers to raise their hands. Three prisoners obeyed his order. They were immediately led out of the rank and placed at a distance of 25 meters from a detachment of German soldiers armed with machine guns. The commandant gave the order to open fire. He then spoke to the remaining prisoners and told them that the three volunteers had been shot as an example to the others.”

In this case we are not faced with the simple murder of three unarmed soldiers of the Polish Army. . . .

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel, you forgive my interrupting you, but you remember that I have interrupted all the other prosecutors to point out to them that one opening speech had been made on behalf of their delegation, and that really their function was to present the documents.

Now, you have just presented a document which states that three volunteers were shot. I think that any comment upon that is really unnecessary.

COL. POKROVSKY: I now proceed to the quotation of the second excerpt on Page 37, Subparagraph d—Page 226 of your document book:

“In the autumn of 1939 Camp (Stalag) VIII-S was established in Kounau, near Sagan on the River Bober, a tributary of the Oder. Depositions from this camp read as follows:

“The camp in Kounau was an open space surrounded by barbed wire, with large tents, each holding 180 or 200 persons. In spite of very cold weather (the temperature was below 25 degrees centigrade) there was, in December 1939, no heating appliance whatsoever in the camp. Consequently, some of the internees suffered from frozen hands, feet, and ears. Since the prisoners had no blankets and since their uniforms were too worn out to protect them from the cold, disease broke out, while malnutrition resulted in extreme debility. Moreover, the guards constantly ill-treated the prisoners. They were beaten on the slightest pretext. Two men were especially noted for their brutality, Lieutenant Schinke and Sergeant Major Grau. They hit the prisoners in the face and beat them, broke their ribs and arms, and gouged out their eyes. Such inhuman treatment resulted in several cases of suicide and insanity among the soldiers.”

I think we can now pass on at once to the general conclusions and to read into the Record to this end Subparagraph g on Page 39—Page 287 of the document book:

“The above-mentioned treatment of Polish prisoners of war by individuals as well as by the German military authorities, flagrantly violated the articles of the Geneva Convention of 1929, Articles 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 29, 30, 50, and 54. The convention in question had been ratified by Germany on 21 February 1934.”

Soldiers of the Yugoslav Army, captured by the German troops, were subjected to unbridled ill-treatment by the fascist invaders. Ill-treatment, torture, and torment, together with mass executions were introduced as a part of the system. Here, too, the Hitler criminals were perfectly aware of what they were doing. To whitewash themselves, if only a little, in the eyes of the world, they referred in all documents concerning the destruction of Yugoslav prisoners of war, to the officers and men of the Yugoslav Army as “bandits.”

The second paragraph from the bottom of Page 23 of the official Yugoslav report with regard to the above matter reads as follows—I quote Page 23 of Document Number USSR-305. This quotation begins on Page 326 of your document book:

“. . . everywhere where the Germans used the so-called actions against ‘bands and bandits’ as a pretext for the annihilation of the civilian population (women, children, and old people), units of the Yugoslav National Army of Liberation and partisan units had actually been involved. . . .

“Being under military command and wearing recognizable military emblems and insignia, they conducted an armed struggle against the fascist occupational forces and, moreover, they were fully recognized by all the Allies. Besides, we will see later on that on some of its documents, the German Command itself unmistakably recognized this fact; but in its attitude towards the Yugoslav warriors it continued unrestrainedly to violate the principles of the international laws of war.”

As an additional confirmation of the report, the form of which is in accordance with the requirements of Article 21 of the Charter concerning the admissibility of evidence, I also submit to the Tribunal Document Number USSR-305. This is an excerpt from the report by the Yugoslav State Commission concerning the determination of crimes committed by the occupational forces and their accomplices. The State Commission reports that there is at its disposal a secret report by Lieutenant General Hoesslin, the officer in command of the 188th Mountain Infantry Reserve Division, numbered 9070/44. The report is of great importance because of the following considerations which I will explain to the Tribunal in the terms of Document Number USSR-305. I quote:

“Although the report refers to our divisions, brigades, and artillery battalions under their proper names and proper numbers—in cases of military engagements—all our army is called in this report by the general name of ‘bandits,’ and for the very simple reason that by so doing they are attempting to divest us of the rights of belligerents, they themselves assuming the right to shoot prisoners of war, to kill the wounded, and to have a pretext for employing repressive measures against the peaceful non-combatant population, allegedly because of their assistance to the ‘bandits.’ Lieutenant General Hoesslin admits that the combat group of Colonel Christel after ‘a night engagement with weak bandit forces’—these are the precise words of the report—‘burnt down Laskovitz, Lazna, and Cepovan, and destroyed a hospital.’

“In General Hoesslin’s report it is further stated that the division, together with the 3rd Brandenburg Regiment and other German army and police units, participated in ‘a free-for-all manhunt for bandits in the neighborhood of Klana’ (Operation Ernst). . . .”

I submit to the Tribunal Exhibit Number USSR-132 (Document Number USSR-132), Page 363 of your document book. This represents an excerpt from the directives issued by Major General Kübler concerning the conduct of troops in action, an extract which was certified by the Yugoslav State Commission. I read these excerpts into the Record:

“Secret; 118th Jäger Division; Abt Ic; Br. B. No. 1418/43 secret; Div. Hqs., 12. 5. 1943.

“Directives for the Conduct of Troops in Action.

“2. Prisoners:

“Anyone having participated openly in the fight against the German Armed Forces and having been taken prisoner is to be shot after interrogation.”

I further submit to the Tribunal Exhibit Number USSR-304 (Document Number USSR-304). This number has been given to the excerpt from Memorandum Number 6 of the Yugoslav State Commission for the determination of the crimes committed by the occupational forces and by their accomplices. In the last paragraph of Exhibit Number USSR-304—Page 2 of the Russian text—is stated as follows—your Page 365 of the document book:

“On 3 May 1945 the Germans brought from one of the partisan hospitals 35 manacled patients and hospital orderlies. Ten of the patients who were unable to walk were stood against the wall and shot. Their bodies were piled in a heap, covered with wood and set on fire.”

As Exhibit Number USSR-307 (Document Number USSR-307) I submit another extract from statement Number 6 of the same State Commission. This statement is found on Page 85 to 115 of the first book entitled “Memoranda on Crimes Committed by the Occupation Forces and their Accomplices.” I shall now proceed to quote a part of this extract:

“On 5 June 1944 Hitler’s criminals captured two soldiers of the Yugoslav Liberation Army and the Slovene Partisan Detachments. They brought them to Razori, where they cut off their noses and ears with bayonets, gouged out their eyes and then asked them if they could see their Comrade Tito. Thereupon they assembled the peasants and beheaded the two victims in their presence. . . . They then placed both the heads on a table.”

In accordance with their usual practice of photographing the bodies of their victims, the fascists then took photographs, and, as is further stated in the extract quoted by me:

“Later, in the course of the fighting, the photographs were found on a fallen German. From this it can be seen that they confirm the above described incident at Razori.”

These pictures will be submitted to the Tribunal together with other Yugoslav photographic evidence.

Under Document USSR-65(a) I submit to the Tribunal an announcement signed by the Commander of the SS and police detachments of the 18th Military District, SS Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of Police, Rösener. I shall now proceed to read into the Record a part of this announcement. You will thus be able to see that the warriors of the Yugoslav Armed Forces who were taken prisoner were either hanged or shot. This document is on Page 367 of your document book, “In connection with the various clashes between police detachments and Yugoslav units. . . .”

I skip several sentences of this document concerning a description of the encounters between detachments of Polish and Yugoslav units.

“Eighteen bandits were recently killed in action and a considerable number taken prisoner.

“The following bandits, who were among the prisoners, were publicly hanged at Stein on 30 June 1942. . . .”

This statement is followed by the names of eight Yugoslav soldiers between the ages of 21 and 40 years. I will not read this list into the Record.

On Page 36 of our Exhibit Number USSR-36 (Document Number USSR-36)—your Page 339—the first paragraph from the bottom reads, “We can find the identical evidence in a collection of official notes on the staff conferences of Gauleiter Uiberreiter.” Thus, for example, it is stated in the minutes of the conference held on 23 March 1942, “Fifteen bandits were executed in Maribor today.” I omit some sentences from the minutes of the conference held on 27 July 1942, “Many bandits have been shot recently.”

The minutes of the conference of 21 December 1941 contain a passage:

“Since the bandits started their activities in July 1941, 164 bandits have been shot by the uniformed police and 1,043 by special procedure (Sonderverfahren).”

The minutes of 25 January 1943 state:

“The number of guerilla troops liquidated on 8 January 1942 by the Security Police and the uniformed branch is 86, including wounded and prisoners, 77 of whom were killed.”

Such notes can be found in almost every one of the minutes of these conferences held by Uiberreiter.

A certain number of prisoners of war who had escaped immediate annihilation were moved into special camps where they were gradually killed off by hunger and by exhausting heavy labor. I will now read into the Record the last paragraph on Page 37 of the report of the Yugoslav Government, which was previously mentioned by me and offered in evidence as Exhibit Number USSR-36. It is on Page 340 of the document book:

“One such camp was established in 1942 at Boten, near Rognan. Nearly 1,000 Yugoslav prisoners of war were brought into this camp; and in the course of a few months all of them, to the last man, died of illness, hunger, physical torture, or execution by shooting. They were forced every day to do the very hardest work on a road and some dams. Their working hours lasted from dawn until 1800 hours, under the worst possible climatic conditions in this far northern part of Norway. During their work the prisoners were beaten incessantly and in the camp, itself, were exposed to terrible ill-treatment.

“Thus, for example, in August 1942 the prisoners were ordered by the German staff of the camp to have all their hair removed from their armpits and around their genitals, as otherwise they would be shot. Not one prisoner received a razor from the Germans, though the Germans knew well that they had none. The prisoners spent the whole of the night plucking out their hair with their hands and assisting one another. However, in the morning the guards killed four prisoners and wounded three by rifle fire.

“On 26 November 1943, German soldiers, in the middle of the night, broke into the hospital and dragged out into the courtyard 80 sick prisoners; after they had been forced to strip in the bitter cold, they were all shot. On 26 January 1943, 50 more prisoners died in torment from the beatings received. Throughout the winter many prisoners were killed in the following manner: They would be buried up to their waist in the snow, and water poured over them, so that they formed statues of ice. It was established that 880 Yugoslav prisoners of war were killed in the above-mentioned camp in various ways.”

Further, on Page 38, Exhibit Number USSR-36 (Document Number USSR-36), information is contained of the shooting of Yugoslav prisoners of war in the camp at Bajsfjord, Norway. After 10 July 1942, when an epidemic of spotted fever broke out in the camp and spread to six others, the Germans found no other way of fighting this epidemic than by shooting all the patients. This was done on 17 July 1942. On the same page, 38, there is a reference to a Norwegian report of 22 January 1942, compiled on a basis of statements made by Norwegian guards of this camp who had fled. It is stated in this report that of 900 Yugoslav prisoners of war, 320 were shot, while the remainder, with a view to isolating them, were transferred to another camp, Bjerfjel. I will read into the Record Page 38 of Exhibit Number USSR-36, beginning with the fifth paragraph from the bottom, Page 341 of your document book:

“When an epidemic of spotted fever broke out in the new camp, an average of 12 men a day were shot in the course of the following 5 to 6 weeks. By the end of August 1942 only 350 of these prisoners were returned to Bajsfjord, where German SS troops continued to exterminate them. In the end only 200 men remained alive and were transferred to camp Osen.”

I will now skip two paragraphs and pass to the last paragraph of the same report:

“On 22 June 1943 a transport containing 900 Yugoslav prisoners arrived in Norway. Most of them were intellectuals, workers and peasants, and prisoners from the ranks of the former Yugoslav Army or else captured partisans or men seized as so-called ‘politically suspicious elements.’ Some of them—about 400—were placed in the still unfinished camp at Korgen, while the other group of about 500 was sent 10 to 20 kilometers further on to Osen. The commandant of both camps, from June 1942 until the end of March 1943, was the SS Sturmbannführer Dolps. . . .

“Men were constantly dying of hunger. Forty-five were placed in a hut which normally accommodated six men only. . . . There was no medicine. . . . They worked under most difficult conditions on road building, in the bitter cold, without clothing and caps, in the wind and rain, 12 hours a day.

“The prisoners in the camp at Osen used to sleep in their shirts without any underpants, without any cover whatsoever, on the bare boards. Dolps personally visited the huts and carried out inspections. The prisoners who were caught sleeping in their underpants were killed on the spot by Dolps with his submachine gun. In the same manner he killed all those who appeared on parade, which he reviewed personally, in soiled underwear. . . . By the end of 1942 only 90 still remained alive of the first group of 400 in Korgen. Out of about 500 prisoners who were taken to the camp of Osen by the end of June 1942, there were, in March 1943, only 30 men left alive.”

I will read into the record an excerpt from Page 39, Exhibit Number USSR-36 beginning with the third paragraph from the bottom, Page 342 of your document book:

“Besides this terrible treatment of the captured soldiers of the Yugoslav National Army of Liberation and the Partisan Detachments, the Germans also treated prisoners of war from the ranks of the old Yugoslav Army in complete contravention of international law and contrary to the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, of 1929. In April 1941, immediately after the occupation of the Yugoslav territory, the Germans drove into captivity in Germany about 300,000 noncommissioned officers and men. The Yugoslav State Commission has at its disposal much evidence of the unlawful ill-treatment of these prisoners. We shall give here a few examples only.

“On 14 July 1943 in the officers’ SS camp at Osnabrück, 740 captured Yugoslav officers were separated from the remainder and placed in a special penitentiary camp called Camp D. Here they were all crowded together in four huts; all contact with the rest of the camp was prohibited. The treatment of these officers directly contravened the provisions of the Geneva Convention even more so than the treatment of the other prisoners. In this penitentiary camp were placed all those whom the Germans considered as supporters of the National-Liberation movement and against whom they very frequently applied measures of mass punishments.

“The Germans gambled with the lives of the prisoners and frequently shot them from sheer caprice. Thus, for instance, at the aforesaid camp at Osnabrück, on 11 January 1942, a German guard fired at a group of prisoners, severely wounding Captain Peter Nozinic. On 22 July 1942 a guard fired on a group of officers. On 2 September 1942, a guard fired on the Yugoslav lieutenant, Vladislav Vajs, who was incapacitated by a wound he had received some time before. On 22 September 1942, a guard from the prison tower again fired on a group of officers. On 18 December 1942 the guard fired on a group of officers because, from their huts, they were watching some English prisoners passing by. On 20 February 1943 a guard fired on an officer merely because this officer was smoking. On 11 March 1943 a guard opened fire on the doors of a hut and killed General Dimitri Pavlovic. On 21 June 1943 a guard fired at the Yugoslav lieutenant colonel, Branko Popanic. On 26 April 1944 a German noncommissioned officer, Richards, fired on Lieutenant Vladislav Gaider, who subsequently died of his wounds.

“On 26 June 1944 the German captain, Kuntze, fired on two Yugoslav officers, severely wounding Lieutenant Djorjevic.

“All these shootings were carried out without any serious reasons or pretext and only as a result of brutal orders issued by the German camp commandants, who threatened that firearms would be used even in the case of the most insignificant offenses.

“All these incidents occurred in one single camp. But this was the treatment applied in all the remaining camps for Yugoslav officers and soldiers—captives in the hands of the Germans.”

A certain incident is described in the Czechoslovak Government report which I should like to mention here. Its importance lies not in the fact that it throws a new light on the methods employed in fascist crimes but that it took place at the time when the Hitlerites clearly realized that their days were numbered. This incident is described in Appendix 4 to the Czechoslovak Government’s report, and I shall describe it briefly and in my own words.

There was an airfield at Gavlichkov Brod at which various military installations were located, while the former lunatic asylum was used as an SS hospital. When the question arose regarding the formalities for the surrender of the German military units at the airfield—in 1945—Staff Captain Sula with one of his fellow officers as official representative of the Czechoslovak Army took himself to the airfield. Neither of them ever came back. Later the airfield and the hospital were occupied by the Czech national units and an investigation was carried out. It showed that the negotiators, together with six other persons who had previously disappeared at Gavlichkov Brod, were taken by the Germans to the SS hospital where they were subjected to cruel tortures. In the case of Captain Sula the Germans cut out his tongue, gouged out his eyes, and cut his chest open. The others suffered similar treatment. Most of them had been castrated. I am in possession of photographic evidence in support of this fact which I am submitting to the Tribunal.

My presentation has lasted several hours. But surely, neither time nor any word of living human speech will ever suffice to describe even a thousandth part of the sufferings borne by the soldiers of my fatherland and of the other democratic countries who had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the fascist executioners.

I have only been able to show the Tribunal, in a very condensed form, the manner in which the monstrous fascist directives regarding the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and their mass extermination were carried out, an ill-treatment before which the horrors of the Middle Ages pale.

We shall here attempt, if only quite briefly, to fill in the gaps. In tens of thousands the witnesses will pass before your eyes. They have been called before the Tribunal to testify in this case. I cannot summon them by name, no oath will you ever administer to them and yet their evidence will never be denied—for the dead do not lie. Most of the films pertaining to German atrocities which will be presented by the Soviet Prosecution pertain to crimes against prisoners of war. The silent testimony of the helpless prisoners burned alive in hospitals, of prisoners mutilated beyond all recognition, of prisoners tortured and starved to death will, I am certain, be far more eloquent than any word of mine.

Blood drips from the hands of the accused—the blood of the victims of Rostov and Kharkov, the martyrs of Auschwitz and all the extermination camps created by the Hitlerites. Treacherously the enemy attacked our country. The people rose in arms to defend their mother country, her freedom, and her independence, the honor and lives of their families. They joined the ranks of the fighting men. They fell into the hands of the enemy. Now see how the enemy dishonored them when they stood helpless and unarmed.

So may these major criminals, who bear the main responsibility for the evil deeds of the fascists, be forced to answer to the martyrs to the full extent of the law of international justice for the indescribable atrocities which you will see with your own eyes, and for the many other crimes which will forever remain unknown.

Allow me to present to the Tribunal Chief Counsellor L. N. Smirnov, Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R., who will submit to the Tribunal the documentation pertaining to the crimes committed against the civilian population of the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Your Honors, my problem today consists of presenting to you the written documents and other judicial evidence testifying to the very grievous crimes committed by the Hitlerian conspirators against the peaceful population in the territories of the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia when under temporary occupation.

The number of such depositions at the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution is unusually great. Suffice it to say that in the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the determination and investigation of the atrocities of the German fascist invaders and the accomplices, there are 54,784 reports of the crimes by the Hitlerian criminals, directed against the peaceful citizens of the Soviet Union.

But even these documents do not, by a long way, cover all the crimes perpetrated by these war criminals against the peaceful population. The Soviet Prosecution asserts and I submit to the Tribunal evidence to this effect, that along the entire length of the far-flung front, from the Barents to the Black Sea, and throughout the entire depths of the infiltration of the German hordes into my mother country, wherever the German soldier or the men of the SS set foot, crimes of unspeakable cruelty were committed and the victims of these crimes were the women, the children, and the old.

The crimes of the German fascist criminals became apparent as and when the Red Army units moved west. The reports on these Hitlerite crimes against the peaceful population were made by officers of the advance units of the Red Army, by local authorities, and public organizations.

The Soviet people did not, in the first moment, learn of the crimes of the German fascist invaders from circulars of the German Command, from the notices posted up by the Reich leaders, or from the directives issued by the SS Obergruppenführers both in incoming and outgoing bulletins of the competent German chancelleries, although such documents were captured in very large quantities by the advance units of the Red Army and are currently in the possession of the Soviet Prosecution. Far different were the sources of their information. Returning to their native haunts the soldiers of the Army of Liberation saw the many villages, towns, and cities which had been reduced to so much wasteland.

At the foot of the communal graves where rest the bodies of the Soviet people murdered by “typical German methods”—I shall, later on, present to the Tribunal evidence of these methods and of the regularity of their application—at the foot of the gallows where the feet of the adolescents danced on the air, at the ovens of the gigantic crematories where the murdered internees from the extermination camps were burned, at the sight of the dead women and girls, victims of some sadistic whim of the fascist bandits, at the sight of children, who had been torn in half—by all this evidence did the Soviet people recognize the mighty chain of crime extending, as the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. so aptly said, “from the ministerial armchair to the hands of the executioner.”

All these monstrous crimes had a definite system of their own. There was uniformity in the murder methods: One and the same system prevailed in the construction of the gas chambers, in the mass production of the round tins containing the poisonous substances “Cyclone A” or “Cyclone B,” the ovens of the crematories are all built on the same typical lines, and one was the plan extending over all the camps of destruction. There was uniformity in the construction of the evil-smelling death machines, which the Germans referred to as “gaswagen” but which our people called the “soul destroyers”; and there was the same technical elaboration in the construction of mobile mills for grinding human bones. All this indicates one sole and evil will uniting all the individual assassins and executioners.

It became obvious that German thermotechnicians and chemists, architects, toxicologists, mechanics, and physicians were engaged in this rationalization of mass murder on instructions received from Hitler’s government and from the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces. It was also evident that the “death factories” brought into existence an entire series of auxiliary industries.

But the unity of this will-to-evil was not only apparent there, where a special technique had been evolved to serve the purpose of very evil murder. The unity of this will-to-evil was also apparent from the similarity of the methods employed by the murderers, from the uniformity of type in the murder technique evolved as well as from the fact that, in cases where no special technique was employed, use was made of ordinary weapons of the German Armed Forces.

From the evidence which I shall submit later on you will see that the sites where the Germans buried their victims were opened up by Soviet legal doctors in the north and south of the country. These sites were separated from each other by thousands of kilometers, and it is quite evident that the crimes were perpetrated by perfectly different people; but the methods employed were absolutely identical. The wounds were invariably inflicted on the same parts of the body. And identical, too, were the preparations for camouflaging the gigantic graves as antitank ditches and trenches. Everywhere the unarmed and defenseless people, on their arrival at the execution ground, were ordered, in practically the same terms, to undress and lie face downwards in previously prepared pits. As soon as the first batch was shot, whether in the swamps of Bielorussia or the foothills of the Caucasus, the row was covered with quicklime and the second batch of unarmed and defenseless people, of people about to die, were again ordered by the murderers to undress and lie down on that corrosive, blood-soaked mass which covered the first batch of victims.

This is testified to not only by the uniformity of instructions and orders received from high commands. So similar were the methods employed that it became clear that execution squads were being trained in special schools which had systematized beforehand and provided for every eventuality, from the order to undress prior to the shooting right down to the shooting proper. These assumptions, based on an analysis of assembled facts, were later confirmed by documents captured by the Red Army and by the testimony of prisoners of war.

From the very first months of the war it became clear to the Soviet Government that the innumerable crimes of the German fascist aggressors against the peaceful citizens of my mother country represented, not the excesses of undisciplined military units or the isolated crimes of individual officers and soldiers, but that they represented a system prepared in advance, not merely sanctioned by the criminal Hitler Government, but consciously planned and encouraged by this government.

I submit to the Tribunal in evidence according to Article 21 of the Charter, one of the official notes of V. M. Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the U.S.S.R., dated as early as 6 January 1942. This document is registered as Exhibit Number USSR-51 (Document Number USSR-51). It is on the first page of your document book, beginning at the third paragraph after the heading:

“As and when the Red Army, in the course of its continued and victorious counter-offensive, liberated numerous cities and rural committees which had, for a certain time, been in the hands of the German invader, an incredible picture emerged more clearly with every passing day—a picture of the looting which took place in every community, of general devastation, of revolting acts of rape, ill-treatment, and mass murder—all committed against peaceful citizens by the fascist German occupational forces during their advance, during the occupation, and during their withdrawal. The great amount of documentary material which the Soviet Government has at its disposal witnesses to the plundering and despoiling of the population, accompanied by bestial acts of violence and mass murders, carried out in all territories which came under the heels of the German invaders. Unquestionable facts prove that the regimes of robbery and of bloody terror inflicted on the peaceful population of the occupied villages and cities did not consist of certain excesses of individual undisciplined military units or individual German officers and soldiers. Rather does it point to a definite system, planned far in advance and encouraged by the German Government and the German Army Command, a system which intentionally unleashed within their army the lowest animal instincts among the officers and men.

“Every step of the German fascist army and its allies in the invaded Soviet territories of the Ukraine and Moldavia, of Bielorussia and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, in the Karelian-Finnish lands, in the Russian zones and regions, led to annihilation and to the destruction of priceless material and cultural treasures—the property of the nation; for the civilian population it led to the loss of hard-won property, slave labor, famine, and bloody massacre before whose horror the most savage crimes in history have paled.

“The Soviet Government and its organizations record all these infamous crimes of the Hitler army for which the indignant Soviet people justifiably demand and will obtain retribution.

“The Soviet Government considers it a duty to bring to the notice of all civilized humanity, of honest men all the world over, its declaration concerning the monstrous crimes perpetrated against the peaceful people of all occupied territories of the Soviet Union by the Hitlerite armies.”

I now proceed to read into the record Paragraphs 2, 4, and 5 of the concluding statement of this note. Your Honors will find the place in question on the reverse side of Page 4 of the document quoted, Paragraph 5, Column 1 of the text:

“The Hitlerite Government in Germany which had so treacherously attacked the Soviet Union pays no heed, in warfare, to any standards of international law or to any of the moral requirements. It wages war primarily against the peaceful and unarmed populations, against women, children, and old men, thereby revealing its own essential vileness. This government of robbers, which only recognizes violence and rapine, must be crushed by the all-powerful strength of the freedom-loving peoples, in whose ranks the Soviet nation will carry out its mighty task of liberation to the end.

“In bringing all the atrocities committed by the German invaders to the knowledge of all the governments with which the Soviet Union maintains diplomatic relations, the Soviet Government announces that it holds Germany’s criminal Hitlerite Government responsible for all the inhuman and rapacious acts perpetrated by the German Armed Forces.

“At the same time the Government of the Soviet Union declares with unshakable conviction that the Soviet Union’s fight for liberation is a fight for the rights and liberty not only of the peoples of the Soviet Union, but also for the rights and liberty of all freedom-loving peoples of the world and that this war can only end with the complete destruction of the Hitler armies and with complete victory over the Hitler tyranny.”

The large quantity of the materials and facts which I have to submit to the Tribunal renders necessary the adherence to a very strict systematization of the materials in question.

Evidence will be submitted to the Tribunal successively.

Firstly, with regard to the deliberate encouragement by the major war criminals of the lowest instincts of German officers, men, and officials detailed to the Eastern areas where they were incited to murder the civilian population and to indulge in every form of violence against it. They also created that atmosphere of impunity which surrounded the murderers and legalized the regime of terror. Secondly, with regard to the special training and selection of units designated to put into effect both the mass murders and the regime of terror inflicted on the civilian population. Thirdly, with regard to the extent of the crime, the ubiquity and the immense degree of the German fascist atrocities. Fourthly, with regard to the gradual development and perfection of methods for the realization of the monstrous crimes, from the first shootings to the creation of the special extermination camps. Fifthly, with regard to attempts to conceal all traces of the crimes and the special measures taken for that purpose by order of the higher authorities.

I shall now submit documents to prove the first two of the points just mentioned.

The Tribunal has already received evidence that the actual orders, circulars, and the so-called laws, promulgated by the Hitlerian criminals for the legalization of terror directed against the peaceful population and for the justification of rape and murder, are directly connected with the inhuman theories of fascism. The Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R. has twice quoted from a book by the former president of the Danzig Senate, at one time a very close friend of Hitler’s, Hermann Rauschning, published in 1940 in New York under the title of The Voice of Destruction. The same book (Document Number USSR-378) was published in various other countries under different titles, such as, What Hitler Told Me, or Conversations with Hitler, and so on.

Two quotations were made from Rauschning’s book, which I have submitted to the Tribunal, in the speech of the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. The first is on Page 225 of the original. Your Honors will find it in the last paragraph of Page 14. The contents of this quotation can be summarized as follows: Hitler told Rauschning that he was freeing mankind from the humiliating restrictions imposed by the “chimera of conscience and morality.” The second quotation is also extremely important. I will endeavor to prove by a series of concrete facts the apparently abstract contents of this quotation. You will find it on Pages 137-138. It concerns a conversation between Hitler and Rauschning on the subject of a special technique of depopulation essential for the physical extermination of entire nations and about the right of the victor to exterminate entire populations.

And indeed, in order to murder millions of innocent and defenseless people, it was necessary not only to develop the technical formula of “Cyclone A,” to construct gas chambers and the crematory ovens, nor yet to elaborate an elaborate procedure for mass shootings. It was also essential to educate many thousands who would carry out these policies “not in the letter, but in the spirit”—as stated by Himmler in one of his speeches. It was necessary to train persons deprived both of heart and conscience, perverted creatures who had deliberately cut themselves off from the basic conceptions of morality and law. It was necessary to legalize and theoretically establish the conformity to law of the substitution of the concept of “guilt” by the concept of “preventive purge of undesirable elements for political purposes,” of the concept of “justice” by the concept of “the right of the master,” and of the concept of “law” by an apologia of arbitrary administration and police terror.

It was necessary, by orders, regulations, and decrees, to instill in the minds of hundreds of thousands of human beings, trained as the bloodhound is trained, to carry out the premeditated atrocities of the major criminals, that they were in no way responsible for the crimes committed. That is why Hitler freed them from the “chimera called conscience.”

But the theoretical foundations laid down for the purpose still did not constitute official instructions, nor did they introduce definite retaliatory measures against those who were unduly mild and those who did not fully recognize the “joys of cruelty.” This is why, even before the beginning of the war with the Soviet Union, the German fascist criminals issued a number of so-called handbooks, sermons, and similar documents to the Germans who were being sent East. I submit one of these documents to the Tribunal. Of all the documents in my possession I have deliberately selected this small document, and I dwell on it because it is not intended for the SS or police. It is intended for the so-called agricultural leaders. This document is entitled, “The Twelve Commandments for the Behavior of Germans in the East and for Their Treatment of the Russians.”

I submit this document to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-89 (Document Number USSR-89), and Your Honors will find it on Page 17 of the document book. From these “Twelve Commandments” I shall quote just one, the sixth, which has a direct bearing on my present theme. . . .

DR. NELTE: Mr. President, the words “Twelve Commandments for the Behavior of the Germans in the East and for Their Treatment” have been written on Document Number USSR-89. That is all that is in my copy. This document has no heading and no signature. As the question of responsibility is involved, it would surely be desirable for the Prosecution to name the author of these “Twelve Commandments.” So I respectfully ask the Tribunal to decide whether this document is admissible as evidence in its present form.

THE PRESIDENT: Can you inform us what the source of the document is?

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: This document is included in the documentation of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the investigation and determination of German fascist atrocities. It was received from the following sources—I must interrupt my further presentation.

The Counsel for the Defense has pointed out that this document bears no signature. If Your Honor will turn to the original of this document, which I have submitted to you, you will find the signature of a certain Backe. Unfortunately I cannot say who this Backe was, but I discovered this signature on a whole series of German, or rather of German fascist documents which, in rather peculiar juxtaposition, usually discussed two subjects—cattle breeding and the Russian soul. Evidently the author of this document was considered equally competent to deal with both questions. But what his official position was I really cannot say.

I repeat, this document was captured by field units of our army, in the region of Rossoshy, handed to the Extraordinary State Commission and the original of this document is now being submitted to the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: I have the original before me now. It is dated Berlin, the 1st of June 1941, and has a signature which looks like B-a-c-k-e. Perhaps Counsel for the Defense would like to see the original document. It is, as I understand from the prosecuting counsel, made a part of the Soviet Government report; and if so, we must take notice of it.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: That is so. I have information concerning Backe’s official position. He was Minister of Food and Agriculture. I did not know that before, because in practice I did not have the occasion to come across this branch of German fascist life.

DR. NELTE: Mr. President, I believe I can identify the signature as “Backe.” Backe was in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, was indeed State Secretary at the time.

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps this would be a convenient time to break.

[A recess was taken.]

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Mr. President, have I your permission to proceed?

I now quote the sixth commandment of the twelve which have just been submitted to the Tribunal. This sixth commandment, which is on Page 17 of the document book of the Tribunal, reads as follows:

“6. The areas just opened up must be permanently acquired for Germany and Europe. Everything will depend upon your behavior. You must realize that you are the representatives of Greater Germany and the standard-bearers of the National Socialist Revolution and of the New Europe for centuries to come. You must, therefore, carry out with dignity even the hardest and most ruthless measures required by the necessities of the state. Weakness on the part of an individual will, on principle, be considered as just cause for his recall. Anyone who has been recalled for this reason will no longer be eligible for a responsible position in the Reich either.”

For what “hardest and most ruthless” measures the criminal Hitlerite Government was preparing those whom it named “the standard-bearers of the National Socialist Revolution,” and what crimes were committed by them, we shall show later on.

In this manner the theoretical, abstract discussions were followed up by official orders quite definite and allowing of no ambiguity. Execution squads were trained in special educational institutions. The network of these institutions extended almost to the lowest ranks.

I shall submit to the Tribunal the indictment drawn up for the Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. by the examining magistrate of most important affairs on the subject of German fascist atrocities in the city and region of Kharkov. This document has already been fully confirmed by the verdict of the military tribunal, which has also been submitted to the Tribunal. The Tribunal will find this verdict on Page 20 of your document book. The indictment and sentence are submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-32 (Document Number USSR-32).

There is on the first page of the indictment an extract from the testimony of the Defendant Retzlav. It is on Page 24 of the document book of the Tribunal, last paragraph. I quote an excerpt from the testimony:

“The accused senior corporal of the German Army, Reinhard Retzlav, who received his training in the special battalion ‘Altenburg,’ testified in the course of his interrogatory:

“The course of training even included several lectures by leading officials of the GFP”—Secret Field Police—“who definitely declared that the peoples of the Soviet Union, especially those of Russian nationality, were subhuman and should be destroyed in an overwhelming majority, although an appreciable number was to be employed by the German landowners as slaves. These directives were the result of the policy of the German Government toward the peoples of the occupied territories; and, it must be confessed, were put into practice by every member of the Armed Forces, myself included.”

Such were the courses dedicated to the training and education of junior police officials.

But the fascist training school for murderers acknowledged other forms of education as well, forms specially dedicated to the technique of destroying all traces of the crimes committed. The Tribunal has already received the document registered as Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (8) (Document Number USSR-6(c) (8). This document is one of the appendices to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on German atrocities perpetrated on the territory of the region of Lvov. The document is the testimony of the witness, Manusevitch, interrogated by the senior assistant to the prosecutor of the Lvov region, by the special request of the Extraordinary State Commission. The minutes of the interrogatory are recorded in conformity with the legal code of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Tribunal will find these minutes on Page 48 of the document book.

Manusevitch was imprisoned by the Germans in Yanov Camp, where he worked in the prisoners’ squad for burning corpses of murdered Soviet citizens. After the 40,000 corpses murdered in Yanov Camp were burned, the squad was transferred for similar purposes to the camp in Lissenitzky Wood.

I now quote from the record of the interrogation, which the Tribunal will find on Page 52 of the document book, Paragraph 2 from the top, Line 26. I begin:

“In the death factory of this camp special 10-day courses on corpse burning were organized, on which 12 men were employed. Pupils attending these courses came from the camps of Lublin, Warsaw, and others whose names escape me. I do not know the surnames of the pupils, but they were officers from colonels to sergeant majors, not soldiers from the rank and file. The instructor at these courses was the officer in command of crematories, Colonel Schallok. On the site where the bodies were exhumed and burned he explained the practical manner of their burning and how to set up the machinery for bone crushing.”

Later on, photographs of this machine will be submitted to the Tribunal together with a description, or rather, I should say, technical directions.

“Schallock further explained the manner in which the pit was levelled over, the earth sifted, and trees planted over it, and how the ashes of the human corpses were scattered and concealed. Courses of this nature continued for a considerable period. During my sojourn, that is, during the 5½ months that I worked in the camps of Yanov and Lissenitzky, 10 groups of military students graduated successfully.”

For the education of adolescents, the German fascists created a special organization, the so-called Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend). The Defendant Baldur von Schirach was for quite a long time the head of this organization.

What kind of methods were used for the education of German youth by the fascist criminals is described by a French subject, Ida Vasso, the directress of a hostel for aged Frenchmen in Lvov. During the German occupation of Lvov, she had an opportunity of visiting the Lvov ghetto. In her statement to the Extraordinary State Commission, Vasso described the local system for the extermination of human beings.

From Vasso’s statement it is obvious that the Germans educated the Hitler Youth by training these young fascists to shoot at living targets—at children specially handed over to the Hitler Youth to serve as targets.

Vasso’s statement was checked by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union and fully confirmed. In confirmation of this evidence I will submit to the Court Exhibit Number USSR-6 (Document Number USSR-6), which is a report by the Extraordinary State Commission, entitled, “German Atrocities Perpetrated in the Territory of the Lvov Region.”

I now quote from Vasso’s statement in this connection. It is included in the text of the report as a certified document, on Page 6-c of the document book. The Tribunal will find Vasso’s statement on the reverse side of Page 59, Paragraph 5, beginning from Line 14 from the beginning of the paragraph:

“. . . the little children were martyrs. They were handed over to the Hitler Youth who used them as living targets while learning how to shoot. No mercy for others, all for themselves—this was the motto of the Germans. The whole world must learn of their methods. We, who were the helpless witnesses of these revolting scenes, must speak of those horrors in order that everybody should know of them and, what is more important, should never forget them since no vengeance will ever bring the millions of dead back to life again.”

Your Honors can turn to the same Page 59 of the document book, Line 10 from the beginning of the second paragraph. Here the Tribunal will find the official confirmation of Vasso’s statement. The Extraordinary State Commission established that, in Lvov, the Germans:

“Spared neither men, women, or children. The adults were simply killed on the spot; the children were given to the Hitler Youth for target practice.”

In this manner were created, educated, and trained the amoral monstrosities who were called upon to materialize the program of the major war criminals for the actual destruction of the population in the Eastern European countries. The fascist government had no need to fear that the “Standard Bearers of the National Socialist Revolution” in the East would show any traces of humanity at all.

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, I hope you will forgive my interrupting you; but as I had to point out to Colonel Pokrovsky just now, we really don’t want any comment upon each one of these documents. The passage you have just read to us now is nothing but comment upon the frightful document which you have just read. It all takes time. If you could find your way to cut out the comment after these documents and simply to present us with the documents, it will save time.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I will now quote an excerpt from the testimony of the witness Manusevitch, previously submitted as Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (8), the passage where he speaks of the activities of the Yanov Camp administration. He was a witness of these activities when working in a special squad of prisoners employed for burning the corpses of people murdered in this camp—Page 3 of the minutes of the interrogatory. The Tribunal will find this document on Page 50 of the document book, Line 25 from the top. I quote this passage as an illustration of the execution squads created by the Hitlerites and of some of the atrocities perpetrated by them:

“Apart from the shootings in Yanov Camp various forms of torture were practiced, namely, in winter a barrel would be filled with water and a man, with hands and feet tied, would be thrown into the barrel, where he froze to death. Yanov Camp was surrounded by a barbed wire entanglement consisting of two rows of barbed wire, 120 centimeters apart. A man would be thrown in and left there for several days on end. He could not extricate himself from the wire and he eventually perished from hunger and thirst. But prior to being thrown into the barbed wire, he would nearly have been beaten to death. A man would be strung up by the neck, hands, and feet. Dogs would be set on him and the dogs would tear him to pieces. Human beings were used as targets for shooting practice. This was mostly done by the following members of the Gestapo: Heine, Müller, Blum, Camp Commandant Willhaus, and others whose names escape me. People would be beaten till they nearly died, dogs would then be set on them who tore the victims to pieces. A man was given a glass to hold and was then stood up to serve as a target in shooting practice; if the glass was hit, the man was spared, but if he was shot in the hand he was immediately killed after being told that he was no longer fit for work. Men would be taken by the legs and torn in two. Infants from 1 month to 3 years old were thrown into buckets of water and left to drown. A man would be tied to a post facing the sun and kept there till he died of sunstroke. In addition, before men were sent to work, they were subjected to a so-called examination for physical fitness. The men were made to run a distance of 50 meters and if one of them ran well—that is—rapidly and without stumbling—he remained alive while the rest were shot. There was, in the same camp, a small, grass-covered plot. Here, too, footraces were run and anybody who stumbled in the grass and fell was promptly shot. The grass grew higher than a man’s knee. Women were strung up by the hair, after first having been stripped naked, swung in the air, and left to hang till they died.

“There was also the following case: a Gestapo man, Heine, made a young lad stand up and cut pieces of flesh from his body. Another man was wounded 28 times in the shoulders with a knife. The wounds healed and he worked in a death brigade. He was subsequently shot. Near the kitchen, during the distribution of coffee, the executioner Heine, whenever he was on duty, would go up to the first man in the line and ask, ‘Why are you standing in front of the others?’ and shoot him dead. In this way he shot quite a lot of people. He would then go to the end of the queue and ask, ‘Why are you the last in the line?’ and shoot him as well. I personally witnessed these atrocities during my imprisonment in Yanov Camp. . . .”

The testimony of the witness Manusevitch, which I have read into the record, was fully confirmed by the official report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union entitled, “German Atrocities Perpetrated in the Lvov Region.” Further on Manusevitch speaks mainly about the activities of officials in the lower and middle rank of the camp administration. It is evident from the official report of the Extraordinary State Commission that a system of the vilest ill-treatment practiced upon the helpless people was initiated and organized by the upper ranks of the camp administration, who invariably set their subordinates personal examples of inhuman behavior.

I will not make any comment on this document, although I do beg the Tribunal to take note of a certain Obersturmführer Willhaus mentioned in this document.

The Tribunal will find the excerpt which I shall now read into the Record on Page 58 of the document book—on the reverse side of the page, Column 1 of the text. I quote:

“SS Hauptsturmführer Gebauer established a savage system of murder in Yanov Camp, which, after his transfer to another post, was perfected by the camp commandant, SS Obersturmführer Gustav Willhaus and SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Wartzok.

“A former inmate of the camp told the commission:

“ ‘I have seen with my own eyes how SS Hauptsturmführer Fritz Gebauer strangled women and children and froze men to death in barrels filled with water. The hands and feet of the victims were shackled before they were lowered into the water. Those doomed to die remained in the barrels until they froze to death.’

“According to the testimonies of numerous Soviet prisoners of war and also of French citizens held in German camps, it was established that the German thugs invented the most vicious methods for exterminating human beings, a fact which they considered as particularly praiseworthy and in which they were encouraged both by the higher military command and by the government.

“SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Wartzok, for instance, loved to hang internees by both feet on posts and leave them in this position until they died; Obersturmführer Rokita personally slashed open the bellies of the prisoners. The chairman of the investigation section of the Yanov Camp, Heine, pierced the bodies of internees with sticks or a piece of iron; he would tear out the finger nails of women with pliers, then he would strip his victims, hang them up by their hair, swing them out and shoot at the ‘moving targets.’

“The commandant of the Yanov Camp, Obersturmführer Willhaus, systematically shot with an automatic rifle from the balcony of his office room the prisoners employed in the workshops, partly for sheer love of sport and partly to amuse his wife and daughters. He would then hand his rifle to his wife and she too had a shot at the prisoners. Sometimes, to please his 9-year-old daughter, he had children between the ages of 2 and 4 years tossed in the air and then took pot shots at them, while his daughter applauded and shrieked, ‘Papa, do it again; do it again, Papa!’ And he did it again.

“The internees of this camp were exterminated for no reason at all, often as a result of a bet. A woman witness, Kirschner, informed the Investigating Commission that a Gestapo Commissar, Wepke, bet the other camp executioners that he could cut a boy in half with one stroke of the axe. They did not believe him. So he caught a 10-year-old boy on the road, made him kneel down, told him to hide his face in the folded palms of his hands, made one test stroke, placed the child’s head in a more convenient position and with one single stroke cut the boy in half. The Hitlerites heartily congratulated Wepke, shaking him warmly by the hand.

“In 1943, for Hitler’s birthday—his 54th—the commandant of the Yanov Camp, Obersturmführer Willhaus, picked out 54 prisoners of war and shot them himself.

“A special hospital for prisoners was organized in the camp. The German hangmen Brambauer and Birman checked up the patients on the 1st and 15th day of each month; and, if they discovered that among the patients there were some who had been in the hospital for over 14 days, they shot them on the spot. Six or seven people were killed during each investigation.

“The Germans executed their tortures, ill-treatments, and shooting to the accompaniment of music. For this purpose they created a special orchestra selected from among the prisoners. They forced Professor Stricks and the famous conductor Mund to conduct this orchestra. They requested the composers to write a special tune, to be called the ‘Tango of Death.’ Shortly before dissolving the camp the Germans shot every member of the orchestra.”

Later on I will present to the Tribunal, as a photo-document, photographs of this “orchestra of death.”

What took place in Yanov Camp was in no way exceptional. In exactly the same manner the German fascist administration behaved in all concentration camps in the occupied area of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern European countries.

I submit to the International Military Tribunal Exhibit Number USSR-29 (Document Number USSR-29). It is a communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of the crimes perpetrated by the Germans in the extermination camp of Maidanek in the city of Lublin. The Tribunal will find this communiqué on Page 63 of the document book. I quote Section 3 of this document, “Tortures and Murder in the Extermination Camp”—Page 64 reverse side of the document book, beginning with the last paragraph of the first column of the text:

“The forms of torture were extremely varied. Some of them were in the nature of so-called jokes which frequently ended in death. They included mock-shooting when the victim was rendered insensible by a blow over the head with a blunt instrument, and mock drownings in the pond of the camp which often ended in actual drowning.

“Among the German executioners were specialists in particular methods of torture. Prisoners were killed by a blow with a stick on the back of the head, by a kick in the stomach, in the groin, et cetera.

“The SS torturers drowned their victims in the dirty water flowing from the bathhouse through a narrow ditch. The head of the victim was plunged into the dirty water and kept under by the boot of an SS man until he died. A favorite method of the Hitler SS was to hang prisoners with their hands bound behind their back. The Frenchman, De Courantin, who suffered the torture in question, stated that a man hanged in this manner lost consciousness very rapidly, whereupon the hanging would be interrupted. He was hanged again as soon as consciousness was recovered and the process was repeated several times.

“For the smallest offense, particularly for any suspicion of escape, the camp internees were hanged by the German fiends. In the middle of each field stood a post with a cross beam 2 meters above ground, from which the victims were hanged. ‘I saw from my barracks,’ said witness Demashev, former camp internee and Soviet prisoner of war, ‘how people were hanged from the beam in the middle of the field.’

“Close to the laundry, in the entresol between the first and second floor, was a special shed with beams from the ceilings where prisoners were hanged in whole groups.”

The women interned in the camp were subjected to the same ill-treatment and torture; they suffered the same forms of control, of work beyond their strength, of beating, and ill-treatment. The greatest cruelty was exercised by the female personnel of the SS. The worst were the chief woman supervisor Erich, and the supervisors Braunstein, Anni David, Weber, Knoblick, Ellert, and Radli.

The Commission has established many facts of unparalleled brutality perpetrated by the German executioners in the camp.

The German, Heinz Stalbe, chief of the camp police, at a plenary meeting stated that he had seen with his own eyes how the director of the crematory, Oberscharführer Mussfeld, tied the arms and legs of a Polish woman and threw her into the furnace alive. The witnesses Yelinski and Olech—workers in the camp—also stated that internees had been burned alive in the crematory ovens:

“An infant was snatched from its mother’s breast and dashed before her eyes against the wall of the barrack”—stated witness Atrochov—“I saw for myself how infants were taken from their mothers and murdered before their eyes: One small leg would be seized by a hand, the executioner would stand on the other and the infant would be torn in half”—stated witness Edward Baran.

“The deputy camp commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Tumann was particularly noted for his sadistic tendencies. He forced groups of internees to kneel in a row and then killed them by blows on the head with a stick. He set Alsatian dogs on the internees. He participated actively and energetically in all executions and killings of the prisoners.

“Thus hunger, work beyond their strength, torture, torment, ill-treatment, and murder accompanied by unheard-of sadism were employed for the mass extermination of the captives in the camp.”

To prove that these sophisticated and sadistic crimes were not exclusively characteristic of the SS or the special police units, but that the major war criminals had deliberately plunged whole strata of the personnel of the German Armed Forces into the very depths of moral degradation, I turn to the contents of a note by the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., V. M. Molotov, dated 6 January 1942, which was submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-51. Your Honors will find the passage I am about to quote on the reverse side of the document book, Paragraph 4, Column 1 of the text. I begin the quotation:

“There are no bounds to the wrath and indignation aroused among the Soviet population and in the Red Army by the innumerable and despicable acts of violence, the foul outrages perpetrated against the honor of the women and the mass murders of Soviet citizens, both men and women, carried out by the German fascist officers and men. Wherever the rule of the German bayonet begins to hold sway, an unbearable regime of bloody terror, agonizing torture, and savage murder is introduced. The robberies committed everywhere by the German officers and men are invariably accompanied by the beating and murder of immense numbers of entirely innocent people. For failure to deliver up food supplies to the very last crumb, and all clothing, down to the very last shirt, the occupants torture and hang old and young, women and children. At forced labor they beat up and shoot for all defective execution of the established quota of work.

“On 30 June Hitler’s thugs entered the city of Lvov, and on the very next day they started a massacre under the slogan, ‘Kill the Jews and the Poles.’ After hundreds had been put to death the Hitler gangsters arranged an ‘exhibition’ of the murdered citizens by building an arcade. The mutilated bodies, mostly of women, were laid out along the walls of the houses. The place of honor in this ghastly ‘exhibition’ was occupied by the corpse of a woman whose baby had been pinned to her with a bayonet.

“Such were the monstrous atrocities of the fascists from the very outbreak of the war. Wallowing in innocent blood, the Hitlerite blackguards are still continuing their dastardly crimes.

“In the hamlet of Krasnaya Polyana near Moscow, on 2 December, the German fascist dastards assembled all the local inhabitants between the ages of 15 and 16, locked them up in the icy premises of the district executive committee building in which all the window panes had been knocked out, and kept them there for 8 days without food or water. The infant children of the women workers of the Krasnaya Polyana factory, A. Zaitseva, T. Gudkina, O. Naletkina, and M. Mikhailova, died in the arms of their mothers during this ordeal.

“Numerous instances are on record of Soviet children having been used as practice targets by the Hitlerites.

“In the village of Bely Rast, in the Krasnaya Polyana district, a gang of drunken German soldiers put 12-year-old Volodia Tkachev up on the porch of one of the houses as a target and opened fire on the boy with an automatic rifle. The boy was riddled with bullets. After that the thugs began to fire random shots at the windows of houses. They stopped a collective farm woman, I. Mossolova, who was passing in the street with her three children, and there and then shot her and the children dead.

“In the village of Voskressenskoye of the Dubinin District, the Hitlerites used a 3-year-old boy as their target, firing at him with their machine guns.

“In the regional center of Volovo in the Region of Kursk, where the Germans stayed for a space of 4 hours, a German officer killed the 2-year-old son of a woman named Boikova by dashing the child’s head against a wall merely because it was crying.

“In the village soviet of Zlobin, in the district of Orel, the fascists killed the 2-year-old child of a collective farmer, Kratov, because his crying disturbed their sleep.

“In the village of Semenovskoe, in the region of Kalinin, the Germans bound with twine the arms of Olga Tikhonova, the 25-year-old wife of a Red Army man and mother of three children, who was in the last stage of pregnancy, and raped her. After violating her the Germans cut her throat, stabbed her through both breasts, and sadistically bored them out. In the same village the occupants shot a boy of 13 and cut out a five-pointed star on his forehead.

“In November the telegraph operator of the town of Kalinin, Ivanova, went to visit relatives in the village of Burashevo, near Kalinin, together with her 13-year-old son Leonid. When they left the town they were noticed by some Hitlerites, who began shooting at them from a distance of 60 meters; as a result the boy was killed. The mother made several attempts to carry away the child’s body, but whenever she tried to do so the Germans opened fire and she had to leave the body there. For 8 days the German soldiers would not let her remove the body. It was only removed and buried by the mother when the place was occupied by our troops.”

Mention is made, further on in the note, of another child victim of the fascists. The Tribunal will see this murdered boy in our filmed documentary evidence. I would ask the Tribunal to pay attention to the further words of the “note” which I shall read into the Record:

“In Rostov-on-Don a pupil of the commercial school, 15-year old Vitya Cherevichny, was playing in the yard with his pigeons. Some passing German soldiers began to steal the birds. The boy protested. The Germans took him away and shot him, at the corner of 27th Line and 2d Maisky Street for refusing to surrender his pigeons. With the heels of their boots the Hitlerites trampled his face out of all recognition.

“The village of Bassmanova, in the Glinka district of the Smolensk region, liberated by our troops early in September was one mass of ashes after the German occupation. On the very first day of their arrival, the fascist fiends drove into the fields over 200 schoolboys and girls who had come to the village to help in the harvesting. There they surrounded them and savagely shot them all. A large group of schoolgirls was abducted to the rear ‘for their lordships, the officers.’

“The seizure of towns or villages usually begins with the erection of a gallows on which the German executioners hang the first civilians they can lay their hands on. Moreover, they leave the bodies hanging on the gallows for days and even weeks. They do the same with the people they shoot in the streets of the towns and villages, leaving the bodies untended for days on end.

“After the seizure of Kharkov, the German thugs hanged several people from the windows of a large house in the center of the city. Furthermore, in the same city of Kharkov on 16 November 19 persons, including one woman, were hanged from the balconies of a number of houses.”

The bestial acts of violence perpetrated against the women everywhere testify to the profound moral corruption of the criminals. I shall quote from that passage in the note which Your Honors will find on Page 4, Paragraph 4, of the document book:

“Women and young girls are vilely outraged in all the occupied areas.

“In the Ukrainian village of Borodayevka, in the Dniepropetrovsk region, the fascists violated every one of the women and girls.

“In the village of Berezovka, in the region of Smolensk, drunken German soldiers assaulted and carried off all the women and girls between the ages of 16 and 30.

“In the city of Smolensk the German Command opened a brothel for officers in one of the hotels into which hundreds of women and girls were driven; they were mercilessly dragged down the street by their arms and hair.

“Everywhere the lust-maddened German gangsters break into the houses, they rape the women and girls under the very eyes of their kinfolk and children, jeer at the women they have violated, and then brutally murder their victims.

“In the city of Lvov, 32 women working in a garment factory were first violated and then murdered by German storm troopers. Drunken German soldiers dragged the girls and young women of Lvov into Kesciuszko Park, where they savagely raped them. An old priest, V. I. Pomaznew, who, cross in hand, tried to prevent these outrages, was beaten up by the fascists. They tore off his cassock, singed his beard, and bayonetted him to death.

“Near the town of Borissov in Bielorussia, 75 women and girls attempting to flee at the approach of the German troops, fell into their hands. The Germans first raped and then savagely murdered 36 of their number. By order of a German officer named Hummer, the soldiers marched L. I. Melchukova, a 16-year-old girl, into the forest, where they raped her. A little later some other women who had also been dragged into the forest saw some boards near the trees and the dying Melchukova nailed to the boards. The Germans had cut off her breasts in the presence of these women, among whom were V. I. Alperenko, and V. H. Bereznikova.

“On retreating from the village of Borovka, in the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow region, the fascists forcibly abducted several women, tearing them away from their little children in spite of their protests and prayers.

“In the town of Tikhvin in the Leningrad region, a 15-year-old girl named H. Koledetskaya, who had been wounded by shell splinters, was taken to a hospital (a former monastery) where there were wounded German soldiers. Despite her injuries the girl was raped by a group of German soldiers and died as a result of the assault.”

I omit one paragraph and continue:

“But, the Hitlerites do not stop at the murder of individual Soviet citizens. Among the most appalling atrocities in the history of Hitlerite lawlessness and terrorism on German occupied Soviet territory are the nightmare mass murders of Soviet citizens which usually accompany the temporary seizure by the Germans of Soviet towns, villages, and other inhabited centers.

“Here are a few instances of wholesale bloody murders carried out by the Germans against entire villages. In Yaskino, a village in the region of Smolensk, the Hitlerites shot all the old men and adolescents, and burnt the houses down to the ground. In the village of Pochinok of the same region, the Germans drove all the old men, old women, and children into the collective farm office, locked the doors and burnt them all alive. In the Ukrainian village of Yomelchino in the region of Zhitomir, the Germans locked 68 people into a small hut, sealed the doors and windows and asphyxiated to death everybody inside. In the village of Yershevo, of the Zvenigorod district in the Moscow region now liberated by our troops, the Germans prior to their withdrawal drove about 100 peaceful citizens and wounded Red Army men into a church, locked them in, and blew up the building. In the village of Agrafenovka of the Rostov region, on 16 November, the fascists arrested the entire male population between the ages of 16 and 70 and shot one man of every three.”

The subsequent part of the note deals with the mass German crimes known as “actions” and particularly to the “actions” in Kiev. I invite the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that the figure of those murdered in Babye-Yar—as mentioned in this note—is an understatement. After the liberation of Kiev it was established that the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the German fascist invaders far exceeds the German crimes as stated in the first instance.

From further information submitted to the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, in connection with the city of Kiev, it is evident that during the monstrous so-called German mass “action” in Babye-Yar not 52,000 but 100,000 were shot. I now continue to quote from Page 4, of the document book, Paragraph 3:

“Terrible massacres and pogroms were carried out by the German invaders in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In the course of a few days the German bandits tortured and murdered 52,000 men and women, aged people and children, ruthlessly doing to death all Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews who in any way displayed their loyalty to the power of the Soviet. Soviet citizens who succeeded in escaping from Kiev give a shattering picture of one of these mass executions: A large number of Jews, including women and children of all ages, were assembled in the Jewish cemetery. Before shooting them the Germans stripped them naked and then beat them. The first group marked for execution was forced to lie, face downwards at the bottom of a ditch, where the Jews were shot with automatic rifles. The Germans then lightly sprinkled some earth over the dead bodies, made the next batch lie down in a row over the first and shot them in the same way.”

I skip a paragraph and continue with the quotation. You will have the opportunity of seeing the Hitlerite crimes mentioned in the note. The German atrocities in Rostov are shown in great detail in the filmed documentary evidence.

“The Nazi blood-thirstiness towards the citizens of Rostov has become well known. During their 10 days’ sojourn in Rostov the Germans not only wreaked vengeance on separate individuals and families, but in their blood-lust they annihilated tens and hundreds of inhabitants, especially in the working-class districts of the city. Near the premises of the Railway Board, German machinegunners shot 48 people in broad daylight. Sixty people were shot by the Hitlerite assassins on the sidewalks of the main street of Rostov. Two hundred people were murdered in the Armenian cemetery. Even after their expulsion from Rostov by our troops, German generals and officers publicly boasted that they would return to Rostov purposely to vent bloody retribution on the inhabitants, who had actively helped to drive their mortal enemy from their native city.”

On the immediate initiative of the command and officers of the units and formations of the German fascist armies, the advancing and retreating movements of their troops were often protected by the peaceful citizens, preferably by women, old men, and children.

I make no comment but I do consider it necessary to stress the fact that only those people acted like that who had perfectly understood Keitel’s directive—so well known to the Tribunal—that human life “in the countries to which the directive refers, is worth exactly nothing at all.”

I quote further from the note of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Page 7 of the document book, the last paragraph:

“In addition to all that has already been stated, the Soviet Government have in their possession documentation bearing on the systematically repeated monstrous atrocities of the German fascist command, such as the use of Soviet civilians to cover German troops during battle with the Red Army.

“On 28 August 1941 German fascist troops attempted to force the River Ipput. Powerless to overcome the stubborn resistance of the Red Army units, they assembled the population of the Bielorussian town of Dobrush in the Gomel region, and by threatening to shoot those who refused, drove women, children, and old people before them, using them as a shield when they attacked in battle formation.

“The same dastardly crime against the civilian population was repeated by the German Command in the Vybori Collective Farm Sector of the Leningrad region as well as in the district of Yelna, in the region of Smolensk. The fascist thugs continue to resort to this brutal and cowardly method right up to the present day. On 8 December the Hitlerites made use of the local civil population to cover their retreat from the village of Yamnoye, in the region of Tula. On 12 December, in the same region, they assembled 120 persons—old people and children—and made them march in the vanguard of their troops during engagements with the advancing units of the Red Army. In the fight by our troops for the liberation of the city of Kalinin, units of the German 303rd Regiment, 162d Division, attempting to launch a counter-attack, assembled the women of one of the suburban villages, placed them in the vanguard of their troops, and then went into action. Fortunately the Soviet troops succeeded, when beating off the attack, in driving a wedge between the Hitlerites and their victims thereby saving the lives of the women.”

In order to satisfy the needs of the German fascist armies and in violation of all international conventions, the criminals employed the civil population for particularly dangerous work, especially for clearing the mine fields. I will quote an extract from the second part of this note, which the Tribunal will find on Page 2 of the document book, Paragraph 4. I quote:

“Wherever German troops and German authorities made their appearance on Soviet territory, a regime of brutal exploitation, tyranny, and arbitrary rule was immediately established as far as the defenseless civil population was concerned. With a complete disregard for age or conditions of health, and after having taken or destroyed the houses of the Soviet citizens, a great number of these were brought to concentration camps by the Hitlerites and were compelled, under threat of torture, shooting, or death by starvation, to perform, gratuitously, various kinds of heavy labor, including work of a military nature. In a number of cases, civilians employed on one or another job of a military nature were summarily shot to ensure secrecy.

“Thus, for instance, in the village of Kolpino, in the region of Smolensk, the invaders drove all the farmers off to work on building bridges and dugouts for German units. Upon the completion of the construction of these fortifications, all these farmers were shot.”

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps this would be a good time to break: off.

COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, sir.

[The Tribunal adjourned until 15 February 1946 at 1000 hours.]

SIXTIETH DAY
Friday, 15 February 1946