Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to “protective arrests” whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.
In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified “Nacht und Nebel”. These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.
Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to International Conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and ill-treatment of civilians.
1. In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the “Western Countries”) and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called “Western Germany”).
Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the defendants and particularly in the concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Vught and Amersfoort, and in numerous cities, towns and villages, including Oradour sur Glane, Trondheim and Oslo.
Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following forms:—
Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts; they were both individual and collective; notably in Paris (round-up of the 18th Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in August, 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals in December, 1941, round-up in July, 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand, (round-up of professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermon-Ferrand[Clermont-Ferrand?] on 25th November, 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January, 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24th December, 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24th December, 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May, 1944); at Saint Pol de Leon (round-up in July, 1944); at Locminé (round-up on 3rd July, 1944); at Eyzieux (round-up in May, 1944) and at Moussey (round-up in September, 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and practised in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Bethune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes and Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centres.
In the concentration camps, the health regime, and the labour regime, were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:—
1.