“Mauthausen, in addition to its permanency of construction had facilities for a large garrison of officers and men, and had large dining rooms and toilet facilities for the staff. It was conducted with the sole purpose in mind of exterminating any so-called prisoner who entered within its walls. The so-called branches of Mauthausen were under direct command of the SS officials located there. All records, orders, and administrative facilities were handled for these branches through Mauthausen. The other camps, including Gusen and Ebensee, its two most notorious and largest branches, were not exclusively used for extermination but prisoners were used as tools in construction and production until they were beaten or starved into uselessness, whereupon they were customarily sent to Mauthausen for final disposal.” (2176-PS)
It is clear from both the motion picture and these reports, which could be supplemented by many similar ones, that the brutal conditions in all concentration camps followed the same general pattern. The widespread incidence of these conditions makes it clear that they were not the result of sporadic excesses on the part of individual jailers, but were the result of policies deliberately imposed from above.
The crimes committed by the Nazis in the concentration camp were on so vast a scale that individual atrocities pale into insignificance. But there are two exhibits in the possession of the prosecution which illustrate the contempt in which the Nazis held human values. The first is a frame showing sections of human skin, taken from human bodies in Buchenwald Concentration Camp and preserved as ornaments. (This was offered by the prosecution as a physical exhibit.) They were selected because of the tattooing which appeared on the skin. Attached to this exhibit is an extract of an official U. S. Army report describing the circumstances under which this exhibit was obtained (3420-PS):
“Mobile Field Interrogation Unit No. 2
PW INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN
“No. 2/20
19 December 1944
“Address Briefs and Requests to HQ, FID, MIS, APO 887
“EXTRACT
“13. Concentration Camp, Buchenwald.