“4. As a rule, no more children will be shot.
“5. The reporting of hostile gangs as well as drives against them is not affected hereby. All drives against these hostile gangs can only take place after my approval has been obtained.
“6. The prisons have to be kept empty, as a rule. We have to be aware of the fact that the Slavs will interpret all soft treatment on our part as weakness and that they will act accordingly right away. If we limit our harsh measures of security police through above orders for the time being, that is only done for the following reason. The most important thing is the recruiting of workers. No check of persons to be sent into the Reich will be made. No written certificates of political reliability check or similar things will be issued.
“(signed) Christiansen.”
(3012-PS)
The head of the Jewish section in the GESTAPO, and the man directly responsible for carrying out the mass extermination program against the Jews by the GESTAPO, Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, estimated in his report to Himmler on the matter, that 2,000,000 Jews had been killed by shootings, mainly by the Einsatz Groups of the SIPO and SD during the campaign in the East. This did not include the estimated 4,000,000 sent by the GESTAPO for extermination in annihilation camps. (2615-PS)
(2) The GESTAPO and SD stationed special units in prisoner of war camps for the purpose of screening out racial and political undesirables and executing them. The program of mass murder of political and racial undesirables carried on against civilians was also applied to prisoners of war captured on the Eastern front. Warlimont, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht Fuehrungs Stab, states:
“* * * Shortly before the beginning of this campaign [with U.S.S.R.] I was present in a group composed of the Commanders in Chief (with their Chiefs of Staff) of the three Armed Forces, of the Army groups, of Armies, and of the corresponding groups in the Air Forces and Navy. Hitler made an announcement to this group that special measures would have to be taken against political functionaries and commissars of the Soviet army. He said that this would not be an ordinary campaign but would be the clash of conflicting ideologies. He further said that the political functionaries and commissars were not to be considered as prisoners of war but were to be segregated from other prisoners immediately after their capture and were to be turned over to special detachments of the SD which were to accompany the German troops to Russia. He further said that when it was not possible to turn over the political functionaries and commissars to the SD, they were to be eliminated by the German troops.” (2884-PS)
The Chief of the SD, Otto Ohlendorf, describes this action in the following words:
“In 1941, shortly after the start of the campaign against Russia, an agreement was entered into between the Chief of the Security Police and SD and the OKW and OKH to the effect that the prisoner of war camps on the Eastern front should be opened to Einsatzkommandos of the SIPO and SD so that the prisoners could be screened. All Jews and Communist functionaries were to be taken from the prisoner of war camps by the Einsatzkommandos and executed outside the camps. To my knowledge, this action was carried on throughout the entire Russian campaign. In the other occupied territories and within the Reich—to my knowledge—the GESTAPO had been made responsible for this program in the Russian prisoner of war camps. It was, to my knowledge, carried on throughout the greater part of the war.” (2622-PS)