“The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to 71,105. During the pogroms in Kovno 3,800 Jews were eliminated, in the smaller towns about 1,200 Jews.”

“In Latvia, up to now a total of 30,000 Jews were executed. Five hundred were eliminated by pogroms in Riga.” (L-180)

This is a captured report from the Commissioner of Sluzk on October 30, 1941 which describes the scene in more detail. It says:

“. . . The first lieutenant explained that the police battalion had received the assignment to effect the liquidation of all Jews here in the town of Sluzk, within two days. . . . Then I requested him to postpone the action one day. However, he rejected this with the remark that he had to carry out this action everywhere and in all towns and that only two days were allotted for Sluzk. Within these two days, the town of Sluzk had to be cleared of Jews by all means. . . . All Jews without exception were taken out of the factories and shops and deported in spite of our agreement. It is true that part of the Jews was moved by way of the ghetto where many of them were processed and still segregated by me, but a large part was loaded directly on trucks and liquidated without further delay outside of the town. . . . For the rest, as regards the execution of the action, I must point out to my deepest regret that the latter bordered already on sadism. The town itself offered a picture of horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the part of both the German police officers and particularly the Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them White Ruthenians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The White Ruthenians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement. Regardless of the fact that the Jewish people, among whom were also tradesmen, were mistreated in a terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Ruthenian people, the White Ruthenians themselves were also worked over with rubber clubs and rifle butts. There was no question of an action against the Jews any more. It rather looked like a revolution. . . .”

There are reports which merely tabulate the numbers slaughtered. An example is an account of the work of Einsatzgruppen of SIPO and SD in the East, which relates that:

In Estonia, all Jews were arrested immediately upon the arrival of the Wehrmacht. Jewish men and women above the age of 16 and capable of work were drafted for forced labor. Jews were subjected to all sorts of restrictions and all Jewish property was confiscated. All Jewish males above the age of 16 were executed, with the exception of doctors and elders. Only 500 of an original 4,500 Jews remained. Thirty-seven thousand, one hundred eighty persons have been liquidated by the SIPO and SD in White Ruthenia during October. In one town, 337 Jewish women were executed for demonstrating a ‘provocative attitude.’ In another, 380 Jews were shot for spreading vicious propaganda.

And so the report continues, listing town after town, where hundreds of Jews were murdered:

In Vitebsk 3,000 Jews were liquidated because of the danger of epidemics. In Kiev 33,771 Jews were executed on September 29 and 30 in retaliation for some fires which were set off there. In Shitomir 3,145 Jews ‘had to be shot’ because, judging from experience they had to be considered as the carriers of Bolshevik propaganda. In Cherson 410 Jews were executed in reprisal against acts of sabotage. In the territory east of the Dnieper, the Jewish problem was ’solved’ by the liquidation of 4,891 Jews and by putting the remainder into labor battalions of up to 1,000 persons. (R-102)

Other accounts tell not of the slaughter so much as of the depths of degradation to which the tormentors stooped. For example, we will show the report made to Defendant Rosenberg about the army and the SS in the area under Rosenberg’s jurisdiction, which recited the following:

“Details: In presence of SS man, a Jewish dentist has to break all gold teeth and fillings out of mouth of German and Russian Jews before they are executed.”