“In the women’s and girls’ shower rooms, services were partly performed by men, or men would mingle around or even help with the soaping, and vice versa there were female personnel in the men’s shower rooms. Men also for some time were taking photographs in the women’s shower rooms. Since mainly Ukrainian peasants were transported in the last months, as far as the female portion of these are concerned, they were mostly of a high moral standard and used to strict modesty; they must have considered such a treatment as a national degradation. The above-mentioned abuses have been, according to our knowledge, settled by the intervention of the transport commanders. The reports of the photographing were made from Halle; the reports about the former were made from Kiwerce. Such incidents, altogether unworthy of the dignity and prestige of the Greater German Reich may still occur here or there.”
Sick and infirm people of the occupied countries were taken indiscriminately with the rest. Those who managed to survive the trip into Germany but who arrived too sick to work were returned like cattle together with those who fell ill at work, because they were of no further use to the Germans. The return trip took place under the same terrible conditions as the initial journey, and without any kind of medical supervision. Death came to many and their corpses were unceremoniously dumped out of the cars, with no provision for burial.
I quote from Page 3, Paragraph 3 of Document Number 054-PS. In the German text it appears at Page 2, Paragraph 3. Quoting directly:
“Very depressing for the morale of the skilled workers and the population is the effect of those persons shipped back from Germany who had become disabled or had been unfit for employment from the very beginning.
“Several times already transports of skilled workers on their way to Germany have crossed returning transports of such disabled persons and have stood on the tracks alongside of each other for a long period of time. These returning transports are insufficiently cared for. Nothing but sick, injured, or weak people, mostly 50 to 60 in a car usually escorted by 3 to 4 men. There is neither sufficient care nor food. The returnees made frequently unfavorable—if also surely exaggerated—statements relative to their treatment in Germany and on the way. As a result of all this and of what the people could see with their own eyes, a psychosis of fear was evoked among the skilled workers, that is, the whole transport to Germany. Several transport leaders, of the 62d and 63d transports, in particular, reported on it in detail. In one case the leader of the transport of skilled workers observed with his own eyes how a person who had died of hunger was unloaded from a returning transport on the side track (1st Lieutenant Hofmann of the 63rd Transport Station, Darniza). Another time it was reported that three dead had to be deposited by the side of the tracks on the way and had to be left behind unburied by the escort. It is also regrettable that these disabled persons arrive here without any identification. From the reports of the transport commanders, one gets the impression that these unemployable persons are assembled, penned into the wagons, and sent off provided only by a few men escorts and without special care for food and medical or other attendance. The labor office at the place of arrival as well as the transport commanders confirm this impression.”
Incredible as it may seem, mothers in the throes of childbirth shared cars with those infected with tuberculosis or venereal diseases. Babies, when born, were hurled out of these car windows; and dying persons lay on the bare floors of freight cars without even the small comfort of straw.
I refer to Document Number 084-PS, which is Exhibit USA-199. This document is an interdepartmental report, prepared by Dr. Gutkelch, in the Defendant Rosenberg’s Ministry, and it is dated the 30th of September 1942. I wish to quote from Page 10 of the English text, starting with the fourth line from the top of the page. In the German text it appears at Page 22, Paragraph 1. Quoting directly from that paragraph:
“How necessary this interference was is shown by the fact that this train with returning laborers had stopped at the same place where a train with newly recruited Eastern Workers had stopped. Because of the corpses in the trainload of returning laborers, a catastrophe might have been precipitated had it not been for the mediation of Mrs. Miller. In this train women gave birth to babies who were thrown out of the windows during the journey, people having tuberculosis and venereal diseases rode in the same car, dying people lay in freight cars without straw, and one of the dead was thrown on the railway embankment. The same must have occurred in other returning transports.”
Some aspects of the Nazi transport were described by the Defendant Sauckel himself in a decree which he issued on the 20th of July 1942; and I refer specifically to Document Number 2241(2)-PS, which is Exhibit USA-200. I ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice of the original decree, which is published in Section BIa, at Page 48e of a book entitled Die Beschäftigung von ausländischen Arbeitskräften in Deutschland. I quote from Page 1, Paragraph 2, of the English text; and I am quoting directly: