THE PRESIDENT: Now, I call upon Major Walsh. Major Walsh, did you give a lettering to the document book with which you are dealing?
MAJOR WALSH: Yes. If Your Honor please, it is the letter “T.” May it please the Tribunal, during the last session the Prosecution presented briefly the preliminary steps leading to the ultimate objective of the Nazi Party and the Nazi-controlled State, that is, the extermination of the Jews. Propaganda, decrees, the infamous Nuremberg Laws, boycotts, registration, and “ghettoization” were the initial measures in the program. I shall, with the Court’s permission, continue with a discussion of the methods utilized for the annihilation of the Jewish people.
I would like first to discuss starvation. Policies were designed and adopted to deprive the Jews of the most elemental necessities of life. Again the Defendant Hans Frank, then Governor General of Poland, wrote in his diary that hunger rations were introduced in the Warsaw ghetto; and referring to the new food regulations in August 1942, he callously, and perhaps casually, noted that by these food regulations he virtually condemned more than 1 million Jews to death. I offer in evidence that part of Document 2233(e)-PS, diary of Hans Frank, “Conference Volume,” 24 August 1942, Exhibit USA-283. And I quote:
“That we sentence 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally. It is a matter of course that should the Jews not starve to death it would, we hope, result in a speeding up of the anti-Jewish measures.”
Frank’s diary was not the only guide to the deliberate policy of starvation of the Jews. They were prohibited from pursuing agricultural activities in order to cut them off from access to the source of food. I offer Document 1138-PS in evidence, Exhibit USA-284. I refer the Court to Page 4 of the translation, marked with the Roman numeral V, Paragraphs a and b. The document is entitled “Provisional Directive on the Treatment of Jews . . .” and it was issued by the Reich Commissioner for the Ostland. I read:
“Jews must be cleaned out from the countryside. The Jews are to be removed from all trades, especially from trade with agricultural products and other foodstuffs.”
Jews were excluded from the purchase of basic food, such as wheat products, meat, eggs, and milk.
I offer in evidence Document 1347-PS, Exhibit USA-285, and I quote from Paragraph 2 on the first page of the translation before the Court. This is an original decree, dated 18 September 1942, from the Ministry of Agriculture. I quote:
“Jews will no longer receive the following foods, beginning with the 42d distribution period (19 October 1942): meat, meat products, eggs, wheat products, (cake, white bread, wheat rolls, wheat flour, et cetera), whole milk, fresh skimmed milk, as well as such food distributed not on food ration cards issued uniformly throughout the Reich but on local supply certificates or by special announcement of the nutrition office on extra coupons of the food cards. Jewish children and young people over 10 years of age will receive the bread ration of the normal consumer.”
The sick, the old, and the pregnant mothers were excluded from the special food concessions allotted to non-Jews. Seizure by the State Police of food shipments to Jews from abroad was authorized, and the Jewish ration cards were distinctly marked with “Jew,” in color, across the face of the cards, so that the storekeepers could readily identify and discriminate against Jewish purchasers.