THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
M. DUBOST: As far as the other western countries, Holland and Norway, are concerned, we have received documents which we submit as Document Number F-224(b), Exhibits RF-291, 292, and 293.
In the French text you will find a long list of civilians who were executed. Also you will find a report of the Chief of the Criminal Police, Munt, in connection with these executions, and you will observe that Munt tries to prove his own innocence, in my opinion without success. This is in Document Number RF-277, already submitted.
On Page 6 you will find the report of an investigation concerning mass executions carried out by the Germans in Holland. I do not think it is necessary to read this report. It brings no new factual element and simply illustrates the thesis that I have been presenting since this morning: That in all the western countries the German military authorities systematically carried out executions of hostages as reprisals for acts of resistance. You will see that on 7 March 1945 an order was given to shoot 80 prisoners, and the authority who gave this order said, “I don’t care where you get your prisoners”—execution without any designation of age or profession or origin.
The Tribunal will see that a total of 2,080 executions was reached. It will be noted that as a reprisal for the murder of an SS soldier, a house was destroyed and 10 Dutchmen were executed; and in addition, two other houses were destroyed. In another case 10 Dutchmen were executed. Altogether, 3,000 Dutchmen were executed under these conditions, according to the testimony of this document, which was drawn up by the War Crimes Commission, signed by the Chief of the Dutch Delegation to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Colonel Baron Van Tuyll van Serooskerken.
This document gives to the Tribunal the approximate number of victims, region by region.
I do not wish to conclude the statement as to hostages concerning Holland without drawing the attention of the Tribunal to Section (b) of Document Number F-224, which gives a long list of hostages, prisoners or dead, arrested by the Germans in Holland; for the Tribunal will observe that most of the hostages were intellectuals or very highly placed personages in Holland. We note, therein, the names of members of parliament, lawyers, senators, Protestant clergymen, judges, and amongst them we find a former Minister of Justice. The arrests were made systematically among the intellectual elite of the country.
As far as Norway is concerned, the Tribunal will find in Document Number F-240, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-292, a short report of the executions which the Germans carried out in that country:
“On 26 April 1942 two German policemen who tried to arrest two Norwegian patriots were killed on an island on the west coast of Norway. In order to avenge them, 4 days later 18 young men were shot without trial. All these 18 Norwegians had been in prison since the 22 February of the same year and therefore had nothing to do with this affair.”