M. DUBOST: It is a question of fact which will be decided by the Tribunal. The Tribunal will say whether it does or does not know that these six points which I shall recall to it are correct.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will retire.
[A recess was taken.]
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal is of opinion that the facts with reference to General Giraud’s deportation and the deportation of his family, although they are matters of common knowledge or of public knowledge within France, cannot be said to be of common knowledge or of public knowledge within the meaning of Article 21, which applies generally to the world.
Of course, if the French Prosecutors have governmental documents or reports from France which state the facts with reference to the deportation of General Giraud, the question assumes a different aspect and if there are such documents the Tribunal will, of course, consider them.
M. DUBOST: I must bring proof that the crimes committed individually by the leaders of the German police in each city and in each region of the occupied countries of the West, were committed in execution of the will of a central authority, the will of the German Government, which permits us to charge all the defendants one by one. I shall not be able to prove this by submitting German documents. That you may consider it a fact, it is necessary that you accept as valid the evidence which I am about to read. This evidence was collected by the American and French armies and the French Office for Inquiry into War Crimes. The Tribunal will excuse me if I am obliged to read numerous documents.
This systematic will can only be proved by showing that everywhere and in every case the German policy used the same methods concerning patriots whom they interned or detained. Internment or imprisonment in France was in civilian prisons which the Germans had seized, or in certain sections of French prisons which the Germans had requisitioned, which they occupied, and which all French officials were forbidden to enter. The prisoners in all these prisons were subject to the same regime. We shall prove this by reading to you depositions of prisoners from each of these German penal institutions in France or the western occupied countries. This regime was absolutely inhuman. It just allowed the prisoners to survive under the most precarious conditions.
In Lyons, at Fort Montluc, the women received as their only food a cup of herb tea at 7 o’clock in the morning and a ladle of soup with a small piece of bread at 5 o’clock in the evening. This is confirmed by Document Number F-555, which you will find the eleventh in your document book, which we submit as Exhibit Number RF-302. The first page of this document, second paragraph, is an analysis of the depositions which were received. It is sufficient to refer to this analysis. I shall take a few lines from the following deposition. The witness declares:
“. . . on their arrival at Fort Montluc, the prisoners who were taken in the round-up by the Gestapo on 20 September 1943 were stripped of all their belongings. The prisoners were treated in a brutal fashion. The food rations were quite inadequate. The women’s sense of decency was not respected.”
This testimony was received at Saint Gingolph, 9 October 1944. It refers to the arrests made at Saint Gingolph, which were carried out in the month of September 1943. The witness relates: