In the case of Norway our information is taken from a document submitted by the Norwegian Government for the punishment of the major war criminals. In the French translation of this document—Number UK-79, which we present as Exhibit Number RF-323—on Page 2, the Tribunal will find the statement of the Norwegian Government according to which numerous Norwegian citizens died from the cruel treatment inflicted on them during their interrogations. The number of known cases for the district of Oslo, only, is 52; but the number in the various regions of Norway is undoubtedly much higher. The total number of Norwegian citizens who died during the occupation in consequence of torture or ill-treatment, execution, or suicide in political prisons or concentration camps is approximately 2,100.
In Paragraph B, Page 2 of the document, there is a description of the methods employed in the services of the Gestapo in Norway which were identical with those I have already described.
In the case of Holland, we shall submit Document Number F-224, which becomes Exhibit Number RF-324 and which, is an extract from the statement of the Dutch Government for the prosecution and punishment of the major German war criminals. This document bears the date of 11 January 1946. It has been distributed and should now be in your hands. The Tribunal will find in this document a great number of testimonies which were collected by the Criminal Investigation Department, all of which describe the same ill-treatment and tortures as those already known to you and which were committed by the services of the Gestapo in Holland.
In Holland, as elsewhere, the accused were struck with sticks. When their backs were completely raw from beating they were sent back to their cells. Sometimes icy water was sprayed on them and sometimes they were exposed to electrical current. At Amersfoort a witness saw with his own eyes a prisoner, who was a priest, beaten to death with a rubber truncheon. The systematic character of such tortures seems to me definitely established.
The document of the Danish Government is a first proof in support of my contention that these systematic tortures were deliberately willed by the higher authorities of the Reich and that the members of the German Government are responsible for them. In any case these systematic tortures were certainly known, because there were protests from all European countries against such methods, which plunged us again into the darkness of the Middle Ages; and at no time was an order given to forbid such methods, at no time were those who executed them repudiated by their superiors. The methods followed were devised to reinforce the policy of terrorism pursued by Germany in the western occupied countries—a policy of terrorism which I already described to you when I dealt with the question of hostages.
It is now incumbent on me to designate to you by name those among the accused whom France, as well as other countries in the West, considers to be especially guilty in having prepared and developed this criminal policy carried out by the Gestapo. We maintain that they are Bormann and Kaltenbrunner who, because of their functions, must have known more than any others, about those deeds. Although we are not in possession of any document signed by them in respect to the western countries, the uniformity of the acts we have described to you and the fact that they were analogous and even identical, in spite of the diversity of places, enables us to assert that all these orders were dictated by a single will; and among the accused, Bormann and Kaltenbrunner were the direct instruments of that single will.
Everything I described to you here concerned the procedure prior to judgment. We know with what ferocity this procedure was applied. We know that this ferocity was intentional. It was known to the populations of the invaded countries, and its purpose was to create an atmosphere of real terror around the Gestapo and all the German police services.
After the examination came the judicial proceedings. These proceedings were, as we see them, only a parody of justice. The prosecution was based on a legal concept which we dismiss as being absolutely inhuman. That part will be dealt with by my colleague, M. Edgar Faure, in the second part of the statement on the German atrocities in the western countries: crimes against the spirit.
It is sufficient for us to know that the German courts which dealt with crimes committed by the citizens of the occupied western countries, which did not accept defeat, never applied but one penalty, the death penalty, and that in execution of an inhuman order by one of these men, Keitel; an order which appears in Document Number L-90, already submitted to you by my United States colleagues, under Document Number USA-503. It is the penultimate in your large document book, Line 5:
“If these offenses are punished with imprisonment or even with hard labor for life, it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures which leave the relatives and the population in the dark about the fate of the culprit. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose.”