The appeal ends with the following words:
“Together with 10,000 rescued inmates of all nationalities, we demand that the crimes and the inconceivable atrocities of the Hitlerites should not remain unpunished.”
This just demand is supported by the entire civilized world and by all freedom-loving people. The organized mass annihilation of prisoners of war constitutes one of the vilest crimes of the Hitlerite conspirators.
Numerous facts of murders, tortures, and maltreatment to which prisoners of war were subjected have been definitely established. They were tortured with red-hot irons, their eyes were gouged out, their extremities severed, et cetera. The systematic atrocities and short-shrift justice against captured officers and men of the Red Army were not chance episodes or the results of criminal activities of individual officers of the German Army and of German officials. The Hitlerite Government and the High Command of the German Army ruthlessly exterminated prisoners of war. Numerous documents, orders, and decrees of the fascist Government and orders of the German Supreme Command testify to this fact.
As early as March 1941—as the German Lieutenant General Österreich testified during his interrogation—a secret conference took place at the headquarters of the High Command in Berlin, where measures were planned for the organization of camps for Russian prisoners of war and rules laid down for their treatment. According to Österreich’s evidence these rules and measures for Soviet prisoners of war were essentially a plan for their extermination.
Many Soviet prisoners of war were shot or hanged while others perished from hunger and infectious diseases, from cold, and from torture systematically employed by the Germans according to a plan which was developed beforehand and had as its object the mass extermination of Soviet persons.
In Appendix 3 to Order Number 8 for the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated 17 July 1941, a list is given of prisoner-of-war camps set up in the area of the 1st Military District and of the so-called Government General. In the 1st Military District camps were set up in particular in Prokuls, Heidekrug, Schierwind, Schützenrode (Ebenrode) in Prostken, Suwalki, Fischbor-Gersen and Ostrolenko. In the so-called Government General, camps were set up at Ostrov-Mesovetsky, Sedlce, Byelopedlasko, Kholm, Jaroslav, et cetera. In the appendix to Operational Order Number 9, issued in development of Order Number 8 of 17 July 1942, lists are given of the camps for Soviet prisoners of war situated in the territory of military districts II, IV, VI, VIII, X, XI, and XIII, at Hammerstein, Schneidemühl, and many other places.
THE PRESIDENT: Would this be a convenient time to break off?