Afternoon Session
MARSHAL (Colonel Charles W. Mays): May it please the Court, I desire to announce that the Defendants Kaltenbrunner and Hess will be absent until further notice on account of illness.
THE PRESIDENT: Would it be convenient to you and the Soviet Delegation if the Tribunal sat in open session until half past 11 tomorrow morning, and then after that we would adjourn for a closed session for administrative business? Would that be convenient to the Soviet Delegation?
GEN. RUDENKO: We, that is the Soviet Delegation, have no objection.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then, that is what we will do. The Tribunal will sit tomorrow from 10 until half past 11 in open session and will then adjourn.
GEN. RUDENKO: In these prisoner-of-war camps, as well as in camps for the civilian population, extermination and torture were practiced, referred to by the Germans as “filtering,” “execution,” and “special treatment.” The “Grosslazarett” set up by the Germans in the town of Slavuta has left grim memories. The whole world is familiar with the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans against Soviet prisoners of war and those of other democratic states at Auschwitz, Maidanek, and many other camps.
The directives of the German Security Police and of the SD—worked out in collaboration with the Staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, whose chief was the Defendant Keitel—were applied here.
Operational Order Number 8 stated:
“Executions must not take place in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp. If the camps in the Government General are situated in the immediate vicinity of the frontier, the prisoners intended for special treatment should, if possible, be transported to former Soviet districts. Should executions be necessary owing to violations of camp discipline, the chief of the operational unit should in this case approach the camp commander.
“The activities of the special task forces sanctioned by the army commanders of the rear areas (district commandants dealing with affairs connected with prisoners of war) must be conducted in such a way as to carry out filtering with as little notice as possible, while the liquidation must be carried out without delay and at such a distance from the transit camps themselves, and from populated places, as to remain unknown to the rest of the prisoners of war and to the population.”