“After some time”—I pass on to Page 28 of your document book—“I received a directive from the headquarters of the OKW confirming Reinecke’s instructions to shoot without any warning all Russian prisoners attempting to escape. I do not now remember who signed this directive.”
The witness further testifies how he was called, either towards the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942 to a conference in Berlin of the military district chiefs on prisoner-of-war affairs. The conference was conducted by Major General Von Graevenitz. The question under discussion was what to do with those Russian prisoners of war who were unable to work as the result of wounds or exhaustion. I think it might be useful to quote a few lines. They are on Page 29 in your document book:
“On the proposal of General Von Graevenitz this question was discussed by several officers present, including doctors, who stated that such prisoners of war unable to work should be concentrated in one place—either in camp or in hospital—and killed by poisoning. As a result of this discussion General Von Graevenitz ordered us to murder war prisoners incapable of work, using for this purpose the camp medical personnel.”
The witness asserts that when he arrived on duty in the Ukraine in the summer of 1942, he learned there, as he says—you will find these two lines on Page 29, “A method of murdering Russian prisoners of war by poisoning is already adopted there.”
The witness quotes actual figures, actual facts connected with this crime. I think it important to note a reference to this fact quoted on the fourth page of the Russian text, third paragraph from the top, on Page 29 of your document book:
“When I was in the Ukraine I received from headquarters a top-secret order signed by Himmler, directing that, as from August 1942, Russian war prisoners must be branded with a special mark.
“Russian war prisoners were kept in concentration camps under severe conditions, were poorly fed, subjected to moral outrages, and died of hunger and disease.”
Österreich names facts which confirm this testimony. The following episode is revealingly characteristic. I quote the second paragraph of the fifth page; it is on Page 31 in your document book:
“In the beginning of 1942 when an echelon of Russian war prisoners was being moved from the Ukraine to the city of Torun, approximately 75 people died there, the corpses of whom were not taken away but left in the railway car together with the living. . . . About 100 prisoners of war who could not bear these conditions and tried to escape were shot.”
These and similar cases are known to the witness. He enumerates them, but I do not think it is necessary to cite all of them to the Tribunal. They are all alike.