“The victims, in an overwhelming majority of cases, were men and men mostly in the prime of life, that is, between the ages of 20 and 40.”
Somewhat lower, on the same page:
“Special attention was attracted by the fact that the exhumed corpses, with few exceptions, regularly lacked footwear. Clothing, too, was absent, as a rule, or consisted of worn-out underwear or parts of outer garments. The natural conclusion drawn from these facts is that the removal of clothes and footwear of any value had become the usual and officially recognized procedure preceding the extermination of Soviet citizens.”
In conclusion, the commission deals with the means of extermination, that is, shooting, asphyxiation by gas, and so forth. All this is not new to us and it is not necessary at present to read this part of the conclusion.
In our document, Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (Document Number USSR-6(c)), minutes are quoted from the report of the medico-legal experts as well as the findings of the board of medical experts. We find them on Pages 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the document. I shall set forth, in brief, the contents of the minutes and shall quote a few words from the findings. According to the minutes, the Hitlerites had set up a large camp for prisoners of war in the town of Rawa-Ruska, 52 kilometers northeast from the city of Lvov. In this camp a large number of Soviet and French prisoners of war were interned, and there they perished; they were shot, died of infectious diseases, or starved to death. The commission of medico-legal experts opened up a large number of graves. Some of these graves had been camouflaged by green shrubs and grass. A considerable number of bodies unearthed were dressed in military or semi-military clothing. In some cases identity medallions of Red Army soldiers were discovered inside the clothes. The ages of the prisoners whose bodies were recovered from the graves ranged from 20 to 40 years.
It is said in the findings—the extract quoted is on Page 70 of the document book:
“The data of the autopsies performed on the exhumed bodies justify the conclusion that bodies of Soviet prisoners of war had, in effect, been buried in the forementioned graves. The burial was on a mass scale. The bodies were placed in each grave at a rate of 350-400 corpses (the grave measuring 7 by 4 meters), in layers, one layer on the other. The bodies were buried in the clothes they had worn at the time of death. The absence of footwear on all the corpses indicates that the Soviet prisoners, when alive, were kept unshod or else that their footwear was removed after death. The prisoners were interned in appallingly unsanitary conditions, since all the clothing found was vermin-infested. Judging by the clothes, death, in the majority of cases, must have occurred during the cold season of the year. Nevertheless, practically no warm clothing was found on any of the bodies. To escape the cold, the prisoners of war had dressed in two or three sets of summer uniforms, had wrapped themselves up in sacking, towels. . . .”
I omit a few sentences from this statement and wish to read into the Record the part dealing with the total number of corpses. It is on Page 70 of your document book:
“The number of graves (36), their size, and the number of bodies discovered justify us in believing that from 10,000 to 12,000 bodies of Soviet prisoners of war were buried in this area. The degree of their decomposition points to the fact that the corpses had been buried underground for about 3 years, that is, the time of burial must be placed somewhere in the late autumn or in the winter of 1941-1942.”
A special section of the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the determination and investigation of atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in the city and region of Orel—which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-46 (Document Number USSR-46)—records the mass extermination of prisoners of war carried out over a long period of time.