In the penultimate paragraph, on Page 3, we read—members of the Tribunal will find this passage on Page 73 of the document book:
“The scenes which I had to witness defy all imagination. My joy at the sight of the liberated people was marred by the fact that their faces bore an expression of utter stupor. This made me think, ‘What is the matter here?’ Evidently the sufferings they had undergone erased from their minds all distinction between life and death.
“I observed these people for 3 days and bandaged their wounds while moving them from the camp, but the mental stupor remained. Something similar could also be seen on the faces of the doctors during the first few days.
“People perished in the camp from disease, starvation, and floggings. In the so-called ‘hospital’ prison they died of wound-infection, sepsis, and starvation.”
On the 2d day of May 1945, there was captured in Berlin a member of the SS, Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann. The son of a shopkeeper, Ludwig Waldmann, he was born in Berlin on 17 October 1914. From information received, his mother, up to the time of his capture, was living in the city of Brunswick, Donnerburweg 60.
He testified personally to facts known to him regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. He witnessed these exterminations while working as a driver in different camps and himself participated in the mass killings. His testimony is on Page 9 of Exhibit Number USSR-52 (Document Number USSR-52), entitled, “Camp Auschwitz.” He provides more detailed information on the murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen.
Towards the end of summer 1941, the Sonderkommando of the Security Police in this camp exterminated Russian prisoners of war daily for a whole month. Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann testified—you will find the excerpt I am quoting on Page 82—that:
“The Russian prisoners of war had to walk about one kilometer from the station to the camp. In the camp they stayed one night without food. The next night they were led away for execution. The prisoners were constantly being transferred from the inner camp on three trucks, one of which was driven by me. The inner camp was approximately one and three-quarters of a kilometer from the execution grounds. The execution itself took place in the barracks which had recently been constructed for this purpose.
“One room was reserved for undressing and another for waiting; in one of them a radio played rather loudly. It was done purposely so that the prisoners could not guess that death awaited them. From the second room they went, one by one, through a passage into a small fenced-in room with an iron grid let into the floor. Under the grid was a drain. As soon as a prisoner of war was killed, the corpse was carried out by two German prisoners while the blood was washed off the grid.
“In this small room there was a slot in the wall, approximately 50 centimeters in length. The prisoner of war stood with the back of his head against the slot and a sniper shot at him from behind the slot since the sniper often missed the prisoner. After 8 days a new arrangement was made. The prisoner, as before, was placed against the wall; an iron plate was then slowly lowered onto his head. The prisoner was under the impression that he was being measured for height. The iron plate contained a ramrod which shot out suddenly and pole-axed the prisoner with a blow on the back of the head. He dropped dead. The iron plate was operated by a foot lever in a corner of the room. The personnel working in the room belonged to the above-mentioned Sonderkommando.