I repeat that I am omitting a considerable number of facts established by the commission.
There is but little difference in character between the documentary evidence already read into the Record and the data on the atrocities perpetrated by the German fascist invaders on Soviet prisoners of war in the region of Stalino. In our Number USSR-2(a) we find, among a lot of other documents, two documents about the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. The first document is dated Stalino, 22 September 1943, and is submitted by a special commission with the President of the Stalinozavodsk Regional Council of Workers’ Deputies at its head. I shall read into the Record that part of the document which contains items of interest to us. The official report begins in the left-hand column of Page 3 of Document USSR-2(a), and the extracts which I am reading into the Record are printed on Page 108 of your document book:
“The circumstances of the case: In the Stalinozavodsk district of the town of Stalino, in the Lenin Club, the German fascist invaders organized a camp for Soviet prisoners of war; at times there were up to 20,000 men in this camp; the camp commandant, a German officer named Gavbel, established an intolerable diet for the Soviet prisoners of war.
“Examined as witnesses, Ivan Vasilyetch Plakhoff and Konstantin Semyonovitch Shatzky, former prisoners of war who had been interned in this camp and managed to escape, testified that prisoners of war were starved; a loaf of bread weighing 1,200 grams and made of poor-quality, burned flour was issued to eight men; once a day one liter of hot liquid food was issued, consisting of a small quantity of burned bran, occasionally mixed with sawdust. The premises in which the prisoners of war were housed had no glass in their windows; in summer and winter alike, even in the coldest weather, only 5 kilograms of coal per day were allowed for heating purposes. This amount could not, of course, heat the vast premises where up to a thousand prisoners lived in a perpetual draught. Mass cases of frostbite were observed. There were no baths. Generally speaking, people did not wash for 6 months and were overrun by enormous quantities of vermin. In the hot summer months the prisoners suffered from the heat. They were left without drinking water for 3 to 5 days on end.”
The regime in the camp organized in the region of Stalinozavodsk was, as is clear from the extracts read into the Record, precisely the same as the regime in other German prisoner-of-war camps. This has been proved beyond all doubt by the discovery of general directives.
The following excerpt shows that, over and above these directives, camp commanders had opportunities for committing atrocities themselves, each man according to his own particular method, and yet remained unpunished. On Page 105 of your document book you will find the following extract which I am now quoting:
“Prisoners of war were beaten with sticks and rifle butts on the slightest provocation, and a punishment of 720 strokes with the lash was imposed for any attempt at escape; the strokes were administered over a period of 8 days—30 strokes of the lash at a time—morning, noon, and evening. At the same time, the culprits were deprived of their bread ration, while the liquid ration was halved.”
Mortality in the camp following this regime was enormous. In winter, up to 200 persons died every day. Epidemics broke out in the camp. Numerous cases of oedemata—the result of hunger and death by starvation—were registered.
The guards derived much pleasure in degrading the prisoners of war by setting one against the other. Thus Shatzky testified that he was flogged by German policemen, receiving 120 strokes with the lash and 15 with sticks, for disobeying the order to flog his fellow prisoners of war. The floggings were supervised by German officers.
Provisions brought by civilians for handing to the prisoners of war did not reach them. The commission came to the conclusion that no fewer than 25,000 Soviet prisoners of war were buried in the grounds of the camp and of the central polyclinic. This conclusion is based on the measurement and number of graves and on the evidence of witnesses.