“In a village near Bolva, 15 wounded Red Army men were thrown out of the hut where they were lying, stripped, and bayonetted on the order of Lieutenant Kierick, adjutant of the 112th Engineer Battalion. This was done with the knowledge of the division commander, Lieutenant General Mitt.”
Alois Goetz, from Hagenbach-am-Rhine, a soldier of Company 8 of the 427th Infantry Regiment, stated, “On 27 June, in a forest near Augustovo, two Red Army commissars were shot on the order of the battalion commander, Captain Wittmann.”
On Page 3 of our Exhibit Number USSR-62 we find the following statement by Paul Sender of Königsberg, a soldier of the 4th Platoon of Company 13, Infantry Field Artillery, attached to the 2d Infantry Regiment—Page 137 of the document book:
“On 14 July, on the road between Porchov and Staraya-Russa, Corporal Schneider, of Company 1 of the 2d Infantry Regiment, shot 12 captured Red Army men in the gutter. When I questioned him on the matter, Schneider answered, ‘Why should I bother with them? They are not even worth a bullet.’ I also know of another case.
“During the battles around Porchov, a Red Army man was captured. Shortly after he was shot by a corporal of Company 1. As soon as the Red Army soldier fell, the corporal took from his knapsack all the food in it.”
To conclude the reading of excerpts from the protest of the German prisoners of war, I should like to quote two more depositions by Fritz Rummler and Richard Gillig, respectively. We find their depositions at the bottom of Page 4. Fritz Rummler, a native of Strehlen in Silesia and a corporal of Company 9, Battalion 3, of the 518th Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division, reported the following cases—this excerpt is on Page 138 of the document book:
“In August, in the town of Zlatopol, I saw how two officers of the SS units and two soldiers shot two captured Red Army soldiers after first taking their army overcoats from them. These officers and soldiers belonged to the Panzer tank forces of General Von Kleist. In September the crew of a German tank on the road to Krasnograd crushed two captured Red Army soldiers to death with their tank. This act was inspired purely by lust for blood and murder. The tank commander was a noncommissioned officer, Schneider, belonging to Von Kleist’s Panzer forces. I saw how four captured Red Army soldiers were questioned in our battalion. This happened at Voroshilovsk. The Red Army soldiers refused to answer questions of a military nature asked by the battalion commander, Major Warnecke. He flew into a rage and with his own hands beat the prisoners unconscious.”
Corporal Richard Gillig, of the 9th Transportation Platoon, of the 34th Division, stated:
“Many a time I witnessed the inhuman and cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war. Before my own eyes and on the orders of their officers, German soldiers removed the boots from the captured Red Army soldiers and drove them on barefooted. I witnessed many such facts at Tarutino. I was an eyewitness of the following incident: One prisoner refused to surrender his boots voluntarily. Soldiers of the escort beat him till he could no longer move. I saw other prisoners being stripped, not only of their boots, but of their uniform clothing, right down to their underwear.”
I omit a few sentences and go on to the end of the statement.