“A: ‘The second one shows the camp photographed from another angle, that is, from the right side. The buildings shown here were practically the only brick buildings in the camp. These brick buildings, though quite empty and undamaged, with excellent and spacious quarters, were not used for housing the prisoners of war.’ ”
It is difficult to say whether or not that what the Hitlerites did to the Soviet prisoners of war at the so-called “Grosslazarett” of the town of Slavuta, in the Kamenetzk-Podolsky region, should be considered as the limit of human vileness. Be that as it may, the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites at the “Grosslazarett” is one of the darkest pages in the annals of fascist crime.
I submit to the Tribunal, as Exhibit Number USSR-5 (Document Number USSR-5), the report of the Extraordinary State Commission, and I shall read into the Record several excerpts from the report itself, as well as from the appendices thereto.
“On the expulsion of the fascist hordes from the town of Slavuta, units of the Red Army discovered, on the site of the restricted military area, the establishment which the Germans called the ‘Grosslazarett’ for Soviet prisoners of war. Over 500 emaciated, critically sick men were found in the ‘Lazarett.’ The interrogation of these men and the special investigation carried out by medico-forensic experts and by experts of the Central Institute for Food, of the People’s Commissariat for Health in the U.S.S.R., led to a detailed reconstruction of the extermination of an immense number of Soviet prisoners of war in that appalling institution.”
You will find the passage I am about to quote on Page 153 of the document book:
“In the fall of 1941, German fascist invaders occupied the town of Slavuta, where they organized a ‘Lazarett’ for wounded and sick officers and men of the Red Army, under the name of Grosslazarett, Slavuta, Teillager 301.
“The ‘Lazarett’ was located about 1½ to 2 kilometers to the southeast of Slavuta and occupied 10 three-storied stone buildings. The Hitlerites surrounded all these buildings by a strong barbed wire fence. All along the barbed wire, 10 meters apart, towers were built, in which guns, searchlights, and guards were placed.
“The administrative staff, the German doctors and the guard of the ‘Grosslazarett,’ the latter represented by the commanding officer, Captain Plank (later replaced by Major Pavlisk), the deputy commander, Kronsdorfer, Captain Boye, Dr. Borbe, with his deputy, Dr. Sturm, Master Sergeant Ilseman, and Technical Sergeant Bekker carried out a mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by imposing a special regime of hunger, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, by torture and direct murder, by depriving the sick and wounded of all medical assistance, and by subjecting utterly exhausted men to heavy labor.”
The Extraordinary State Commission refers to the “Grosslazarett” as the “Hospital of Death.” I shall quote a short excerpt from a section under the selfsame name. It is on Page 3 of the Russian original and on Page 153 of the document book:
“The German authorities concentrated at the ‘Grosslazarett’ 15,000 to 18,000 severely and slightly wounded Soviet prisoners of war, together with prisoners suffering from various contagious and noncontagious diseases.