[The Tribunal adjourned until 14 February 1946 at 1000 hours.]
FIFTY-NINTH DAY
Thursday, 14 February 1946
Morning Session
THE PRESIDENT: I have an announcement to make which concerns the defendants’ counsel. The Tribunal will sit in open session on Saturday morning from 10 o’clock to hear the application of the defendants’ counsel for an adjournment.
They will hear one counsel on either side, that is to say, one counsel for the Prosecution and one counsel for the Defense, for 15 minutes each, and after that open session the Tribunal will adjourn into closed session upon procedural matters.
COL. POKROVSKY: Yesterday, in the course of my representation, I referred to four photographs in our possession, two of which were submitted to the Tribunal there and then. These photographs have been made by the Germans and they show the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman. I must apologize that yesterday, for technical reasons, we were unable to produce the remaining two at the proper time. The first of these photographs shows the distribution of food to the prisoners; the second, hungry Soviet prisoners searching for and eating oil cakes intended as cattle food. I now submit the originals of these two photographs (Document Numbers USSR-358 and 359) as Exhibit Numbers USSR-358 and USSR-359.
An autopsy of the exhumed bodies, performed during the investigation of fascist crimes in the so-called “Lager,” Slavuta, confirms that:
“The headquarters command and the camp guards repeatedly resorted to refined forms of torture. Among the bodies exhumed on which autopsies were performed, the medico-legal examination established that the corpses of four prisoners of war, murdered with cold steel, had received bayonet wounds penetrating the cavity of the skull.”
You will find this passage, Your Honors, on Page 153 of the document book.
“The Hitlerites compelled sick and wounded prisoners, despite their extreme weakness and acute state of exhaustion, to carry out work which was entirely beyond their strength. The prisoners had to carry heavy burdens, were forced to shoulder the bodies of murdered Soviet citizens and carry them out of the camp. Exhausted prisoners who fell by the way were shot on the spot. The road to and from work, according to a report of the Roman Catholic priest at Slavuta, was marked, as by milestones, with small grave mounds.”