“Thus the Bolshevik soldier has lost his right to be treated as an honest soldier and in accordance with the rules of the Geneva Convention.”
I beg the Tribunal to recollect that the following directive, dated 7 November 1941, appears in Appendix II of Order Number 11 of the General Staff of the OKW. I quote from Exhibit Number USSR-3, extracts from which appear on Page 233 of your document book—last paragraph in the right column.
“The work of the Special Squad, by license of the rear area commander (officer in charge of prisoner-of-war affairs of the district) must be done in such a way that the selecting and sorting out is practically unnoticeable. Executions must be carried out without delay, and at sufficient distance from the camp and from habitations to keep them secret from the other prisoners and the population.”
These are the transfers of prisoners “to some place in the neighborhood” that Kuntze, the expert executioner, had in mind when he reported to his chiefs on the incidents which occurred during the execution of the 28 crippled prisoners of war.
Among the documents submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Delegation are data regarding the shooting, on 7 April 1945, at the Seelhorst Cemetery in Hanover, of 150 Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. We submit this data as Exhibit Number USSR-112 (Document Number USSR-112). You will find the data in question on Page 207 of your document book. They have been placed at our disposal by the American investigation authorities. They consist of a number of testimonies, including that of Peter Palnikov, a Red Army officer who had fortuitously escaped the execution. You will find the minutes to which I refer on the same page, 207 of your document book. We also have the testimonies of other members of the local population who had been questioned under oath by the American investigation authorities. Their evidence is corroborated by medical reports on bodies exhumed from the graves at Seelhorst Cemetery. In addition, we submit duly certified photographs.
I shall not read all these documents into the record but shall merely point out that the 167 corpses thus exhumed were specially noted in the concluding report of the commission, as enabling the commission to judge, from their appearance, of the “pronounced degree of insufficient nourishment.”
This circumstance must be stressed so that the Tribunal may have a perfectly clear picture of the food situation prevalent among Soviet prisoners of war in the various camps. Regardless of the territory in which the camp was located, all Soviet prisoners of war were exposed to a regime of hunger with the same sustained and systematic cruelty.
While I am thus reporting on the Hitlerian atrocities perpetrated on the prisoners, I find that we now have at our disposal several court verdicts pronounced on the fascist criminals who committed their crimes in the temporarily occupied territories. In accordance with Article 21 of the Charter, I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-87 (Document Number USSR-87) the verdict of a district military tribunal. You will find the entire verdict on Page 214 up to Page 221. It was pronounced in Smolensk, on 19 December 1945. The Tribunal inflicted penalties varying from 12 years hard labor to death by hanging, on 10 Hitlerites directly guilty of the numerous crimes committed in the city and region of Smolensk.
I shall not quote the document, but shall merely mention that on Pages 4, 5, and 6 of the verdict, in passages marked in your copies—these pages, that is, 4, 5, and 6 of the verdict, are to be found in your document book on Pages 218, 219, and 222—information is contained how, as a result of pseudo-scientific experiments on prisoners of war by persons who, to the undying shame of German medicine, were known in Germany as professors and doctors, tortured and murdered the prisoners by blood poisoning. The sentence presents further evidence that, as a result of savage ill-treatment by the German escort conveying Soviet prisoners of war, some 10,000 exhausted, half-dead captives perished between Vyasma and Smolensk.
It is precisely this passage, this information, which you will find in Subparagraph 3 of the verdict. It appears on Page 218 of your document book. The verdict reflects the systematic mass shooting of prisoners of war in Camp 126, in the city of Smolensk—“in Transit Camp 126 South”—during the transfer of the prisoners to the camp and to the hospital. The verdict particularly emphasizes the fact that prisoners of war, too exhausted to work, were shot.