“Thus, for example, in August 1942 the prisoners were ordered by the German staff of the camp to have all their hair removed from their armpits and around their genitals, as otherwise they would be shot. Not one prisoner received a razor from the Germans, though the Germans knew well that they had none. The prisoners spent the whole of the night plucking out their hair with their hands and assisting one another. However, in the morning the guards killed four prisoners and wounded three by rifle fire.
“On 26 November 1943, German soldiers, in the middle of the night, broke into the hospital and dragged out into the courtyard 80 sick prisoners; after they had been forced to strip in the bitter cold, they were all shot. On 26 January 1943, 50 more prisoners died in torment from the beatings received. Throughout the winter many prisoners were killed in the following manner: They would be buried up to their waist in the snow, and water poured over them, so that they formed statues of ice. It was established that 880 Yugoslav prisoners of war were killed in the above-mentioned camp in various ways.”
Further, on Page 38, Exhibit Number USSR-36 (Document Number USSR-36), information is contained of the shooting of Yugoslav prisoners of war in the camp at Bajsfjord, Norway. After 10 July 1942, when an epidemic of spotted fever broke out in the camp and spread to six others, the Germans found no other way of fighting this epidemic than by shooting all the patients. This was done on 17 July 1942. On the same page, 38, there is a reference to a Norwegian report of 22 January 1942, compiled on a basis of statements made by Norwegian guards of this camp who had fled. It is stated in this report that of 900 Yugoslav prisoners of war, 320 were shot, while the remainder, with a view to isolating them, were transferred to another camp, Bjerfjel. I will read into the Record Page 38 of Exhibit Number USSR-36, beginning with the fifth paragraph from the bottom, Page 341 of your document book:
“When an epidemic of spotted fever broke out in the new camp, an average of 12 men a day were shot in the course of the following 5 to 6 weeks. By the end of August 1942 only 350 of these prisoners were returned to Bajsfjord, where German SS troops continued to exterminate them. In the end only 200 men remained alive and were transferred to camp Osen.”
I will now skip two paragraphs and pass to the last paragraph of the same report:
“On 22 June 1943 a transport containing 900 Yugoslav prisoners arrived in Norway. Most of them were intellectuals, workers and peasants, and prisoners from the ranks of the former Yugoslav Army or else captured partisans or men seized as so-called ‘politically suspicious elements.’ Some of them—about 400—were placed in the still unfinished camp at Korgen, while the other group of about 500 was sent 10 to 20 kilometers further on to Osen. The commandant of both camps, from June 1942 until the end of March 1943, was the SS Sturmbannführer Dolps. . . .
“Men were constantly dying of hunger. Forty-five were placed in a hut which normally accommodated six men only. . . . There was no medicine. . . . They worked under most difficult conditions on road building, in the bitter cold, without clothing and caps, in the wind and rain, 12 hours a day.
“The prisoners in the camp at Osen used to sleep in their shirts without any underpants, without any cover whatsoever, on the bare boards. Dolps personally visited the huts and carried out inspections. The prisoners who were caught sleeping in their underpants were killed on the spot by Dolps with his submachine gun. In the same manner he killed all those who appeared on parade, which he reviewed personally, in soiled underwear. . . . By the end of 1942 only 90 still remained alive of the first group of 400 in Korgen. Out of about 500 prisoners who were taken to the camp of Osen by the end of June 1942, there were, in March 1943, only 30 men left alive.”
I will read into the record an excerpt from Page 39, Exhibit Number USSR-36 beginning with the third paragraph from the bottom, Page 342 of your document book:
“Besides this terrible treatment of the captured soldiers of the Yugoslav National Army of Liberation and the Partisan Detachments, the Germans also treated prisoners of war from the ranks of the old Yugoslav Army in complete contravention of international law and contrary to the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, of 1929. In April 1941, immediately after the occupation of the Yugoslav territory, the Germans drove into captivity in Germany about 300,000 noncommissioned officers and men. The Yugoslav State Commission has at its disposal much evidence of the unlawful ill-treatment of these prisoners. We shall give here a few examples only.