MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I will now quote an excerpt from the testimony of the witness Manusevitch, previously submitted as Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (8), the passage where he speaks of the activities of the Yanov Camp administration. He was a witness of these activities when working in a special squad of prisoners employed for burning the corpses of people murdered in this camp—Page 3 of the minutes of the interrogatory. The Tribunal will find this document on Page 50 of the document book, Line 25 from the top. I quote this passage as an illustration of the execution squads created by the Hitlerites and of some of the atrocities perpetrated by them:
“Apart from the shootings in Yanov Camp various forms of torture were practiced, namely, in winter a barrel would be filled with water and a man, with hands and feet tied, would be thrown into the barrel, where he froze to death. Yanov Camp was surrounded by a barbed wire entanglement consisting of two rows of barbed wire, 120 centimeters apart. A man would be thrown in and left there for several days on end. He could not extricate himself from the wire and he eventually perished from hunger and thirst. But prior to being thrown into the barbed wire, he would nearly have been beaten to death. A man would be strung up by the neck, hands, and feet. Dogs would be set on him and the dogs would tear him to pieces. Human beings were used as targets for shooting practice. This was mostly done by the following members of the Gestapo: Heine, Müller, Blum, Camp Commandant Willhaus, and others whose names escape me. People would be beaten till they nearly died, dogs would then be set on them who tore the victims to pieces. A man was given a glass to hold and was then stood up to serve as a target in shooting practice; if the glass was hit, the man was spared, but if he was shot in the hand he was immediately killed after being told that he was no longer fit for work. Men would be taken by the legs and torn in two. Infants from 1 month to 3 years old were thrown into buckets of water and left to drown. A man would be tied to a post facing the sun and kept there till he died of sunstroke. In addition, before men were sent to work, they were subjected to a so-called examination for physical fitness. The men were made to run a distance of 50 meters and if one of them ran well—that is—rapidly and without stumbling—he remained alive while the rest were shot. There was, in the same camp, a small, grass-covered plot. Here, too, footraces were run and anybody who stumbled in the grass and fell was promptly shot. The grass grew higher than a man’s knee. Women were strung up by the hair, after first having been stripped naked, swung in the air, and left to hang till they died.
“There was also the following case: a Gestapo man, Heine, made a young lad stand up and cut pieces of flesh from his body. Another man was wounded 28 times in the shoulders with a knife. The wounds healed and he worked in a death brigade. He was subsequently shot. Near the kitchen, during the distribution of coffee, the executioner Heine, whenever he was on duty, would go up to the first man in the line and ask, ‘Why are you standing in front of the others?’ and shoot him dead. In this way he shot quite a lot of people. He would then go to the end of the queue and ask, ‘Why are you the last in the line?’ and shoot him as well. I personally witnessed these atrocities during my imprisonment in Yanov Camp. . . .”
The testimony of the witness Manusevitch, which I have read into the record, was fully confirmed by the official report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union entitled, “German Atrocities Perpetrated in the Lvov Region.” Further on Manusevitch speaks mainly about the activities of officials in the lower and middle rank of the camp administration. It is evident from the official report of the Extraordinary State Commission that a system of the vilest ill-treatment practiced upon the helpless people was initiated and organized by the upper ranks of the camp administration, who invariably set their subordinates personal examples of inhuman behavior.
I will not make any comment on this document, although I do beg the Tribunal to take note of a certain Obersturmführer Willhaus mentioned in this document.
The Tribunal will find the excerpt which I shall now read into the Record on Page 58 of the document book—on the reverse side of the page, Column 1 of the text. I quote:
“SS Hauptsturmführer Gebauer established a savage system of murder in Yanov Camp, which, after his transfer to another post, was perfected by the camp commandant, SS Obersturmführer Gustav Willhaus and SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Wartzok.
“A former inmate of the camp told the commission:
“ ‘I have seen with my own eyes how SS Hauptsturmführer Fritz Gebauer strangled women and children and froze men to death in barrels filled with water. The hands and feet of the victims were shackled before they were lowered into the water. Those doomed to die remained in the barrels until they froze to death.’
“According to the testimonies of numerous Soviet prisoners of war and also of French citizens held in German camps, it was established that the German thugs invented the most vicious methods for exterminating human beings, a fact which they considered as particularly praiseworthy and in which they were encouraged both by the higher military command and by the government.