I conclude this quotation from the report of the Polish Government and ask the Tribunal’s permission to refer to a short excerpt from the report of the Czechoslovakian Government. There is one part I would like to read into the record. Your Honors will find it on Page 141 of the document book. I begin the quotation:
“Even before the beginning of the war, thousands of Czech patriots and especially Catholic and Protestant clergymen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and so on, were arrested. Furthermore, in every district lists were drawn up of persons who were subject to arrest as hostages at the first sign of any breach of ‘public order and security.’ At first these were only threats. In 1940 Karl Frank announced, in a speech to the leaders of the Movement of National Unity, that 2,000 Czech hostages, interned in concentration camps, would be shot if prominent Czech statesmen refused to sign the declaration of loyalty. Sometime after the attempt on Heydrich’s life, many of these hostages were executed.
“Threats of reprisals against directors of factories in case of some hitch in the work at the factory were a typical method of Nazi terrorism. Thus, in 1939 the Gestapo summoned all the directors as well as the managers of warehouses belonging to various industrial firms and informed them that they would be shot in case of a strike. On leaving they had to sign the following declaration: I am aware of the fact that I would be shot immediately should my factory cease working without a justifiable reason.’
“In the same way, school teachers were held responsible for the loyal behavior of their pupils. Many teachers were arrested only because the pupils in their schools were caught writing anti-German slogans or reading forbidden books.”
I now interrupt the quotation from the report of the Government of the Czechoslovakian Republic, and I begin to read the section recording the killings of hostages in Yugoslavia.
I shall just say a few words by way of introduction. These criminal murders of the peaceful population developed on their own particular lines in Yugoslavia. As a matter of fact, it is impossible at this point to speak of the execution of hostages, although the Hitlerites constantly make use of this term in their official documents, which will be presented to the Tribunal at a later date.
Truth to tell, under the alleged killing of hostages, the Hitlerite criminals were realizing, on an enormous scale, the regime of terroristic extermination of the peaceful citizens not only for crimes which somebody or other had committed, but also for crimes which, to Hitler’s way of thinking, might be committed.
I submit the document that confirms this fact. It contains excerpts from the report of the Yugoslav Government, which Your Honors will find on Page 259 in the document book in their possession, Paragraph 1. I begin the quotation:
“The murder of hostages was one of those methods which were used by military authorities and the Reich Government on an incredible scale for the mass extermination of the Yugoslav population.
“The Yugoslav State Commission for the investigation of War Crimes has at its disposal an innumerable quantity of concrete details and original evidence taken from the German archives. We submit only a very limited number of such details and evidence, which are, however, sufficient proof that the killing of hostages was merely an item in the common plan in the systematic Nazi crime.”