Further, as Document Number USSR-145, I present a certified photographic copy of a poster announcing the shooting of 51 hostages, and the date is 1942, month unknown. The poster is signed by Roesener.
Further, I present as Document Number USSR-146, an original announcement printed as a poster, signed by Roesener, which announced that on 31 March 1942, 29 hostages were shot.
Further, I present as Document Number USSR-147 a certified photographic copy of the announcement, printed as a poster, which stated that on 1 July 1942, 29 hostages had been shot.
I consider that the sum total of these documents is sufficient to prove that the system of hostages was widely used in Yugoslavia.
To conclude my presentation of evidence in this particular field, I refer to Exhibit Number USSR-304 (Document Number USSR-304), Report Number 6 of the Yugoslav Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of war crimes. I read one paragraph of this document into the record:
“A group of hostages at Celje were strangled on hooks used by the butchers for hanging meat. In Maribor, the doomed, in groups of five, had to place the bodies of the hostages already executed in boxes and then load them into trucks. After that they themselves were shot, while the next group of five, in their turn, continued with the loading. This went on continuously. Sodna Street in Maribor was all soaked in blood pouring from the trucks.”
I end my quotation here.
It seems to me that in submitting to the Tribunal a summary of the terroristic regime established in the countries of Western Europe, this summary would be incomplete without some mention of a country like Greece, a country which also was a victim of the terroristic regime which the German fascists had established. Therefore I present to the International Military Tribunal a report of the Government of the Greek Republic. This report is duly certified with the signature and seal of the Greek Ambassador in Great Britain, as well as of a member of the British Foreign Office. This document is submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-79 (Document Number UK-82), and I shall read into the record a few excerpts from this report which concerns the setting up of the fascist terror regime in Greece and which also deals with the same criminal system of hostages.
The war against Greece was declared by Germany on 6 April 1941, and already on 31 May the German commanding general in Athens had published a frankly terroristic order directed against the peaceful population of Greece. The direct pretext for publishing this was the fact that on 30 May 1941 the Greek patriots had torn down the swastika from the Acropolis.
I here quote this order of the commanding general of the German Armed Forces in Greece, from the report of the Greek Government, on Page 33 of the Russian translation. This order threatens severe punishment for the following reasons: