“c) In the village of Sossenki, 17,500.
“d) In the stone quarries near the village of Vydumka, 3,000.
“e) In the area surrounding Rovno prison, 500.”
I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the following text, where we read indications as to the distribution of certain methods of murder adopted by the criminals in the various periods. Mass shootings, as shown in the following Subparagraphs a, b, and c, took place in 1941. The extermination of peaceful citizens in the gas wagons occurred in 1943, as shown in Subparagraph d. Shootings followed by burnings of the corpses in 1943, and shootings in the jail occurred in 1944.
I skip the next page, and draw the attention of the Tribunal to that part of the document which is on Page 240, second column of the text; a description of the methodical destruction of the inmates in Rovno prison. I dwell on this point because similar methods of extermination of Soviet people are typical of the terrorist regime established by the Hitlerite invaders in the temporarily occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. I begin my quotation on Page 240 of the document book:
“On 18 March 1943 the Rovno paper Volyn of the German occupational troops published the following announcement:
“ ‘On 8 March 1943 inmates of Rovno prison attempted to escape, whereby they killed one German prison official and one guard. The escape was thwarted by the energetic action of the prison guard. By order of the commandant of the German Security Police and the SD, all the prison inmates were shot on that same day.’
“In November 1943 the German district judge was murdered by a person unknown. As a measure of retaliation, the Hitlerites again shot over 350 inmates of Rovno prison.”
I will not quote any further examples of the executions in the prisons, since in those documentary films which will be submitted to the Tribunal, Your Honors will find a series of similar crimes committed by the Hitlerite invaders on the territories of the U.S.S.R. I pass on to the following part of my statement: “The retaliatory destruction of village populations.”
In the infinite chain of German fascist crime, there are some which will remain for a long time, perhaps forever, in the memory of indignant mankind, even though mankind will have learned about still graver crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. One of the crimes that will thus be remembered is the destruction of a small Czechoslovak village called “Lidice” and the bestial reprisal against the population of that village.