Out of this correspondence I quote a short excerpt from the record of Corporal Paul Kluge’s interrogation. Paul Kluge belonged to a medical detachment stationed in Shwetz. He heard that a shooting of Poles would take place on Sunday, 8 October 1939, in the Jewish cemetery. Out of curiosity he decided to visit the place of execution. I quote only that part of his interrogation which relates the manner of shooting. The Tribunal will find this quotation on Page 393 of the document book, second volume, second paragraph (Document Number USSR-42). I start the quotation:
“We were already of the opinion that we were the victims of silly rumors and had returned to our barracks, when suddenly a large bus full of women and children drove into the cemetery. We returned to the cemetery. Then we saw a party consisting of a woman with three children, aged from 3 to 8 years, led to an open grave about 2 meters wide and 8 meters long. The woman was forced to descend into this grave and took the youngest child with her in her arms. Two men, members of the punitive expedition, handed the other two children to her. The woman was forced to lie, face down, in the grave and beside her three children, in the same manner, on her left. After that, four men of the detachment also climbed down into the grave, aimed their guns so that the barrels were about 30 centimeters away from the napes of their necks. Thus they shot the woman and her three children.
“Then the chief of the detachment called on me to help fill in the grave. I obeyed this order and, being quite near, I could see the next party of women and children being shot in the same manner as were the first.
“In all, there were nine or ten groups of women and children, all shot in the same way, four at a time in the same grave.”
We can therefore see that this method of mass shooting is of very early origin.
I omit the next page of the report as it contains the minutes of another interrogation with similar information, and submit to the Tribunal proof of other, even more cruel methods of mass shootings which the Hitlerite criminals invented, beginning with 1943 and continuing to the end of the war.
The Hitlerite criminals, beginning with 1943, began to adopt different methods to cover the traces of their crimes, in particular, to burn the bodies. It has been proved by documents that the Hitlerites compelled their victims, first to prepare the kindlings and logs, then to lie down on these wood piles. Then the first group was shot. The next party of condemned persons brought logs, laid them down on the layer of corpses, and then lay down themselves on these logs and were then executed.
I beg Your Honors to turn to the album concerning the Auschwitz Camp, where the pictures of another camp, Kloga, are also included. You will find there a typical example of this cruel manner of shooting. In order to prove this, I turn to a document which has already been submitted previously to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-39. The excerpt which I wish to quote is on Page 233 of the document book, second column of the text, last paragraph. I start the quotation:
“On 19 September 1944 the Germans began the liquidation of the Kloga Camp. Unterscharführer of the Camp, Schwarze, and the chief of the office, Hauptscharführer Max Dalmann, selected 300 people from among the internees, and made them carry firewood to a clearing in the woods. Seven hundred other men were forced to build pyres. When these pyres were ready the German butchers began mass shootings of the internees.
“In the first place, those who carried the wood and built up the fires were shot and then the remaining victims. The shooting was carried out in the following manner: At the point of a gun members of the SD Police units forced the prisoners to lie face down on the platforms of the pyres and then they shot them with submachine guns or revolvers. The bodies were burned on the fires.”