To save time I omit the next part of the quotation. In order to prove that the methods in other camps were even more cruel but of the same type as the ones described above, I beg the Tribunal to turn to a document, which has already been submitted as Exhibit Number USSR-38 (Document Number USSR-38). It is the report on the atrocities of the German invaders in the town of Minsk. I refer to a quotation which the Tribunal will find on Page 215 of the document book in the second column of the text, last paragraph.
In the first part of this quotation you will read how, in order to conceal the traces of their crimes, the German Hitlerite invaders built near the camp in Maly Trostianets primitive crematorium installations. I begin my quotation by that passage of the report which speaks of the shootings which occurred in the immediate neighborhood of these primitive crematorium installations. To facilitate the task of the translators, I inform you that I omitted three pages of the text and I read now from Page 223 of the Russian text of the speech.
I begin the quotation with the testimony of the witness Savinsky, who stated as follows:
“Having reached a point 10 kilometers from Minsk, near the village of Maly Trostianets, the car stopped near one of the barns. We all understood that we were brought here to be shot. . . . By order of the German butchers the interned women were brought out in groups of four from the car. Seeing that it was my turn, together with Anna Gobubovich, Yulia Semashko, and another woman whose name I do not know, I climbed on top of the pile of bodies. Shots were heard. I was slightly injured on the head and fell.”
I omit the next part of the quotation which described how this woman saved herself. I quote the last paragraph:
“The legal-medical experts discovered that there were bullet wounds in the necks of these bodies. In the barn and on the stacks of logs the Germans shot and burned 6,500 persons.”
I omit the next three pages of the text and next submit to the Tribunal the proofs of the organization of the German fascist invaders. . . .
THE PRESIDENT: The translation came through to us that 63 people were killed. The translation in writing is 6,500.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: The translation in writing is absolutely correct, Mr. President. For the confirmation of this, one could turn to the original document—the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union. This was a gross error on the part of the interpreters. They diminished the number of those shot more than 10,000 times.
So I omit the following three pages of the statement and will present evidence of the existence of special places of mass executions where the number of victims was numbered by hundreds of thousands of persons and where the doomed were brought in not only from the surrounding regions but from many countries of Europe.