I omit the following part of the quotation, because the data contained therein is already known to the Tribunal and I beg the Tribunal to pay attention to Page 270 of the document book, first paragraph, which says that in the Stavropol region the murder vans were used for the killing of 660 people who were ill in the local hospital. Further I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission regarding the Crimes of the German fascist criminals in Krasnodar. I submit this document to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-42 (Document Number USSR-42). It concerns the mass killing of people in murder vans. I will not quote this document. I pass on to Page 243. I submit to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-55 the verdict of the military tribunal of the North Caucasian Front. I wish only to quote a short excerpt from this verdict in order to save time. The Tribunal will find this on Page 439 of the document book, Volume II, Paragraph 2. I begin the quotation:
“The legal investigation has also ascertained as facts the systematic torture and burning, in the cellars of the Gestapo by the Hitlerite criminals, of many arrested Soviet citizens, as well as the extermination by carbon-monoxide gases in specially built cars (murder vans), that is, the asphyxiation of approximately 7,000 innocent Soviet people, including more than 700 patients from the hospitals of the town in Krasnodar region; among them were 42 children, from 5 to 16 years old.”
I omit the pages of the text.
Next I submit to the Tribunal a report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union on the atrocities of the German fascist invaders in the town of Kharkov and the Kharkov region. I submit this document to the Tribunal under Document Number USSR-43. I will not quote this document, but will go over to another, more comprehensive document, namely, the verdict of the military tribunal of the 4th Ukrainian Front which was pronounced in this case. This document has been introduced to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-32 (Document Number USSR-32). The Tribunal will find this excerpt which I would like to quote on Page 222 of the document book, first paragraph. I begin the quotation:
“For the mass executions of Soviet citizens the German fascist invaders used the so-called gas wagons: Large, closed cars which were known to the Russians as ‘murder vans.’ Into these gas wagons the German fascist invaders drove Soviet citizens and murdered them by special poisonous gas, carbon-monoxide. In order to hide the traces of the monstrous crimes committed and the mass extermination of Soviet people by way of asphyxiation with carbon-monoxide in these gas wagons, the German fascists burned the bodies of their victims.”
I conclude this quotation and omit the next page of the text and another page, and go on to Page 252 of my statement.
In order to prove that the murder vans were used not only at places I mentioned, I now refer to a report of the Extraordinary State Commission which has already been submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-9 (Document Number USSR-9), on the atrocities committed in the town of Kiev. The Tribunal will find there a proof of the fact that murder vans were used in Kiev.
THE PRESIDENT: We have just had handed up to us, in the written translation of your address, Page 234. We already had Page 234. Do you want this to be 234(a)? Is it just one page that you are handing up now?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: There is a different numbering in the English text, Mr. President; and it is difficult for me to talk about the text which is in your possession, because I simply do not know the numbering of the English translation.
THE PRESIDENT: Maybe it is 234(a)?