During the period of their temporary military successes, the German fascist criminals did not bother themselves very much with concealing the trace of their crimes. They did not even consider it necessary to camouflage the burial grounds in which they hurled the bodies of the murdered persons after the shootings.
But after the defeat suffered by the Hitlerite war machine at Stalingrad, the situation changed. Fearing retaliation, the criminals began to take urgent measures to conceal the traces of their crimes. Where possible, they burned the corpses. Where this could not be done, the burial grounds were carefully camouflaged with moss or green foliage. The earth which covered the graves of those shot was smoothed out with special machines and with caterpillar tractors.
However, the main method adopted by the German fascist criminals for camouflaging their crimes was the burning of the corpses. The ashes from the burned bodies were strewn over the fields. The bones which had not been calcinated were crushed in special machines and mixed with manure for the preparation of fertilizers. In large camps the crushed bones of the victims were sold to the German firms to be transformed into superphosphates.
As proof of the enormous scale of the Hitlerites’ criminal activity directed toward concealing the traces of their crimes, I shall submit to the Tribunal a series of documents. I will refer, first of all, to the communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary State Commission on Maidanek. This document was submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-29 (Document Number USSR-29). The part of the communiqué to which I refer will be found by the Tribunal on Page 65 of the document book, on the other side, Column 2 of the text, last paragraph. In order to save time, I will allow myself to summarize the contents of this document:
In the beginning of 1942 two ovens for the burning of corpses were built:
“As there were a great many corpses, the Germans, in 1942, began building, and by autumn of 1943 had concluded, the building of powerful crematoria consisting of five ovens. These ovens burned unceasingly. The temperature in these ovens could reach 1,500 degrees Celsius. In order to be able to put as many bodies as possible into the ovens, the corpses were dissected and the limbs hacked off.”
I omit the next paragraphs and beg the Tribunal to pay attention to the passage which is three paragraphs further down.
The ovens in the crematories proved to be inadequate, so the Germans were compelled to resort to special primitive cremation installations which had been made in the following way—I begin the quotation by Paragraph 1, Page 334 of the text:
“On rails or on automobile frames which served as grates planks were placed. Corpses were laid on the planks, then more planks, and again corpses. Five hundred to 1,000 corpses were piled on one pyre. All that was covered with gasoline and ignited.”
I quote a short excerpt which ascertains the scale of criminal actions taken to conceal the trace of these crimes, Page 336, first paragraph: