[Moving pictures were then shown.]
MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: What the Germans perpetrated in Lidice was repeated a short time later in another inhabited point of Czechoslovakia in the village of Lezhaky. I shall refer as evidence to the Czechoslovak Government’s report, Pages 126-127. This report is presented to the Court as Exhibit Number USSR-60 (Document Number USSR-60). This report states, “Lezhaky, like Lidice, was totally destroyed and the ground where it stood is now covered over with rubble.”
I pass on to the next section of my report, the destruction of villages and towns, industry, and transport in the territory of the U.S.S.R.
Your Honors, I have quoted above the general directives of the criminal Hitler Government and the German Supreme Command concerning the destruction of inhabited centers, industry, and means of communications in the U.S.S.R. Now I pass on to the presentation of evidence of those destructions which were carried out in execution of these directives by the Hitlerites everywhere on the territory of the Soviet Union which they temporarily occupied.
I omit the evidence regarding the destruction of single towns of the Soviet Union and pass on to the presentation of my report beginning on Page 42.
There are a large number of documents at the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution which incriminate the Hitlerite criminals in premeditated and systematic, calculated and cruel annihilation and destruction of cities and towns, plants and factories, railways and means of communication.
The presentation of all this documentation would seriously delay the Trial. Therefore, I consider it possible to pass on to the presentation of the general conclusive data established by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union instead of presenting separate documents.
From Exhibit Number USSR-35 (Document Number USSR-35), I shall read into the record only those sections and data which have not been read into the record previously and only those which directly concern my subject. These extracts, Your Honors, are on Pages 223-224 of your document book. I quote:
“The German fascist invaders totally or partially destroyed and burned 1,710 towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets. They burned and destroyed more than 6 million buildings and rendered some 25 million persons homeless. Among the destroyed towns which suffered most are the greatest industrial and cultural centers: Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-the-Don, and many others.
“The German fascist invaders destroyed 31,850 industrial works which employed some 4 million workers.”