I ask the Tribunal’s permission to bring in evidence a short quotation from a document already submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-46—the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union on the crimes committed in the city and region of Orel. In the text of this document there is a special communication of a famed Russian scientist, a doctor, the President of the Academy of Medical Science and member of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, Academician Burdenko. The Tribunal will find this communication on Page 14 of the document book, Paragraph 6:
“The scenes I had to witness”—says Burdenko—“surpassed the wildest imagination. Our joy at the sight of the delivered people was dimmed by the expression of stupor on their faces.
“This led one to reflect—what was the matter? Evidently the sufferings they had undergone had stamped upon them equality of life and death. I observed these people during 3 days. I bandaged them, I evacuated them, but their physical stupor did not change. Something similar could be noticed during the first days on the faces of the doctors.”
I shall not, Your Honors, waste time in drawing attention to the long and well-known extracts from Mein Kampf or the Myth of the Twentieth Century. We are interested, in the first place, in the criminal practices of the German fascist fiends.
I have already said above, that death constantly hung over the people who became the victims of fascism. Death could come unexpectedly, together with the appearance in one or another place of a Sonderkommando; but at the same time, a death sentence would be pronounced for any act in these special decisions so mockingly called German fascist “laws.”
I and other members of the Soviet Prosecution already have given numerous examples of these terroristic laws, directives, and decrees of the German fascist authorities. I do not wish to repeat myself, but I beg the Tribunal’s permission to quote one of these documents as it concerns all the temporarily seized eastern territories.
The only justification for the publication of this document for its author, the Defendant Alfred Rosenberg, is that these temporarily occupied districts were populated by non-Germans. This document is a characteristic evidence of the persecution of people for racial, national, or political motives. I beg the Tribunal to enter in the record, as Exhibit Number USSR-395 (Document Number USSR-395), the photostat of the so-called third decree supplementing the penal directives for the Eastern territories which was issued by Alfred Rosenberg on 17 February 1942. Your Honors will find this document on Pages 19 and 20 of the document book. I shall read in full, beginning with Paragraph 1:
“The death penalty, or, in lesser cases, penal servitude will be inflicted upon: Those who undertake to use violence against the German Reich or against the high authority established in the occupied territories; those who undertake to commit violence against a Reich citizen or a person of German nationality for his or her belonging to this German nationality; those who undertake to use violence against a member of the Wehrmacht or its followers, the German police including its auxiliary forces, the Reich Labor Service, a German authority or institution, or the organizations of the NSDAP; those who appeal or incite to disobedience of orders or directives issued by the German authorities; those who with premeditation damage the furniture of German authorities and institutions or things used by the latter for their work or in the public interest; those who undertake to assist anti-German movements or to maintain the organizational connection of groups prohibited by the German authorities; those who participate in or incite hostile activity and thus reveal anti-German mentality or who by their behavior lower or injure the authority or the welfare of the German State and people; those who premeditatively commit arson and thereby damage German interests in general or the property . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: Have you read this before?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I checked the transcript, and I do not think that this has been read into the record.