I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-421 (Document Number USSR-421), a memorandum on the utilization of the labor of Soviet prisoners of war, addressed by the chief of the prisoner-of-war department for the 8th Military District for the administration of industrial concerns to which the prisoners of war were sent.
I request the Tribunal to accept this document as evidence. It is submitted in the original. I quote Point 10 of this memorandum. Your Honors will find the passage quoted in the last paragraph of Page 150 of the document book. I begin the quotation:
“The following directives have been issued for the treatment of Russian prisoners of war:
“The Russian prisoners of war have all passed through the school of Bolshevism, they must be looked upon as Bolsheviks and treated as such. According to their own instructions they must, even in captivity, struggle actively against the state which has captured them. Therefore, we must from the very beginning treat all Russian prisoners of war with ruthless severity, if they give us the slightest cause for so doing.
“Complete separation of prisoners of war from the civilian population must be carried out strictly, in work as well as during recreation.
“Civilians attempting, some way or another, to approach the Russian prisoners of war, to exchange ideas with them, to hand them money, food supplies, et alia, will be arrested without warning, questioned, and handed over to the police.”
I further quote the introduction to this memorandum. Your Honors will find it on Page 149 of the document book, Paragraph 2:
“The High Command of the Armed Forces has issued directives regulating the utilization of Soviet prisoner-of-war labor. According to these directives the utilization of Russian prisoners of war could be tolerated only if carried out under far harsher conditions than those applied to prisoners of war of other nationalities.”
Thus the instructions for a specially cruel regime, to be applied to Soviet prisoners of war merely because they were Soviet people, were not the result of any arbitrary action on the part of the Lamsdorf Camp administration. They were dictated by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. In drafting this memorandum, the Lamsdorf Camp administration was only carrying out direct orders from the Supreme Command.
I quote two more, fairly characteristic points from the memorandum. I quote Point 4, which Your Honors will find on Page 149 of the document book, last paragraph. I begin the quotation—it is a very brief one: