“In contrast to the increased requirements for the safeguarding of the Russian billets, these—from the viewpoint of comfort—must be reduced to the most modest requirements.”
I shall endeavor to explain later on what this means. I shall next quote Point 7, which Your Honors will find on Page 150 of the document book, Paragraph 3. I begin the quotation:
“The food rations for Russian prisoners of war at work will differ from the rations allocated to prisoners of other nationalities. More detailed information on this subject will be given later.”
Such was the memorandum addressed to the industrialists to whose concerns the Soviet prisoners of war were sent to work as slaves.
I submit to the Tribunal Exhibit Number USSR-431 (Document Number USSR-431), which is another memorandum about guarding the Soviet prisoners of war. The document is submitted in the original and I request the Tribunal to accept it as evidence into the record.
I ask the permission of the Tribunal to quote a few brief excerpts from this document. First I quote that part of the document which proves its origin. The first page of the text indicates it is an appendix to a “Directive of the OKW—General Office, Armed Forces, POW Section.” Next follow number and document, which are not so important. I now read the introduction to this memorandum, which is on Page 150 of the document book:
“For the first time in this war the German soldier is faced with an adversary who is educated both in a military and in a political sense, whose ideal is communism and who sees in National Socialism his very worst enemy.”
I omit the next paragraph and continue:
“Even in captivity, the Soviet soldier—however harmless he may appear outwardly—will seize every occasion to show his hatred for all that is German. We must reckon with the fact that the prisoners will have received suitable instructions on their behavior if captured and imprisoned.”
My colleague, Colonel Pokrovsky, has already denounced the absurdity of these so-called special instructions and I therefore do not consider it necessary to dwell on this passage. I continue: