MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: May I continue, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I request the Tribunal to accept as one of the proofs of the Hitlerite crimes perpetrated in the prisoner-of-war camps certain documents which I should like to submit to the Tribunal at the request of our honorable British colleagues. The Soviet Prosecution does this all the more readily in that it considers this documentation of the British Prosecution of essential importance in establishing the criminal contravention by the major Hitlerite war criminals of the laws and customs of war accepted by all civilized nations for the treatment of prisoners of war.
I would ask the Tribunal to add to the documentation of the Trial the documents of the British Delegation, which I have presented as Exhibit Number USSR-413 (Document Number UK-48) regarding the cruel murder of 50 prisoners of war, officers of the Royal Air Force, who were captured while attempting to escape en masse from Stalag Luft III at Sagan and shot after their capture by the German criminals in the night of 24-25 March 1944.
These documents consist of an official record of the Hitlerite crimes, signed by Brigadier Shapcott, representative of the British Armed Forces, and the attached minutes of the court of inquiry held in Sagan by order of the senior British officer in Stalag Luft III and forwarded to the protecting power.
Included with these documents are the statements of the following Allied witnesses: Wing Commander Day, Flight Lieutenant Tonder, Flight Lieutenant Dowse, Flight Lieutenant Van Wymeersch, Flight Lieutenant Green, Flight Lieutenant Marshall, Flight Lieutenant Nelson, Flight Lieutenant Churchill, Lieutenant Neely, P. S. M. Hicks.
The material evidence is also corroborated by statements taken from the following Germans: Generalmajor Westhoff, Oberregierungs und Kriminalrat Wielen, Oberst Von Lindeiner.
There is also a photostatic copy attached of the official list of those who perished, handed over by the German Foreign Office to the Swiss Diplomatic Mission in Berlin, and the report of the representative of the protecting power during his visit to Stalag Luft III on 5 June 1944.
I shall briefly summarize the circumstances of this infamous crime of the Hitlerites by quoting from the report of Brigadier Shapcott. Your Honors will find the passage which I am about to quote on Page 163, Paragraph 2 of the document book. I begin:
“On the night of 24-25 March 1944, 76 R.A.F. officers escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan in Silesia where they had been confined as prisoners of war. Of these, 15 were recaptured and returned to the camp, 3 escaped altogether, 8 were detained by the Gestapo after recapture. Of the fate of the remaining 50 officers the following information was given by the German authorities. . . .”