I omit the end of Page 70, and I quote the last paragraph of this document on Page 71 of my report:
“The fact that all these crimes were committed in the residence of the former Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, Erich Koch, serves as additional proof that all the crimes of the Hitlerite bandits were perpetrated in execution of a plan for the extermination of the Soviet people and the devastation of the Soviet territories temporarily occupied by the Hitlerites, a plan conceived and executed by the Hitlerite Government.”
In Section 5 of his opening statement, General Rudenko, Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R., quoted an extract from a letter of the Commissioner General for Bielorussia, Kube, addressed to the Defendant Rosenberg.
This document is a typewritten letter, signed in ink by Kube. It has several notations in pencil, evidently by the hand of Rosenberg; and it has a stamp, “Ministerial Bureau,” and is dated 3 October 1941. This document, identified as Document Number 1099-PS, I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-374 in evidence of the enormous proportions assumed by the plundering of historical treasures, carried out everywhere by the Hitlerites.
With your permission I shall now take the liberty of quoting some additional extracts from this document, which discloses the fact that not only were the plundered treasures sent to Germany but that they had also been stolen by individual generals of Hitler’s Army. Kube’s letter reveals at the same time the existence of a previously elaborated plan for the plunder of the cultural treasures in Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine. The vandalism of the Hitlerites reached such proportions that even Kube, that hangman of the Bielorussian people, was roused to indignation. He was afraid of allowing a profitable deal to slip through his hands and sought compensation from Rosenberg. I quote the second paragraph from the beginning of the letter:
“Minsk possessed a large and, in part, a very valuable collection of art treasures and paintings which have now been removed almost in their entirety from the city. By order of Reichsführer SS, Reichsleiter Heinrich Himmler, most of the paintings, some still during my term of office, were packed by the SS and sent to the Reich. They are worth several millions which were withdrawn from the general district of White Ruthenia. The paintings were supposedly sent to Linz and to Königsberg in East Prussia. I beg to have this valuable collection—as far as it is not needed in the Reich—placed once more at the disposal of the general district of White Ruthenia or, in any case, to place the monetary value of these collections with the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.”
Kube, as well as the Defendant Rosenberg, was of the opinion that he had the right to monopolize the stolen treasures and complained—I quote the second part of the second paragraph of this letter:
“General Stubenrauch has taken a valuable part of this collection and has carried it off to the area of military operations. Sonderführer, whose names have not yet been reported to me, have carried off three truckloads (without receipt) of furniture, paintings, and objects of art.”
Having, along with other fascist leaders, robbed the people of Bielorussia, and taken a direct part in the mass ill-treatment and extermination of the Soviet population, Kube hypocritically declared—I quote the last paragraph of this letter:
“Bielorussia, already poor in itself, has suffered heavy losses through these actions.”