May I proceed with the presentation of the film, Your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, of course.
[Moving pictures were then shown.]
MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: I must dwell, Your Honors, on one more category of crimes committed by the Hitlerites—the spoliation and destruction of churches, convents, and other places of religious worship.
By destroying monasteries, churches, mosques, and synagogues and robbing their property, the German invaders sadistically mocked the religious feelings of the people. These blasphemous crimes assumed a general appearance in all the territories which were under German rule. Soldiers and officers organized bloody orgies in places of worship, kept horses and dogs in the churches, donned the church vestments, and made sleeping bunks out of the icons.
I shall not trespass on your time by reading all the numerous documents at the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution, and shall merely dwell on some of these, in particular on the documentary photographs, an album of which I present to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-99 (Document Number USSR-99).
With your permission, I should like to read a few more documents and particularly a short extract from the document which has already been presented to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-51(3) (Document Number USSR-51(3)). You can find this extract in your document book on the back of Page 321. I quote:
“The Hitlerite invaders do not spare the religious sentiments of the believing section of the Soviet population either. They have burned, looted, blown up, and desecrated hundreds of churches on Soviet territory, including several irreplaceable monuments of ancient church architecture.”
I omit two paragraphs, and I quote the next one:
“The priest Amvrosy Ivanov writes from the village of Iklinskoye, in the Moscow region: