[Turning to the witness.] I was asking you on what impartial medico-judicial data were the deductions of the commission based—not the individual report of Dr. Markov, in which there are no deductions—but the deductions of the entire commission, that the corpses had remained not less than 3 years in the ground?
MARKOV: The collective protocol of the commission which was signed by all the delegates was very scant regarding the real medico-judicial data. Concerning the condition of the corpses, only one sentence in the report was stated, namely that the corpses were in various stages of decomposition, but there was no description of the real extent of decomposition.
Thus, in my opinion, this deduction was based on the papers found on the corpses and on testimony of the witnesses, but not on the actual medico-judicial data. As far as medical jurisprudence is concerned, they tried to support this deduction by the statement of Professor Orsos regarding the finding of pseudocallus in the skull of corpse Number 526.
But, according to my conviction, since this skull was the only one with signs of pseudocallus, it was wrong to arrive at a definite conclusion regarding the stage of decomposition of thousands of corpses which were contained in the Katyn graves. Besides, the observation of Professor Orsos regarding pseudocallus was made in Hungary; that is to say, under quite different soil and climatic conditions, and withal in individual graves and not in mass graves, as was the case in Katyn.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: You spoke about the testimony of witnesses. Did the members of the commission have the opportunity personally to interrogate those witnesses, especially the Russian witnesses?
MARKOV: We did not have the opportunity of having any contact with the indigenous population. On the contrary, immediately upon our arrival at the hotel in Smolensk, Butz told us that we were in a military zone, and that we did not have the right to walk around in the city without being accompanied by a member of the German Army, or to speak with the inhabitants of the place, or to make photographs. In reality, during the time we were there, we did not have any contact with the local inhabitants.
On the first day of our arrival in the Katyn wood, that is to say, on 29 April, in the morning, several Russian civilians were brought under German escort to the graves. Immediately upon our arrival at Smolensk some of the depositions of the local witnesses were submitted to us. The depositions were typed. When these witnesses were brought to the Katyn wood, we were told that these witnesses were the ones who gave the testimonies which had been submitted to us. There was no regular interrogation of the witnesses which could have been recorded, or were recorded. Professor Orsos started the conversation with the witnesses and told us that he could speak Russian because he had been a prisoner of war in Russia during the first World War. He began to speak with a man, an elderly man whose name, so far as I can remember, was Kiselov. Then he spoke to a second witness, whose last name so far as I can remember was Andrejev. All the conversation lasted a few minutes only. As our Bulgarian language is rather similar to the Russian, I tried also to speak to some of the witnesses...
THE PRESIDENT: Don’t you think that should be left to cross-examination? Can’t these details be left to cross-examination?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, Mr. President.
I would ask you, Witness, to interrupt the reply to this question and to answer the following one: At the time you signed this general report of the commission, was it quite clear to you that the murders were perpetrated in Katyn not earlier than the last quarter of 1941, and that 1940, in any case, was excluded?