MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: How many corpses were exhumed by the commission you headed?
PROSOROVSKI: In the Katyn wood the commission of medical experts exhumed and examined, from various graves and from various depths, altogether 925 corpses.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: How was the work of exhumation done and how many assistants were employed by you on this work?
PROSOROVSKI: Specialists and medico-legal experts participated in the work of this commission. In September and October 1943 they had exhumed and examined the corpses of the victims shot by the Germans...
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Where was the examination of the corpses performed?
PROSOROVSKI: They examined them in the town and the neighborhood of Smolensk. Among the members of this commission were Professor Prosorovski; Professor Smolianinov; the eldest and most learned collaborator of the Medico-Legal Research Institute, Dr. Semenovski; Professor of Pathological Anatomy Voropaev; Professor of Legal Chemistry Schwaikova, who was invited for consultations on chemico-legal subjects. To assist this commission, they called also medico-legal experts from the forces. Among them were the medical student Nikolski, Dr. Soubbotin...
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I doubt whether the Tribunal is interested in all these names. I ask you to answer the following question: What method of examination was chosen by you? What I mean is, did you strip the corpses of their clothes and were you satisfied with the customary post mortem examination or was every single one of these 925 corpses thoroughly examined?
PROSOROVSKI: After exhumation of the corpses, they were thoroughly searched, particularly their clothing. Then an exterior examination was carried out and then they were subjected to a complete medico-legal dissection of all three parts of the body; that is to say, the skull, the chest, and the abdomen, as well as all the inner organs of these corpses.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Please tell me whether the corpses exhumed from these burial grounds bore traces of a previous medical examination?
PROSOROVSKI: Out of the 925 corpses which we examined, only three had already been dissected; and that was a partial examination of the skulls only. On all the others no traces of previous medical examination could be ascertained. They were clothed; and the jackets, trousers, and shirts were buttoned, the belts were strapped, and the knots of ties had not been undone. Neither on the head nor on the body were there any traces of cuts or other traces of medico-legal examination. Therefore this excludes the possibility of their having been subjected to any previous medico-legal examination.