The United States of America having established this Military Tribunal I, pursuant to law, through properly empowered military authorities, and the defendants having been brought before Military Tribunal I pursuant to the indictment filed 25 October 1946 in the Office of the Secretary General of the Military Tribunal at Nuernberg, Germany by an officer of the United States Army, regularly designated as Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, acting on behalf of the United States of America, pursuant to appropriate military authority, and the indictment having been served upon each defendant for more than 30 days prior to this date, and a copy of the indictment in the German language having been furnished to each defendant and having been in his possession more than 30 days and each defendant having had ample opportunity to read the indictment, and having regularly entered his plea of “not guilty” to the indictment, the Tribunal is ready to proceed with the trial.
This Tribunal will conduct the trial in accordance with controlling laws, rules, and regulations, and with due regard to appropriate precedents in a sincere endeavor to insure both to the prosecution and to each and every defendant an opportunity to present all evidence of an appropriate value bearing upon the issues before the Tribunal; to this end, that under law and pending regulations impartial justice may be accomplished.
The trial, of course, will be a public trial, not one behind closed doors; but, because of limited facilities available, the Tribunal must insist that the number of spectators be limited to the seating capacity of the courtroom. Passes will therefore be issued by the appropriate authorities to those who may enter the courtroom. The Tribunal will insist that good order be at all times maintained, and appropriate measures will be taken to see that this rule is strictly enforced.
For the information of all concerned, the Tribunal announces that hearings will be held each day this week commencing at 9:30 o’clock through Friday. The Tribunal will reconvene at 9:30 o’clock, Monday, 16 December 1946, and will hold sessions every day of that week including Saturday, on which day, however, the Tribunal will recess until 9:30 o’clock, Thursday, 2 January 1947, when the Tribunal will convene at the usual time.
[6] Tr. pp. 9-11.
IV. OPENING STATEMENT OF THE PROSECUTION BY
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR,
9 DECEMBER 1946.[[7]]
The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected.
For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals. They were 200 Jews in good physical condition, 50 gypsies, 500 tubercular Poles, or 1,000 Russians. The victims of these crimes are numbered among the anonymous millions who met death at the hands of the Nazis and whose fate is a hideous blot on the page of modern history.