Chapter XIX: Part II: of this case (5)

In rounding up General Österreich’s testimony it is necessary to quote a sentence mentioned, as I believe, by the Commander-in-Chief, General Field Marshal Von Reichenau, in “The Conduct of the Army in the East.” I submit this document to the Tribunal as our Exhibit Number USSR-12 (Document Number USSR-12). This quotation is on Page 33 in your document book, “Supplying the civilian population and the prisoners of war with food is a misunderstood humanitarian act as well as . . .” I submit to the Military Tribunal this despicable directive of Hitler’s Field Marshal and request it be accepted as evidence. This document is registered under Number USSR-12.

Three of Hitler’s high-ranking officers confirmed that even at the beginning of the war, at a special conference. . . .

THE PRESIDENT: Could you tell us if this order was issued by Field Marshal Von Reichenau? By the general himself?

COL. POKROVSKY: The order is signed by General Field Marshal Von Reichenau.

THE PRESIDENT: Was it captured or what?

COL. POKROVSKY: This document was one of the trophies captured by the Russian Army.

THE PRESIDENT: By the Russian Army?

COL. POKROVSKY: By the Russian Army.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

COL. POKROVSKY: Three of Hitler’s high-ranking officers have confirmed that already at the beginning of the war the question of exterminating Soviet prisoners of war was settled during a special conference. They—the witnesses—differ slightly in detail, but the fact itself has been quite definitely established. The sentence which I quoted from the directive of Field Marshal Reichenau also confirms that even the supply of food to the soldiers of the Red Army taken prisoner by the Germans was considered as “unnecessary humanity.”

It is useful perhaps to submit to you Document Number 884-PS (Exhibit USSR-351). It bears the signature of Warlimont and a postscript by the Defendant Jodl. The document was drawn up at the Führer’s headquarters on 12 May 1941. It said, “OKH had submitted the draft of a directive dealing with the treatment of responsible political workers and similar persons.” You have this quotation on Page 35 in the document book, as well as the two following excerpts which I am going to quote.

The draft foresaw the “removal” of persons of this category. The decision whether a prisoner of war falls into the group “to be removed” is up to the officer. The document states; “By an officer with authority to impose punishment for breach of discipline.” Thus, any junior officer was endowed with powers of life and death over any captured Red Army soldier, regardless of his rank or service. Paragraph 3 of this document states:

“Political commissars of the army are not recognized as
prisoners of war and are to be liquidated, at the latest, in the
transient prisoner-of-war camps. No evacuation to the rear
areas.”

The Defendant Jodl added the, for him, characteristic postscript—you will find it on Page 37 of the document book:

“We must reckon with possible reprisals against German airmen.
It would, therefore, be better to consider all these measures in
the nature of reprisals.”

General Österreich’s testimony concerning the existence of the order to brand Soviet prisoners of war is fully confirmed. I submit to the Tribunal, as Exhibit Number USSR-15 (Document Number USSR-15), Order Number 14-802/42, given by the Chief of Gendarmerie of the Vice Governor in the Region of Styria. It is stated in the order that it is a question of disclosing the order of the Chief of Police. The first paragraph of the order of the chief of the regular police states—the paragraph quoted is on Page 38 of the document book:

“1. Soviet prisoners of war are to be branded with a special and
lasting mark.

“2. The brand is to consist of an acute angle of about 45
degrees with a 1-centimeter length of side, pointing downwards
on the left buttock, at about a hand’s width from the rectum.
This brand is to be made with the lancets available in all
military units. Indian ink is to be used as coloring matter.”

The third paragraph underlines that, “Branding is not a sanitary precaution.”

It is stated in Paragraph 5 that, together with all Soviet prisoners of war now entering the regions of the Baltic States, the Ukraine, and the province of the Governor General commanded by the German Armed Forces, all the remaining prisoners of war in the area of the Supreme Army Command (OKW) up to September 1942 are to be subjected to branding.

The same directive was issued to the presidents of the regional labor offices and the Reich Inspectors for Allocation of Labor. In this Document Number 1191-PS, Page 40 of the document book, it is stated that the order of the OKW, dated 10 July 1942, was brought to the attention of the presidents of regional labor offices and to the Reich Inspectors for Allocation of Labor.

Our documents numbered USSR-121, 122, and 123 are excerpts taken from orders issued by the German military authorities, such as regimental and divisional commanders, and confirm that the prisoners of war, in order to “spare German blood,” were forced to clear mine fields and carry on work which endangered their lives. Order Number 16641 of the 60th German Infantry Division states, in explanation of the bestial treatment of the Soviet warriors:

“Russian soldiers and noncommissioned officers are very brave in
battle. Even a small isolated unit will always attack. In this
connection a humane attitude towards the prisoners is not
permissible.”

This quotation is on Page 44 in the document book.

THE PRESIDENT: We have had that already, have we not, or an almost identical one?

COL. POKROVSKY: You are right, Sir, I quoted this excerpt as a part of the note of the Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Molotov; and now I quote it as part of a special German document. I consider that it is an unprecedented event in history when, instead of respecting an enemy for his military valor, the senior officers of Hitler’s army, in reply to such military valor, ordered their subordinates to treat this same enemy ruthlessly and inhumanly.

In the document submitted to you as Number 3257-PS (Exhibit Number USSR-352), there is a sentence directly relating to my theme. It has been read into the record. Document 3257-PS is a secret report of the Armament Inspector in the Ukraine, dated 2 December 1941, and addressed to the Chief of Armament Section of the OKW. It states—the excerpt quoted is at the end of Page 45 and the beginning of Page 46 of your document book:

“Living conditions, food, clothing conditions, and the health of
the prisoners of war are bad; mortality is very high. We may
reckon on the fact that during this winter people will perish at
the rate of tens and even hundreds of thousands.”

I submit a document under Document Number D-339 (Exhibit USSR-350). The chief camp and factory physician, Jäger, having inspected the camp in Naeggerath Street, informed the medical department of the Central Administration of Camps, in a top-secret medical report on 2 September 1944—you will find the excerpt quoted on Page 47 of your document book—as follows:

“The prisoner-of-war camp in Naeggerath Street is in an
atrocious condition. The men live in dustbins, in kennels, in
ovens no longer used, and in huts made by themselves. Food is
barely sufficient. Krupp is responsible for shelter and the food
supply. Medicine and bandages were so scarce that in many cases
medical treatment was completely impossible. The blame for this
appalling state of affairs rests on the permanent camp.”

In the files of the Defendant Rosenberg was found, among other documents, one numbered Document 081-PS (Exhibit USSR-353). As far as we can understand, it is a letter from Rosenberg to Keitel, dated 28 February 1942, on the subject of the prisoners of war. A copy found in Rosenberg’s files is unsigned, but there is no doubt that such a letter was either addressed to Keitel or prepared for dispatch to the chief of the Armed Forces. The letter states that the fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is a tragedy on an enormous scale.

I will now read into the record the second sentence of the fifth paragraph of the Russian text—you will find it on Page 48 of the document book:

“Out of 3,600,000. . . .”

THE PRESIDENT: I think the United States read this letter, did they not?

COL. POKROVSKY: The document has been partially read, but I would ask permission to read part of a short excerpt a second time, since it is of importance to my further report. It will, quite literally, only take a minute and a half of our time.

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Pokrovsky, we have been preventing other prosecuting counsel from reading documents which have already been read and we are directed by the Charter to conduct an expeditious trial; and I do not really see how it can be expeditious if documents are read more than once.

COL. POKROVSKY: This document, which is already known to the Tribunal, presents a very clear picture of what happened in the camp. The author of this letter states that attempts had been made by the population to supply the prisoners with food but that in most cases the attempts were foiled by the energetic opposition of the camp commanders.

There is no reason to suspect the author of that letter of piling on the agony, or of having any liking for the Soviet people. On the contrary, there is every reason to state that the question has not yet been fully elucidated. This document, addressed by one defendant to another, enables us to imagine the acts that took place in the camps for Soviet prisoners of war.

I began by presenting to you documents of German origin, and this with a definite aim in view. After you have been informed of the attitude of the Hitlerites themselves towards the Soviet prisoners of war and as soon as you have learned however briefly, what the camps for the Soviet prisoners looked like from the words of the Hitlerites themselves, it will be easier for you to estimate the probative value of the documents of non-German origin.

I stop, because it seems to me the Tribunal wants to adjourn.

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps that would be a convenient time to adjourn.

[_The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel, the Tribunal proposes to adjourn at half past four this afternoon, as they have some administrative work to do.

COL. POKROVSKY: I return to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in Smolensk and in the region of Smolensk. The greater part of this report is dedicated to the mass annihilation of prisoners of war by the Germans. I should like to read into the Record excerpts from this document, submitted to you as Exhibit Number USSR-56 (Document Number USSR-56), Page 6, Paragraph 4 from the top; you will find it on Page 58 of our document book. It reads as follows:

“The German fascist invaders systematically exterminated the
wounded and captured Soviet citizens. Physicians A. N. Smirnov,
A. N. Glasunov, A. M. Demidov, A. S. Pogrebnov, and others,
formerly interned in the war prisoners’ camp, stated that on the
road from Vyasma to Smolensk the Hitlerites shot several
thousand people.

“In the autumn of 1941 the German occupational forces drove a
party of prisoners of war from Vyasma to Smolensk. Many of the
prisoners were unable to stand, as a result of continuous
beating and exhaustion. Whenever the citizens attempted to give
any of the prisoners a piece of bread, the German soldiers drove
the Soviet citizens off, beat them with sticks and rifle butts,
and fatally shot them. On the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Street, on the
Roslavskoye and Kievskoye high roads, the fascist blackguards
opened a disorderly fire on a column of prisoners of war. The
prisoners attempted to escape, but the soldiers overtook and
shot them. In that way nearly 5,000 Soviet people were fatally
shot. The corpses were left lying about the streets for several
days.”

It is not difficult to see that this extract fully coincides with the statement in Document Number 081-PS, which has already been read into the Record, the contents of which I once before related to the Tribunal very briefly and in my own words.

We are completing the document only by factual evidence. On the same Page 6—which corresponds to Page 58 of the Document Book—two lines lower down, it is said:

“The German military authorities tortured the prisoners of war.
On the way to Smolensk and especially at the camp, the prisoners
were killed by tens and hundreds. In Prisoner-of-War Camp Number
126, the Soviet people were subjected to torture; sick people
were sent to heavy labor; no medical assistance was rendered.
The prisoners in the camp were tortured, forced to do work
beyond their strength, shot. About 150 to 200 people died every
day of torture, by starvation, typhus and dysentery epidemics,
freezing to death, exhausting work, and bloody terror. Over
60,000 peaceful citizens and prisoners of war were exterminated
in the camp by the German fascist invaders. The facts of the
extermination of the imprisoned officers and men of the Red Army
and of the peaceful citizens were confirmed by the testimony of
physicians imprisoned in the camp; Smirnov, Shmouroff,
Pogrebnov, Erpoulov, Demidov, hospital nurses Shubina and
Lenkovskya, and also by Red Army soldiers and inhabitants of the
city of Smolensk.

“Thousands of prisoners of war were shot in the camp under the
directions of Sonderführer Eduard Gyss.

“Sergeant Gatlyn brutally avenged himself on the prisoners.
Being aware of the fact, they tried to keep out of his way. So
Gatlyn dressed in the uniform of a Red Army soldier, mixed with
the crowd, and, having picked himself a victim, would beat him
half dead.

“Private Rudolf Radtke, a former wrestler from the German
circuses, prepared a special lash made of aluminum wire, with
which he beat the prisoners black and blue. On Sundays he would
come to the camp drunk, throw himself on the first prisoner he
met, torture and kill him.

“Emaciated and exhausted Soviet invalids were forced by the
fascists to work at the Smolensk power plant. Many occasions
were observed when prisoners, worn out by starvation, would
collapse under the strain of work beyond their strength and were
immediately shot by Sonderführer Szepalsky, Sonderführer Bram,
Hofmann Mauser, and Sonderführer Wagner.

“There was, in Smolensk, a hospital for prisoners of war; Soviet
doctors working at that hospital stated: Up to July 1942, the
patients lay unbandaged on the floor. Their clothes and bedding
were covered not only with dirt but with pus. The rooms were
unheated and the floors of the corridors coated with ice.”

A report of a medico-legal examination is appended, Your Honors, to the statement of the Extraordinary State Commission which I have just quoted. Experts such as Academician Burdenko, member of the Extraordinary Commission, Dr. Prosorovsky, chief medico-forensic expert of the People’s Commissariat for the Care of Public Health in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Smolianov, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Second Moscow Medical Institute, and other specialists, conducted—from 1 to 16 October 1943—numerous exhumations and medico-legal autopsies on the corpses in Smolensk and the vicinity of Smolensk. A great many mass graves were opened which contained the corpses of such persons who had been killed during the German fascist occupation. The number of corpses which were found in these graves was between 500 and 4,500 at each place where such mass executions took place.

I shall read into the Record only such excerpts from the findings of the experts’ investigation as have a direct bearing on my subject. You will find the paragraph which I am now quoting on Page 61 of your document book, corresponding to Page 9 of our Exhibit Number USSR-56 (Document Number USSR-56).

“The corpses found in the pits were for the most part either
partially or completely-naked, or else clothed in worn-out
underwear; only in the minority of cases did the bodies
disinterred wear clothes or military uniforms.”

It is stated in Paragraph 2 on the next page of the Document Number USSR-56—page 62 of the document book—Paragraph 2:

“Identity documents were found in 16 cases only—3 passports, 1
Red Army book, and 12 military identity ‘medallions.’ By
‘medallions’ I mean the small tube-like cases, not unlike a
needle case in appearance, issued to each soldier in the Red
Army. A document giving the soldier’s name, his father’s name,
surname, and rank, together with his home address, is slipped
into this tube.

“In some cases partly preserved articles of clothing and tattoo
marks alone could help in establishing the identity of the
deceased.”

This circumstance confirms the fact that the Germans endeavored to make the identification of their victims impossible, as demanded in special German directives. The first paragraph on Page 11 of Document Number 56, corresponding to your Page 63 in the document book, says:

“The autopsies performed on corpses taken from graves in the
area of the large and small concentration camps at Plant 35, of
the former German hospital for prisoners of war, of a sawmill,
and of concentration camps near the villages of Becherskaya and
Rakytna, revealed that, according to the data of the autopsies,
death in an overwhelming majority of cases could be ascribed to
hunger, starvation, and acute infectious diseases.

“An objective proof of death from starvation, over and above the
total absence of all subcutaneous fatty tissues, as disclosed
during the autopsies, was the discovery, in a number of cases,
of grassy substances, remains of rough leaves and plant stalks
in the abdominal cavity.”

On the same page, but rather lower down, in Paragraph 4, we read:

“The considerable number of burial-pits opened (87), filled with
masses of corpses, together with the estimated differences in
the time of burial, differences ranging from the second half of
1941, 1942, and 1943, testify to the systematic extermination of
Soviet citizens.

“The victims, in an overwhelming majority of cases, were men and
men mostly in the prime of life, that is, between the ages of 20
and 40.”

Somewhat lower, on the same page:

“Special attention was attracted by the fact that the exhumed
corpses, with few exceptions, regularly lacked footwear.
Clothing, too, was absent, as a rule, or consisted of worn-out
underwear or parts of outer garments. The natural conclusion
drawn from these facts is that the removal of clothes and
footwear of any value had become the usual and officially
recognized procedure preceding the extermination of Soviet
citizens.”

In conclusion, the commission deals with the means of extermination, that is, shooting, asphyxiation by gas, and so forth. All this is not new to us and it is not necessary at present to read this part of the conclusion.

In our document, Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (Document Number USSR-6(c)), minutes are quoted from the report of the medico-legal experts as well as the findings of the board of medical experts. We find them on Pages 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the document. I shall set forth, in brief, the contents of the minutes and shall quote a few words from the findings. According to the minutes, the Hitlerites had set up a large camp for prisoners of war in the town of Rawa-Ruska, 52 kilometers northeast from the city of Lvov. In this camp a large number of Soviet and French prisoners of war were interned, and there they perished; they were shot, died of infectious diseases, or starved to death. The commission of medico-legal experts opened up a large number of graves. Some of these graves had been camouflaged by green shrubs and grass. A considerable number of bodies unearthed were dressed in military or semi-military clothing. In some cases identity medallions of Red Army soldiers were discovered inside the clothes. The ages of the prisoners whose bodies were recovered from the graves ranged from 20 to 40 years.

It is said in the findings—the extract quoted is on Page 70 of the document book:

“The data of the autopsies performed on the exhumed bodies
justify the conclusion that bodies of Soviet prisoners of war
had, in effect, been buried in the forementioned graves. The
burial was on a mass scale. The bodies were placed in each grave
at a rate of 350-400 corpses (the grave measuring 7 by 4
meters), in layers, one layer on the other. The bodies were
buried in the clothes they had worn at the time of death. The
absence of footwear on all the corpses indicates that the Soviet
prisoners, when alive, were kept unshod or else that their
footwear was removed after death. The prisoners were interned in
appallingly unsanitary conditions, since all the clothing found
was vermin-infested. Judging by the clothes, death, in the
majority of cases, must have occurred during the cold season of
the year. Nevertheless, practically no warm clothing was found
on any of the bodies. To escape the cold, the prisoners of war
had dressed in two or three sets of summer uniforms, had wrapped
themselves up in sacking, towels. . . .”

I omit a few sentences from this statement and wish to read into the Record the part dealing with the total number of corpses. It is on Page 70 of your document book:

“The number of graves (36), their size, and the number of bodies
discovered justify us in believing that from 10,000 to 12,000
bodies of Soviet prisoners of war were buried in this area. The
degree of their decomposition points to the fact that the
corpses had been buried underground for about 3 years, that is,
the time of burial must be placed somewhere in the late autumn
or in the winter of 1941-1942.”

A special section of the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the determination and investigation of atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in the city and region of Orel—which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-46 (Document Number USSR-46)—records the mass extermination of prisoners of war carried out over a long period of time.

The prisoner-of-war camp was set up in the city jail of Orel. After the Hitlerite invaders had been driven from Orel, the Extraordinary Commission was able to secure the testimony of doctors who had been in this camp and who had fortuitously escaped with their lives. Included in this report are the personal observations of a member of the Extraordinary State Committee, Academician Burdenko, who personally examined people liberated by the Red Army from the camp, from the camp premises, and from the so-called camp hospital. The general conclusion is that in the camp of Orel and in others the Hitlerites bodily exterminated the Soviet people with characteristic German thoroughness.

The prisoners received 200 grams of bread and a liter of soup made from rotten soy beans and moldy flour. The bread was baked with an admixture of sawdust. The camp administration, doctors included, treated the prisoners atrociously. I should like to quote a few excerpts from the report of the commission, and I shall start from Paragraph 5, Page 2 of the document, which you will find on Page 72 of the document book:

“The camp commander, Major Hoffmann, flogged the prisoners and
forced persons exhausted by hunger to carry out heavy manual
work in the local quarries and in the unloading of ammunition.

“Boots and shoes were taken from the prisoners and replaced by
wooden clogs.

“In the winter these clogs became slippery and the prisoners,
when walking, and especially when going up to the 2d and 3rd
floor, would slip on the stairs and be lamed.”

Dr. H. I. Zvetkov, a former inmate of the prisoner-of-war camp, testified as follows. I quote, and you will find the excerpt quoted on Page 72 and at the beginning of Page 73:

“I can only describe the attitude of the German Command towards
the prisoners of war, during my stay in the camp at Orel, as one
of deliberate extermination of manpower in the person of the
prisoners. The food ration, which at best contained a maximum of
only 700 calories, led, when work was hard and beyond their
strength, to complete exhaustion of the organism (cachexia) and
to death. . . .

“Despite our categorical protests and our struggle against this
mass murder of the people of the Soviet, the German camp
doctors, Kuper and Beckel, maintained that the diet was
perfectly satisfactory. Moreover, they denied that the oedemata
from which so many of the prisoners suffered were due to
starvation and quite calmly ascribed the condition entirely to
heart or kidney troubles. The very mention of the term ‘hunger
oedema’ was forbidden in the diagnosis. Mortality in the camp
assumed mass proportions. Of the total number of persons
murdered, 3,000 died of starvation and of complications arising
from malnutrition.

“The prisoners lived in indescribably appalling conditions. The
overcrowding was incredible. Fuel and water were completely
lacking. Everything was infested by vermin. From 50 to 80 people
were crammed into a ward 15 to 20 square meters in size.
Prisoners would die at the rate of five or six per ward, and the
living would have to sleep on the dead.”

It is further said that a particularly terrible regime existed for those included in the category of recalcitrants. They were put into a special building, named the death block. The inmates of this block were shot on schedule, five to six persons being taken to execution every Tuesday and Friday. The German physician Kuper was one of those present at the shootings. Academician Burdenko established that in the so-called hospital people were exterminated in the same manner as in the rest of the camp.

In the penultimate paragraph, on Page 3, we read—members of the Tribunal will find this passage on Page 73 of the document book:

“The scenes which I had to witness defy all imagination. My joy
at the sight of the liberated people was marred by the fact that
their faces bore an expression of utter stupor. This made me
think, ‘What is the matter here?’ Evidently the sufferings they
had undergone erased from their minds all distinction between
life and death.

“I observed these people for 3 days and bandaged their wounds
while moving them from the camp, but the mental stupor remained.
Something similar could also be seen on the faces of the doctors
during the first few days.

“People perished in the camp from disease, starvation, and
floggings. In the so-called ‘hospital’ prison they died of
wound-infection, sepsis, and starvation.”

On the 2d day of May 1945, there was captured in Berlin a member of the SS, Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann. The son of a shopkeeper, Ludwig Waldmann, he was born in Berlin on 17 October 1914. From information received, his mother, up to the time of his capture, was living in the city of Brunswick, Donnerburweg 60.

He testified personally to facts known to him regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. He witnessed these exterminations while working as a driver in different camps and himself participated in the mass killings. His testimony is on Page 9 of Exhibit Number USSR-52 (Document Number USSR-52), entitled, “Camp Auschwitz.” He provides more detailed information on the murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen.

Towards the end of summer 1941, the Sonderkommando of the Security Police in this camp exterminated Russian prisoners of war daily for a whole month. Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann testified—you will find the excerpt I am quoting on Page 82—that:

“The Russian prisoners of war had to walk about one kilometer
from the station to the camp. In the camp they stayed one night
without food. The next night they were led away for execution.
The prisoners were constantly being transferred from the inner
camp on three trucks, one of which was driven by me. The inner
camp was approximately one and three-quarters of a kilometer
from the execution grounds. The execution itself took place in
the barracks which had recently been constructed for this
purpose.

“One room was reserved for undressing and another for waiting;
in one of them a radio played rather loudly. It was done
purposely so that the prisoners could not guess that death
awaited them. From the second room they went, one by one,
through a passage into a small fenced-in room with an iron grid
let into the floor. Under the grid was a drain. As soon as a
prisoner of war was killed, the corpse was carried out by two
German prisoners while the blood was washed off the grid.

“In this small room there was a slot in the wall, approximately
50 centimeters in length. The prisoner of war stood with the
back of his head against the slot and a sniper shot at him from
behind the slot since the sniper often missed the prisoner.
After 8 days a new arrangement was made. The prisoner, as
before, was placed against the wall; an iron plate was then
slowly lowered onto his head. The prisoner was under the
impression that he was being measured for height. The iron plate
contained a ramrod which shot out suddenly and pole-axed the
prisoner with a blow on the back of the head. He dropped dead.
The iron plate was operated by a foot lever in a corner of the
room. The personnel working in the room belonged to the
above-mentioned Sonderkommando.

“By request of the execution squad, I was also forced to work
this apparatus. I shall refer to the subject later. The bodies
of prisoners thus murdered were burned in four mobile
crematories transported in trailers and attached to motor cars.
I had to ride constantly from the inner camp to the execution
yard. I had to make 10 trips a night with 10 minutes’ interval
between trips. It was during these intervals that I witnessed
the executions. . . .”

It is a long way from these individual murders to the death factories of Treblinka, Dachau, and Auschwitz, but the tendency, the line of action are identical. Methods and extent of the killings varied. The Hitlerites endeavored to discover ways and means for the rapid mass extermination of human beings. They spent much time on the solution of this problem. To realize their ambition they began to work on the solution even prior to their attack on the Soviet Union by inventing different implements and instruments of murder, while peaceful inhabitants and prisoners of war alike ended up as victims of Hitler’s executioners.

I present to the Tribunal the report of the Extraordinary Commission on the German atrocities in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. This is Exhibit Number USSR-7 (Document Number USSR-7). Here, as in other places, the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war formed part of the savage plan of the fascist aggressors. I shall quote a few sentences from Page 6 of this document. In your copy it is marked with pencil, on Page 86 of the document book:

“In Kaunas, in Fort Number 6, there was a camp, Number 336, for
Soviet prisoners of war. The prisoners in the camp were
subjected to cruel torture and insult, in strict accordance with
the inhuman ‘directions to the supervisors and escorts attached
to labor detachments.’ The prisoners of war in Fort Number 6
were doomed to inanition and death from starvation.

“The witness, Medishevskaja, informed the Commission: ‘The
prisoners of war were terribly starved; I saw them pluck grass
and eat it.’”

I omit a few sentences and read on:

“At the entrance to Camp Number 336, there still exists a board
with the following inscription in German, Lithuanian, and
Russian: ‘All those who maintain contact with prisoners of war,
especially those who try to give them food, cigarettes, or
civilian clothes, will be shot!’

“There was in the camp at Fort Number 6 a ‘hospital’ for
prisoners of war which in reality served as a point of transfer
from the camp to the grave. The prisoners of war thrown into
this ‘hospital’ were doomed to death.

“According to monthly statistics of sickness among the prisoners
of war in Fort Number 6, from September 1941 to July 1942, that
is, over a period of 11 months only, the number of dead Soviet
prisoners amounted to 13,936.”

I shall abstain from reading the list of graves opened; I shall merely quote the sentence indicating the sum total of the graves. “All told, 35,000 prisoners of war were buried in these graves, according to the camp documents.”

Besides Camp Number 336, in the same town of Kaunas, there existed another, unnumbered camp on the southwestern border of the airfield. It is stated, in connection with this camp, that:

“As in Fort Number 6, starvation, the lash, and the truncheon
reigned in this camp. Exhausted prisoners of war, no longer able
to move, were carried out every day beyond the precincts of the
camp, placed alive in previously prepared pits, and covered with
earth.”

The last three lines of the left column, on Page 6 of the Document. Number USSR-7—Page 86 of your document book—state as follows:

“The records, documents, and testimonies of witnesses enabled
the commission to establish that here, within the precincts of
the airfield, nearly 10,000 Soviet prisoners had been tortured
to death and buried.”

The report mentions one more camp, Number 133, near the town of Alitus, and a few more which had been established in July 1941 and existed up to April 1943. In these camps the prisoners froze to death. When unloaded from the railway coaches, such prisoners of war who were unable to walk were shot out of hand. The remaining prisoners were tortured until they lost consciousness, hanged by their feet on chains, brought back to consciousness by having cold water dashed over them; then the whole process would be repeated all over again.

Giving the sum total of prisoners murdered, the commission writes—the few lines which I am about to quote are likewise on the same page, 86, of the document book:

“It had been established that no less than 165,000 Soviet
prisoners of war were executed by the Germans in the
above-mentioned camps of the Lithuanian S.S.R.”

The extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was, quite literally, carried out in every camp. Thousands of Soviet soldiers likewise perished in the extermination camp of Maidanek. The second paragraph of Page 5 of the joint Polish and Soviet communiqué of the Extraordinary Commission, which is presented to you as Exhibit Number USSR-29 (Document Number USSR-29)—corresponding to your Page 92 of the document book—states that:

“The entire bloodstained history of this camp begins with the
mass shooting of Soviet prisoners of war, organized by the SS in
November and December 1941. Out of a group of 2,000 Soviet war
prisoners, only 80 remained alive. All the rest were shot except
a few who were racked and tortured to death.

“Between January and April 1942 more transports of Soviet
prisoners of war were brought to the camp and shot. Nedzelek
Jan, hired to work in the camp as a truck driver, testified:

“‘About 5,000 Russian prisoners of war were exterminated by the
Germans in the winter of 1942 by the following method: They were
taken from their barracks in trucks and driven to the pits of a
former stone quarry, and in these pits they were shot.’

“Prisoners of war of the former Polish Army, captured as far
back as 1939 and imprisoned in various German camps, were
already concentrated, in 1940, in the Lublin camp on Lipovoja
Street and were soon after transferred, in batches, to the
extermination camp of Maidanek, where they suffered the same
fate: systematic torture, murder, mass shooting, _et cetera_.

“The witness, Reznik, testified as follows:

“‘In January 1941, we, a party of approximately 4,000 Jewish
prisoners of war, were placed into railway coaches and sent to
the East. . . . We were brought to Lublin, unloaded and handed
over to the SS. About September or October 1942, it was decided
that only those people who were qualified as skilled plant and
factory workers, and therefore needed in the town, were to be
left in the camp on Number 7 Lipovoja Street, while the rest,
and I among them, were transferred to Maidanek Camp. All of us
already knew—and knew far too well—that deportation to
Maidanek meant death. Of this party of more than 4,000 prisoners
of war, only a few individuals, who had managed to escape while
engaged in work outside the camp, remained alive.

“‘In the summer of 1943, 300 Soviet officers, including two
colonels, four majors, with the remainder consisting of captains
and senior lieutenants, were brought to Maidanek. The officers
in question were shot in the camp.’”

Huge camps for the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war had been organized by German fascists in the territory of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. The report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German invaders on the territory of this republic—we present to the Tribunal this report as Exhibit Number USSR-41 (Document Number USSR-41)—contains the following data on the extermination of 327,000 Soviet prisoners of war. I quote excerpts from Page 7, on the right column of the above-mentioned report. You, Sir, as well as the other members of the Tribunal, will find the excerpt on Page 97 of the document book:

“In Riga, the Germans organized a camp, Stalag 350, for Soviet
prisoners of war, on the premises of the former barracks on
Pernovskaja and Rudolf Streets, which existed from July 1941 to
October 1944. There Soviet prisoners of war were kept in inhuman
conditions. The building where they were lodged had neither
windows nor heat. In spite of heavy forced labor from 12 to 14
hours a day, their rations consisted only of 150-200 grams of
bread and so-called soup made of grass, rotten potatoes, leaves
of trees, and other refuse.”

In my opinion, it is necessary to stress the monotony of the rations issued to the prisoners of war. Testimonies given by witnesses coincide entirely with the official directive on the quantities of food allotted to the prisoners of war, which I have already read into the Record today.

A former prisoner of war, P. F. Yakovenko, who was imprisoned in Stalag 350, testified—this is on Page 97 in your document book; forgive me, I forgot to mention it:

“We were given 180 grams of bread, half consisting of sawdust
and straw, one liter of unsalted soup made of unpeeled rotten
potatoes. We slept on the bare ground and were eaten up by lice.
Between December 1941 to May 1942, 30,000 prisoners of war
perished in this camp from starvation, cold, flogging, typhus,
and shooting. The Germans daily shot prisoners of war who, owing
to weakness or illness, were unable to go to work; they mocked
at them and beat them without any reason at all.”

G. B. Novitzkis, who had worked as senior nurse in the hospital for Soviet prisoners of war in Number 1, Gymnastitcheskaya Street, testified that she had repeatedly seen patients eat grass and tree leaves in order to quell the pangs of hunger.

“In sections of Stalag 350, on the territory of a former
brewery, and in the Panzer barracks, over 19,000 persons
perished between September 1941 and April 1942 alone, of
starvation, torture, and epidemics. The Germans also shot
wounded prisoners of war. In addition, Soviet prisoners of war
perished en route to the camp, since the Germans left them
without food or water.”

A female witness, A.V. Taukulis testified:

“In the fall of 1941 a transport of Soviet prisoners of war,
consisting of 50-60 coaches, arrived at the station of
Salaspils. When the cars were opened, the stench of corpses
spread over a great distance. Half the men were dead; many were
at the point of death. Men who were able to climb out of the
coaches dashed towards water, but the guards opened fire and
shot a score or two of them.”

I shall not enumerate other facts which took place in Stalag 350, I shall merely read into the Record the final sentence, referring to this camp. I fear that there is a misprint in this sentence in your document book. If I am not mistaken, your document book mentions the shooting of 120,000 Soviet prisoners. This figure is inaccurate; in the original document, which I shall now read into the Record, another figure is mentioned, “In Stalag 350 and in its branches, the Germans tortured to death and shot over 130,000 Soviet prisoners of war.”

On Page 97 of your document book you can find the following part of this report:

“There was a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, Stalag 340, in
Daugavpilce (Dvinsk), known among the internees and the town’s
inhabitants as the ‘Death Camp,’ where in 3 years over 124,000
Soviet prisoners of war perished from starvation, tortures, and
shootings.”

The butchering of prisoners of war by German executioners usually began on the way to the camp. In the summer, prisoners of war were transported in tightly-closed wagons, in winter in freight coaches and on platform trucks. Masses of prisoners perished from hunger and thirst. They suffocated in the summer; they froze in the winter.

Witness T.K. Ussenko stated:

“In November 1941 I was on duty, as signalman, at the station of
Most, and I saw a transport, consisting of more than 30 coaches,
move into the ‘Kilometer 217’ siding”—this was the name given
to that particular part of the track—“Not a living soul was
discovered in the coaches. No fewer than 1,500 dead bodies were
unloaded from this transport. They were dressed in nothing but
their underclothes. The corpses lay around the railway track for
nearly a week.”

The hospital attached to the camp was likewise dedicated to the extermination of prisoners of war. Schoolteacher V. A. Efimova, who worked at the hospital, told the Commission:

“It was rarely that any one left this hospital alive. Five
shifts of grave-diggers, selected from among the prisoners,
carried the dead to the cemetery in handcarts. It frequently
happened that a man who was still alive would be thrown into the
cart and six to seven corpses or bodies of executed people piled
on top of him. The living were buried with the dead. At the
hospital sick people, tossing in delirium, were bludgeoned to
death.”

When an epidemic broke out in the camp, the Hitlerites drove to the airfield all the prisoners from any barrack where typhus patients had been discovered and shot them. About 45,000 Soviet prisoners of war were thus exterminated.

Appalling facts are quoted in the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission, which investigated the crimes of the German fascist invaders in the neighborhood of Sevastopol, Kerch, and at the health resort of Teberda. I shall read into the Record some data from our Exhibit Number USSR-63(5) (Document Number USSR-63(5)). At the Sevastopol prison, the German fascist command organized a hospital for sick and wounded prisoners of war. Here the Soviet warriors perished in masses. I shall quote a few sentences, which you will find in your document book on Page 99:

“At the time the hospital was organized, the sick and wounded
were not given any water or bread for 5 or 6 days by the
Germans, who cynically said: ‘This is the punishment for the
specially stubborn defense of Sevastopol by the Russians.’

“The wounded brought in from the battlefield were given no
medical aid. Soldiers and officers were thrown on the cement
floor, where they lay bleeding for 7 and 8 days on end.

“During the defense of Sevastopol, a military hospital and a
medico-sanitary battalion, Number 47, were installed in the
vaults of the champagne factory at Inkermann. After the retreat
of the Red Army, a large number of wounded soldiers and officers
were left behind in Vault Numbers 10, 11, 12, and 13, since
there had been no time to evacuate them. When the German savages
captured the factory, they all became drunk and set fire to the
vaults.”

I omit a whole number of facts, the majority of which, strictly speaking, should have been specially reported to the Tribunal. I pass on to the description of the last crime mentioned in the statement of the commission. I pay special attention to it because it describes the brutal extermination of a very large number of wounded Red Army soldiers. You will also find this excerpt on Page 99 of your document book:

“On 4 December 1943 there arrived at the station of Sevastopol,
from the city of Kerch, three transports of wounded prisoners of
war belonging to the Kerch landing forces. Having loaded them on
a 2,500-ton barge moored in the southern bay near the landing
stage, the Germans set fire to it. The heart-rending screams of
the prisoners filled the air. Women who were not far from the
barge could render no assistance to the wounded, since they were
driven from the site of the fire by gendarmes. Not more than 15
men were saved. Thousands perished in the fire.

“On the following day the same barge was loaded with 2,000 men
from among the wounded brought from Kerch. The barge sailed from
Sevastopol in an unknown direction, and all the wounded in it
were drowned at sea.”

I repeat that I am omitting a considerable number of facts established by the commission.

There is but little difference in character between the documentary evidence already read into the Record and the data on the atrocities perpetrated by the German fascist invaders on Soviet prisoners of war in the region of Stalino. In our Number USSR-2(a) we find, among a lot of other documents, two documents about the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. The first document is dated Stalino, 22 September 1943, and is submitted by a special commission with the President of the Stalinozavodsk Regional Council of Workers’ Deputies at its head. I shall read into the Record that part of the document which contains items of interest to us. The official report begins in the left-hand column of Page 3 of Document USSR-2(a), and the extracts which I am reading into the Record are printed on Page 108 of your document book:

“The circumstances of the case: In the Stalinozavodsk district
of the town of Stalino, in the Lenin Club, the German fascist
invaders organized a camp for Soviet prisoners of war; at times
there were up to 20,000 men in this camp; the camp commandant, a
German officer named Gavbel, established an intolerable diet for
the Soviet prisoners of war.

“Examined as witnesses, Ivan Vasilyetch Plakhoff and Konstantin
Semyonovitch Shatzky, former prisoners of war who had been
interned in this camp and managed to escape, testified that
prisoners of war were starved; a loaf of bread weighing 1,200
grams and made of poor-quality, burned flour was issued to eight
men; once a day one liter of hot liquid food was issued,
consisting of a small quantity of burned bran, occasionally
mixed with sawdust. The premises in which the prisoners of war
were housed had no glass in their windows; in summer and winter
alike, even in the coldest weather, only 5 kilograms of coal per
day were allowed for heating purposes. This amount could not, of
course, heat the vast premises where up to a thousand prisoners
lived in a perpetual draught. Mass cases of frostbite were
observed. There were no baths. Generally speaking, people did
not wash for 6 months and were overrun by enormous quantities of
vermin. In the hot summer months the prisoners suffered from the
heat. They were left without drinking water for 3 to 5 days on
end.”

The regime in the camp organized in the region of Stalinozavodsk was, as is clear from the extracts read into the Record, precisely the same as the regime in other German prisoner-of-war camps. This has been proved beyond all doubt by the discovery of general directives.

The following excerpt shows that, over and above these directives, camp commanders had opportunities for committing atrocities themselves, each man according to his own particular method, and yet remained unpunished. On Page 105 of your document book you will find the following extract which I am now quoting:

“Prisoners of war were beaten with sticks and rifle butts on the
slightest provocation, and a punishment of 720 strokes with the
lash was imposed for any attempt at escape; the strokes were
administered over a period of 8 days—30 strokes of the lash at
a time—morning, noon, and evening. At the same time, the
culprits were deprived of their bread ration, while the liquid
ration was halved.”

Mortality in the camp following this regime was enormous. In winter, up to 200 persons died every day. Epidemics broke out in the camp. Numerous cases of oedemata—the result of hunger and death by starvation—were registered.

The guards derived much pleasure in degrading the prisoners of war by setting one against the other. Thus Shatzky testified that he was flogged by German policemen, receiving 120 strokes with the lash and 15 with sticks, for disobeying the order to flog his fellow prisoners of war. The floggings were supervised by German officers.

Provisions brought by civilians for handing to the prisoners of war did not reach them. The commission came to the conclusion that no fewer than 25,000 Soviet prisoners of war were buried in the grounds of the camp and of the central polyclinic. This conclusion is based on the measurement and number of graves and on the evidence of witnesses.

Mass killings and murders of prisoners of war were also organized by the German fascist invaders in another town in the Don Basin, Artemovsk. A special commission, consisting of the military prosecutor of the town of Artemovsk, of the priest of the Pokrovskaya Church, Ziumin, of representatives of the intelligentsia, public organizations, and army units, drew up an official report on the mass murders of Soviet prisoners of war organized by the fascist invaders. This official report is on Page 4 of Exhibit Number USSR-2(a). It is also on Page 105 of your document book. It is said in the report:

“In November 1941, soon after the occupation of the town of
Artemovsk by German fascist invaders, a prisoner-of-war camp was
established in the territory of the small military town lying
beyond the northern station, housing 1,000 captured Red Army
prisoners of war.”

I omit one paragraph and pass on to the question of living conditions in the camp:

“In the spring of 1942 prisoners of war, driven desperate by
hunger, used to leave the camp and, creeping on all fours like
animals, plucked and ate grass. In order to deprive the men even
of this modicum of food, the Germans fenced off the camp
building by a double row of barbed wire, with a distance of 2
meters between the rows and barbed wire entanglements placed
between them.”

I omit one paragraph and am preparing to read the conclusions into the Record:

“Twenty-five graves were discovered near the camp—three of them
mass graves. The first grave measured 20 by 15 meters; it
contained the remains of about 1,000 corpses. The second grave
measured 27 by 14 meters and contained the remains of about 900
corpses. In the third grave, 20 meters by 1, the remains of up
to 500 corpses were discovered; and in the remaining graves,
from 25 to 30 in each, making up, all told, a total of some
3,000 corpses.”

In the neighborhood of the small farm of Vertyatchy, in the Goroditschtchensky region of the Stalingrad area, the Hitlerites established a prisoner-of-war camp. Here, as in other camps, and with their customary and characteristic sadism, they exterminated the war prisoners of the Red Army.

I present to you, as evidence, our Exhibit Number USSR-63(3) (Document Number USSR-63(3)), which contains an official report of 21 June 1943. It is duly drawn up and certified and contains the following information—this is on Page 110 of the document book:

“As a result of the atrocious regime, at least 1,500 Soviet
prisoners of war perished of starvation, torture, sickness, and
executions in the camp near Vertyatchy, during the 3½ months of
its existence.

“The Germans forced the prisoners to work from 14 to 16 hours
per day, and fed them once a day, the ration consisting of 3 to
4 spoonfuls of stewed rye or a ladleful of unsalted rye soup
together with a piece of horse carrion.

“A few days before the arrival of the Red Army the Germans
ceased to feed the prisoners altogether and condemned them to
death by starvation. Nearly all the prisoners suffered from
dysentery. Many had open wounds, but the prisoners received no
medical assistance whatsoever.”

I omit one paragraph and pass on to the next, which deals with the humiliating treatment of prisoners of war:

“Germans mocked the patriotism of the Soviet prisoners of war by
forcing them to work on German military constructions, to dig
trenches and dugouts, and to build mud huts and shelters for
military technical equipment. The Hitlerites systematically
humiliated Soviet prisoners of war by making them kneel before
the Germans.”