Chapter XX: Part II: of this case (6)

It is noted in the official report that the commission examined material evidence: tools used for the torture of Soviet prisoners of war, a leather thong and dagger, picked up among the disarmed bodies, with the well-known Hitlerite slogan “Blood and Honor” (“Blut und Ehre”). The circumstances in which the dagger was discovered give every possibility of understanding what was meant by German “honor” and for whose blood the dagger was intended.

The documents of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union relating to the town of Kerch describe the characteristic crimes of the Hitlerite invaders. I submit to the Tribunal the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission as Exhibit Number USSR-63(6) (Document Number USSR-63(6)), and I shall read several extracts into the Record. In your copy they are all marked so as to enable the Tribunal to follow the text quoted—Page 115.

THE PRESIDENT: I think we might break off now.

[_A recess was taken._]

COL. POKROVSKY: On Page 115 of the document book you will find the excerpt I am about to quote from the testimony of Citizeness P. Y. Bulytchyeva:

“Citizeness P. Y. Bulytchyeva, born in the city of Kerch in
1894, testified:

“‘I witnessed how our Red Army prisoners of war, both soldiers
and officers, were repeatedly driven along the street and how
the weak and wounded were shot out of hand by Germans in the
street itself when, through sheer debility, they fell out of the
ranks. Many times I witnessed this terrible scene. Once, in the
freezing cold, I saw a group of exhausted, ragged, and
barefooted prisoners driven along. Those who attempted to snatch
the pieces of bread thrown to them by the citizens were beaten
up with rubber truncheons and rifle butts. Those who fell under
the blows were promptly shot.’”

I am omitting a few sentences which, in my opinion, need not be read into the Record.

“At the time of the second occupation, when the Germans broke
into Kerch again, they began to avenge themselves with even
greater fury on perfectly innocent people.”

The witness testifies that the fascist butchers first of all avenged themselves on the military personnel and that they beat wounded soldiers to death with rifle butts. On the same page, 115, you will find the following excerpt:

“The prisoners of war were driven into large buildings, which
were then set on fire. Thus, the Voikov school was burned down,
together with the club for engineering and technical workers
containing 400 soldiers and officers of the Red Army.

“Not a man succeeded in escaping from the burning building. All
those who attempted to save themselves were mowed down by
machine gun fire.

“Wounded soldiers were savagely tortured to death in the small
fishing village of Mayak.”

Another woman witness who lived in this village, A. P. Buryatchenko, testified:

“On 28 May 1942 the Germans shot all the peaceful inhabitants
who had remained in the village and had not succeeded in hiding.
The fascist monsters mistreated the wounded Soviet prisoners of
war, beat them with rifle butts, and then shot them. In my home,
the Germans discovered a girl in military uniform, who resisted
the fascists, crying, ‘Shoot, you vipers, I die for the Soviet
people and for Stalin, but you, you monsters, will die a dog’s
death.’ This girl patriot was shot on the spot.”

There is, in the district of Kerch, the stone quarry of Adjimushkaisk. Red Army soldiers were exterminated and poisoned by gas. N. N. Dashkova, a woman from the village of Adjimushkaisk, testified:

“I myself saw the Germans, who had caught about 900 Red Army
soldiers in the quarry, first ill-treat and then shoot them. The
fascists used gas.”

I omit several sentences. On the same page, 115, you will find the following quotation:

“At the time of the occupation a camp for Soviet prisoners of
war, housing over 1,000 captives, was set up in the Engels Club.
The Germans ill-treated them, fed them only once a day, drove
them off to heavy labor beyond their strength, and shot on the
spot all those who, exhausted, fell by the road.”

I consider it essential to quote a few more testimonies. N. J. Shumilova, a woman from the hamlet of Gorki, testified:

“I myself saw a group of prisoners of war being led past my
courtyard. Three of them were unable to move and were promptly
shot by the German escort.”

P. I. Gerassimenko, a woman living in the hamlet of Samostroy, testified:

“Many Red Army soldiers and officers were driven to our village.
The area which they occupied was surrounded by barbed wire.
Here, naked and barefoot, they perished from cold and hunger.
They were kept in the most frightful and inhumane conditions. By
the side of the living lay the bodies of the dead, and these
bodies were not moved for days on end. Such conditions rendered
life in the camp still more intolerable. The prisoners were
beaten with rifle butts, flogged by the lash, and fed on refuse.
Any inhabitant who attempted to give food and bread to the
prisoners was beaten up, while prisoners attempting to hand over
these gifts were shot.”

In a Kerch school, Number 24, the Germans set up a camp for prisoners of war. A. N. Naumova, a school teacher, testified as follows concerning the regime in the camp:

“There were many wounded in the camp. These unhappy people,
though bleeding profusely, were left without any help. I
collected medicine and bandages for the wounded, and their
wounds were dressed by a medical orderly from among the
captives. The prisoners suffered from dysentery since they were
fed hog-wash instead of bread. People dropped from exhaustion
and disease; they died in agony. On 20 June 1942 three prisoners
of war were given the lash for attempting to escape from the
camp. The wounded were shot. In June one of the escaped
prisoners was caught and executed.”

Koshenikove, a teacher in the Stalin School, in the area of the factory kitchen and Voikov works, witnessed the execution of a group of Red Army men and officers. In 1943 the German criminals drove Red Army prisoners all the way from the Caucasus. The entire road from the ferry to the town, a distance of some 18 to 20 kilometers, was littered with the dead bodies of Red Army men. There were many sick and wounded among the prisoners of war. Whoever was unable to walk, either through exhaustion or sickness, was shot on the way.

Among other facts there is one which deserves special attention:

In 1942 the fascists threw 100 Red Army prisoners of war, alive, into the village well of Adjimushkray; their bodies were subsequently extracted by the inhabitants and buried in a communal grave in the sacred brotherhood of death. This information is contained in the same report, extracts of which I have just quoted to you.

On 29 January 1946 the witness, Paul Roser, was cross-examined here before the Tribunal. He testified that in the course of 4 months, out of 10,000 Russians, whom he had seen as prisoners of war in the German camp at the city of Rawa-Ruska, only 2,000 remained alive.

We possess evidence from yet another eyewitness of the numerous atrocities and endless tortures inflicted on the prisoners of war at Rawa-Ruska. Witness V. S. Kotchan, who was duly interrogated according to the procedure prescribed by our laws, testified before the captain of the guard of justice, Ryshov, on 27 September 1944—the minutes of his interrogation are hereby submitted to you as Exhibit Number USSR-6(c) (Document Number USSR-6(c)):

“I worked under the Germans as a digger at the prisoner-of-war
camp for Red Army soldiers, from December 1941 to April 1942.”

This is on Page 124 of the document book. I omit a few lines irrelevant to the matter, and I quote further:

“This camp was set up by the Germans in the barracks near the
railway. The entire area of the camp was surrounded by barbed
wire. According to personal statements by the prisoners of war,
the Germans drove from 12,000 to 15,000 men into this camp.
While we were working, we watched the Germans mock the Red Army
prisoners of war. They fed them once a day on unpeeled, frozen
potatoes baked in their skins and covered with dirt. They kept
the prisoners of war in the cold barracks all through the
winter.

“I know for a fact that, when the Germans drove the prisoners of
war into this camp, all clothes, overcoats, boots, and shoes
which were at all serviceable were taken from the prisoners,
leaving them barefoot and in rags. The prisoners of war were
taken to work daily under escort from 4 to 5 in the morning and
kept working until 10 o’clock at night. Then, worn out, cold,
and hungry, the prisoners were marched back to their barracks,
where doors and windows had purposely been left open all day so
that the frost might enter these barracks and freeze the
prisoners to death. In the morning, under the supervision of
German soldiers, hundreds of corpses would be taken away in a
tractor by the prisoners of war; they were buried in
previously-prepared pits in the forest of Volkovitch. When the
prisoners were marched off to work in the morning, under escort,
the Germans would place a detachment of soldiers armed with
rifles and stakes by the exit gates of the camp; they pole-axed
them with stakes, stabbed them with bayonets, and chased the
hungry and exhausted prisoners who were unable to move
properly.”

The same witness describes also some other German atrocities:

“The German camp administration brought out completely-naked
prisoners of war, bound them with ropes to a wall surrounded by
barbed wire and kept them there, in the cold of the December
winter, until they froze to death. The air of the camp resounded
continually with the groans and cries of people maimed by rifle
butts. Some were pole-axed with rifle butts on the spot.

“When, starving and exhausted, the prisoners were brought to the
camp, they would hurl themselves on a heap of rotten and frozen
potatoes. This, in turn, would be followed by a shot from the
German escort.”

I present to the Tribunal, under the same Number USSR-6(c)—Page 120 of the document book—the deposition of a French prisoner of war, Emilie Leger, a soldier of the 43rd Colonial Infantry Regiment, Serial Number 29. In his deposition the camp at Rawa-Ruska is called the “famous camp of lingering death, Stalag 325.”

It appears to me that this phrase serves, as it were, as a supplement to the testimonies of witnesses Roser and Kochau. The Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal a considerable quantity of material disclosing as well numerous crimes of the Hitlerite invaders perpetrated against prisoners of war in the territory of the Lvov district.

It seems to me sufficient to read into the Record extracts from the evidence submitted by D. Sh. Manussevitch, and I wish to state that this evidence is confirmed by the testimony of two other witnesses: F. G. Ash and G. Y. Khamaydes. I am presenting all three documents as Document Number USSR-6(c).

Witnesses Manussevitch, Ash, and Khamaydes worked for some time in the detachment which cremated the dead bodies of men shot by the Germans in the region of Lvov and particularly in the Lissenitzky camps. Witness Manussevitch states—I quote, beginning with Line 20 at the bottom of Page 2 of our Number 6(c), and on Page 129 of your document book:

“When we (the Brigade of Death) had completed the cremation of
the corpses, we were conveyed at night in cars to the
Lissenitzky forest, opposite the yeast factory at Lvov. There
were about 45 pits in this forest, containing the bodies of
people previously shot in 1941-42. There were between 500 and
3,500 bodies in the pits. These were not only the bodies of
soldiers of the Italian, French, Belgian, and Russian armies,
that is, of prisoners of war, but of peaceful inhabitants as
well. All the prisoners of war were buried in their clothes.
Therefore, when digging them out of the pits, I could recognize
the dead by their uniforms, insignia, buttons, medals, and
decorations, as well as by their spoons and mess cups. All these
were burned once the corpses had been exhumed. As in the camp at
Yanovsky, grass was sown on the site of the pits, and trees and
dead tree trunks were planted so as to erase any trace of the
crimes, which are certainly unprecedented in the history of
mankind.”

In addition to the testimony of the victims and of many Soviet citizens we have at our disposal the testimonies of members of the German Armed Forces. I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-62 (Document Number USSR-62) a document which was signed by more than 60 persons belonging to different units and branches of the German Army. We find their signature on written protests addressed to the International Red Cross in January 1942. We also have a communication of the International Red Cross acknowledging the receipt of this document. In this letter they mentioned facts relating to the criminal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, of which they had personal knowledge. The persons who signed this protest were themselves prisoners of war at Soviet Camp Number 78. Their protest is the result of the comparison made by the authors of the document between the treatment meted out to Soviet prisoners, which they had seen for themselves, and the treatment they received at Camp Number 78. I will quote a few excerpts from this document—the text with the following words—Page 135 of the document book:

“We, the German prisoners of war of Camp Number 78, have read
the note by the Peoples’ Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the
Soviet Government, Mr. Molotov, concerning the treatment of
prisoners of war in Germany. We might consider the cruelties
described in that note as impossible had we not witnessed such
atrocities for ourselves. In order that truth should prevail, we
must confirm that prisoners of war—citizens of the Soviet
Union—were often subjected to terrible ill-treatment by
representatives of the German Army and were even shot by them.”

Concrete examples of crimes known to the authors are quoted further on in the text. Hans Drews, of Regenwalde, a soldier of Company 4 of the 6th Tank Regiment, stated:

“I am acquainted with the order issued by Lieutenant General
Model to the 3rd Tank Division to the effect that prisoners
should not be taken. A similar order was issued by Major General
Nehring, commanding officer of the 18th Tank Division. Two days
prior to the attack on Russia we were told at the briefing
session of 20 June that in the forthcoming campaign wounded Red
Army men should not have their wounds dressed, since the German
Army would have no time to bother with the wounded.”

The fact of the preliminary issuance of this order also has been confirmed by a soldier of the 18th Tank Division Headquarters, Harry Marek, a native of the neighborhood of Breslau:

“On 21 June, a day before the beginning of the war against
Russia, we received the following order from our offices:

“‘The commissars of the Red Army are to be shot on the spot,
since there is no need to stand upon any ceremony with them.
Neither is there any necessity to bother ourselves unduly with
the Russian wounded; they must be finished off immediately.’”

Wilhelm Metzick, a soldier of the 399th Infantry Regiment of the 170th Division, from Hamburg-Altona, quotes the following case:

“On 23 June, when we entered Russia, we came to a small hamlet
near Beltsa. There I saw with my own eyes how two German
soldiers shot five Russian prisoners in the back with submachine
guns.”

Wolfgang Scharte, a soldier in Company 2 of the 3rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, a native of Gerhardtschagen, near Brunswick, testified concerning the question of exterminating the Red commissars of the Red Army:

“On the day before we opened the campaign against the Soviet
Union, the officers told us:

“‘If on the way you should happen to meet Russian
commissars—they can always be recognized by the Soviet star on
their sleeve—and Russian women in uniform, they must be shot
immediately. Anyone failing to do so and to comply with this
order will be held responsible and punished.’

“On 29 June I myself saw representatives of the German Army
shoot wounded Red Army men lying in a field of grain near the
town of Dubno. After this they were run through with bayonets to
make quite sure that they were dead. German officers stood
nearby and laughed.”

Joseph Berndsen of Oberhausen, a soldier of the 6th Tank Division, stated; “Even before entering Russia we were told, at one of the briefing sessions, ‘Commissars must be shot.’”

Jacob Korzillias, of Horforst, near Treves, a German officer, a lieutenant of the 112th Engineer Battalion of the 112th Infantry Division, certified:

“In a village near Bolva, 15 wounded Red Army men were thrown
out of the hut where they were lying, stripped, and bayonetted
on the order of Lieutenant Kierick, adjutant of the 112th
Engineer Battalion. This was done with the knowledge of the
division commander, Lieutenant General Mitt.”

Alois Goetz, from Hagenbach-am-Rhine, a soldier of Company 8 of the 427th Infantry Regiment, stated, “On 27 June, in a forest near Augustovo, two Red Army commissars were shot on the order of the battalion commander, Captain Wittmann.”

On Page 3 of our Exhibit Number USSR-62 we find the following statement by Paul Sender of Königsberg, a soldier of the 4th Platoon of Company 13, Infantry Field Artillery, attached to the 2d Infantry Regiment—Page 137 of the document book:

“On 14 July, on the road between Porchov and Staraya-Russa,
Corporal Schneider, of Company 1 of the 2d Infantry Regiment,
shot 12 captured Red Army men in the gutter. When I questioned
him on the matter, Schneider answered, ‘Why should I bother with
them? They are not even worth a bullet.’ I also know of another
case.

“During the battles around Porchov, a Red Army man was captured.
Shortly after he was shot by a corporal of Company 1. As soon as
the Red Army soldier fell, the corporal took from his knapsack
all the food in it.”

To conclude the reading of excerpts from the protest of the German prisoners of war, I should like to quote two more depositions by Fritz Rummler and Richard Gillig, respectively. We find their depositions at the bottom of Page 4. Fritz Rummler, a native of Strehlen in Silesia and a corporal of Company 9, Battalion 3, of the 518th Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division, reported the following cases—this excerpt is on Page 138 of the document book:

“In August, in the town of Zlatopol, I saw how two officers of
the SS units and two soldiers shot two captured Red Army
soldiers after first taking their army overcoats from them.
These officers and soldiers belonged to the Panzer tank forces
of General Von Kleist. In September the crew of a German tank on
the road to Krasnograd crushed two captured Red Army soldiers to
death with their tank. This act was inspired purely by lust for
blood and murder. The tank commander was a noncommissioned
officer, Schneider, belonging to Von Kleist’s Panzer forces. I
saw how four captured Red Army soldiers were questioned in our
battalion. This happened at Voroshilovsk. The Red Army soldiers
refused to answer questions of a military nature asked by the
battalion commander, Major Warnecke. He flew into a rage and
with his own hands beat the prisoners unconscious.”

Corporal Richard Gillig, of the 9th Transportation Platoon, of the 34th Division, stated:

“Many a time I witnessed the inhuman and cruel treatment of
Russian prisoners of war. Before my own eyes and on the orders
of their officers, German soldiers removed the boots from the
captured Red Army soldiers and drove them on barefooted. I
witnessed many such facts at Tarutino. I was an eyewitness of
the following incident: One prisoner refused to surrender his
boots voluntarily. Soldiers of the escort beat him till he could
no longer move. I saw other prisoners being stripped, not only
of their boots, but of their uniform clothing, right down to
their underwear.”

I omit a few sentences and go on to the end of the statement.

“I saw, during the retreat of our column, near the town of
Medyn, German soldiers beating up captured Red Army soldiers.
One prisoner was very tired and unsteady on his legs. A soldier
of the escort raced up to the captive and started kicking and
beating him with the butt of his rifle. Other soldiers followed
his example and the prisoner dropped dead when we reached the
town.”

The statement reads on:

“It is no secret that, in the front line of the German Army
division headquarters, specialists existed whose work it was to
torture Red Army soldiers and Soviet officers in order to force
them, in this manner, to disclose military orders and
information.”

I submit to the Tribunal the photostat of this statement. You can see that there are 60 signatures appended to it by members of the German Armed Forces, with the indication of the regiments and smaller subdivisions to which they belonged.

I submit to the Tribunal four photographs of German origin. Each of these photographs was taken by Germans; time and place when the photographs were taken are indicated. One photograph shows the distribution of food; the third and fourth are pictures of the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman.

THE PRESIDENT: Where are the pictures?

COL. POKROVSKY: If I am not mistaken, you have been given the photostat of the statement, but not the photographs.

THE PRESIDENT: This is not a copy of the photographs; these are the signatures of the 60 German prisoners.

COL. POKROVSKY: The photographs will be submitted immediately. They have evidently, by an oversight, not been included in the document book.

THE PRESIDENT: Go on.

COL. POKROVSKY: It is obvious from the first picture that the food distributed is insufficient. Men are practically fighting for the right of getting at it. The second photograph shows hungry Soviet prisoners of war wandering round an empty barn and eating the oil cakes stored for cattle food and which they had discovered. As to the third and fourth photographs, I can submit to the Tribunal important testimony by the witness, Bingel. Excerpts from his testimony have a direct bearing on the question of the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war.

I interrogated Bingel myself and I now submit the minutes of his interrogation to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-111 (Document Number USSR-111), dated 27 December 1945. Bingel, who formerly commanded a company in the German Army, testified—I quote an excerpt from Page 8 of the minutes of his interrogation—as follows:

“A: Tn one of my reports I made a statement concerning the
regime inside the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman. . . . This camp
was guarded by a company of our subsection of the 783rd
Battalion, and I was therefore familiar with everything which
occurred in the camp. It was the task of this battalion to guard
the prisoners of war and to control the highways and railroads.

“‘This camp was calculated to hold, under normal conditions,
from 6,000 to 7,000 men; at that time, however, it housed 74,000
men.’

“Q: ‘Were there barracks?’

“A: ‘No. It was formerly a brickyard and consisted exclusively
of low sheds for drying bricks.’

“Q: ‘Were the prisoners of war housed there?’

“A: ‘It can scarcely be said that they were housed, since each
shed, at the utmost, could not contain more than 200 to 300 men;
the rest had to sleep in the open.’

“Q: ‘What was the regime like at that camp?’

“A: ‘The regime in that camp was definitely peculiar. The
existing conditions gave one the impression that the camp
commander, Captain Bekker, was quite unable to handle and feed
so large a number of men. There were two kitchens in the camp,
although they could hardly be called kitchens. Iron barrels had
been placed on stone and concrete floors, and the food for the
prisoners was prepared in these barrels. But the kitchens, even
if operating for 24 hours on end, could only prepare food for
approximately 2,000 people daily. The usual diet for the
prisoner was very insufficient. The daily ration for six men
consisted of one loaf of bread which, again, could scarcely be
described as bread. Disturbances frequently arose during the
distribution of the hot food, for the prisoners—and there were
70,000 of them in the camp—struggled to get at the victuals. In
cases like these the guards resorted to clubs—a usual procedure
in the camp. I obtained the general impression that in all the
camps the club was inevitably the foundation of all things.’”

Please forgive the digression, but I have been told, Your Honor, that two photographs are attached to the Record and that their authenticity is certified. I am now submitting them to the Tribunal. The other two will be handed to you very shortly. I continue to quote from the Record:

“Q: ‘Do you know anything about the death rate at the camp?’

“A: ‘Sixty to seventy men died at the camp daily.’

“Q: ‘From what causes?’

“A: ‘Before the epidemics broke out one mostly spoke of people
being killed.’

“Q: ‘Killed during the distribution of food?’

“A: ‘Both during the distribution of food and during working
hours; generally speaking, people were being killed all day
long.’”

Bingel was interrogated by us for the second time, and he was shown the photographs of the camp at Uman. These are the same photographs that you now have in your hands, Your Honors. He was then asked the following question, “The camp shown here, is it the one you spoke about, or some other camp?” After this he was shown photographs from a negative, 13×18, of 14 August 1941 and from a negative, 13×22, of the same date. Bingel replied:

“Yes, this is the camp of which I spoke. As a matter of fact,
this is not the camp proper but a clay pit belonging to the
camp; here the prisoners were housed as soon as they arrived
from the front. Later on they were assigned to various sections
of the camp.”

“Q: ‘What can you tell us about the second photograph?’

“A: ‘The second one shows the camp photographed from another
angle, that is, from the right side. The buildings shown here
were practically the only brick buildings in the camp. These
brick buildings, though quite empty and undamaged, with
excellent and spacious quarters, were not used for housing the
prisoners of war.’”

It is difficult to say whether or not that what the Hitlerites did to the Soviet prisoners of war at the so-called “Grosslazarett” of the town of Slavuta, in the Kamenetzk-Podolsky region, should be considered as the limit of human vileness. Be that as it may, the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites at the “Grosslazarett” is one of the darkest pages in the annals of fascist crime.

I submit to the Tribunal, as Exhibit Number USSR-5 (Document Number USSR-5), the report of the Extraordinary State Commission, and I shall read into the Record several excerpts from the report itself, as well as from the appendices thereto.

“On the expulsion of the fascist hordes from the town of
Slavuta, units of the Red Army discovered, on the site of the
restricted military area, the establishment which the Germans
called the ‘Grosslazarett’ for Soviet prisoners of war. Over 500
emaciated, critically sick men were found in the ‘Lazarett.’ The
interrogation of these men and the special investigation carried
out by medico-forensic experts and by experts of the Central
Institute for Food, of the People’s Commissariat for Health in
the U.S.S.R., led to a detailed reconstruction of the
extermination of an immense number of Soviet prisoners of war in
that appalling institution.”

You will find the passage I am about to quote on Page 153 of the document book:

“In the fall of 1941, German fascist invaders occupied the town
of Slavuta, where they organized a ‘Lazarett’ for wounded and
sick officers and men of the Red Army, under the name of
Grosslazarett, Slavuta, Teillager 301.

“The ‘Lazarett’ was located about 1½ to 2 kilometers to the
southeast of Slavuta and occupied 10 three-storied stone
buildings. The Hitlerites surrounded all these buildings by a
strong barbed wire fence. All along the barbed wire, 10 meters
apart, towers were built, in which guns, searchlights, and
guards were placed.

“The administrative staff, the German doctors and the guard of
the ‘Grosslazarett,’ the latter represented by the commanding
officer, Captain Plank (later replaced by Major Pavlisk), the
deputy commander, Kronsdorfer, Captain Boye, Dr. Borbe, with his
deputy, Dr. Sturm, Master Sergeant Ilseman, and Technical
Sergeant Bekker carried out a mass extermination of Soviet
prisoners of war by imposing a special regime of hunger,
overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, by torture and direct
murder, by depriving the sick and wounded of all medical
assistance, and by subjecting utterly exhausted men to heavy
labor.”

The Extraordinary State Commission refers to the “Grosslazarett” as the “Hospital of Death.” I shall quote a short excerpt from a section under the selfsame name. It is on Page 3 of the Russian original and on Page 153 of the document book:

“The German authorities concentrated at the ‘Grosslazarett’
15,000 to 18,000 severely and slightly wounded Soviet prisoners
of war, together with prisoners suffering from various
contagious and noncontagious diseases.

“To replace the ranks of the dead, fresh batches of sick and
wounded prisoners of war were continually brought in. On the
journey the captives were tortured, starved, and murdered. The
Hitlerites threw out hundreds of corpses from each car of the
incoming transports as they reached the ‘Lazarett.’”

According to data received from the investigating commission, 800 to 900 dead bodies would be thrown out of each train as it unloaded at a branch line. A further report of the Commission states:

“Thousands of Soviet prisoners on the march perished from
hunger, thirst, lack of care, and the savage club-law of the
German guards . . . as a routine practice the Hitlerites would
greet a group of prisoners at the ‘Lazarett’ gates with blows
from rifle butts and rubber truncheons, after which the new
arrivals would be stripped of their leather footwear, warm
clothing, and personal belongings.”

In the next section, on the same page, the State Commission reports that infectious diseases were deliberately spread among the prisoners of war by German medical officers in the “Lazarett”:

“In the ‘Grosslazarett’ the German medical officers artificially
created an incredible state of overcrowding. The prisoners were
forced to stand close to each other; they succumbed to
exhaustion, dropped down, and died.”

The fascists resorted to various methods for reducing the living room in the “Lazarett”. A former prisoner of war, I.Y. Chuazhev, reported that:

“The Germans reduced the floor space in the ‘Lazarett’ by firing
off submachine guns, since the prisoners, perforce, pressed more
closely to each other; then the Hitlerites pushed in more sick
and wounded and the door was closed.”

The premeditated spreading of infectious diseases in this death camp, derisively named a “Lazarett,” was achieved by extremely primitive means:

“Patients suffering from spotted fever, tuberculosis, or
dysentery, severely and lightly wounded cases, were one and all
put in the same block and the same ward.”

In a ward intended, under normal conditions, to hold not more than 400 patients, the number of spotted fever and tuberculosis cases alone amounted to 1800.

“The rooms were never cleaned. The sick remained, for months on
end, in the same underclothes in which they were captured. They
slept on the bare boards. Many were half-undressed, others
entirely naked. The buildings were unheated, and the primitive
stoves, constructed by the prisoners themselves, fell to pieces.
There was no water for washing in this ‘Lazarett,’ not even for
drinking. As a result of these unsanitary conditions, the
‘hospital’ was, to a monstrous extent, overrun by lice.”

Annihilation by the premeditated spreading of diseases went hand in hand with starvation. The daily food ration consisted of 250 grams of ersatz bread and two liters of so-called “Balanda soup.” The flour used for baking the bread for sick and wounded prisoners of war was brought from Germany. Fifteen tons of flour were discovered in one of the “Lazarett” storerooms. The factory-packed paper bags, containing 40 kilos each, bore a label with the word “Spelzmehl.” Samples of this ersatz flour were sent for analysis to the Central Food Institute of the People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the U.S.S.R.

I present the document dealing with the annihilation of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites in the “Grosslazarett” as Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), (Document Number USSR-5(a)). On Pages 9, 10, and 11 of this document the Tribunal can see the photostat of the Central Food Institute’s report.

This report was established on the one hand on the basis of an analysis made by the field military laboratory and, on the other hand, on the basis of an analysis carried out in the Central Food Institute itself. Sample bakings of bread were made from the ersatz flour and from the ersatz flour mixed with a small addition of real flour. It seems that it was impossible to bake a loaf with ersatz flour alone. The Institute’s report states:

“It is evident that the bread was made with the addition of a
certain quantity of natural flour for binding the dough. A diet
of this so-called ‘bread,’ in the absence of all other food and
food products of a full dietetic value, inevitably led to
starvation and acute exhaustion.”

The analysis proved that the “flour” consisted of nothing but straw chopped evenly though rather roughly. Some particles were 2 and some 3 millimeters in length. Under the microscope, in every optical field of vision—according to the report—we discovered, “Together with food and vegetable fiber, minute quantities of grains of starch, resembling grains of oats in structure.” The Institute came to the conclusion that “The use of this bread, owing to the irritant action of the soft crumb, resulted in diseases of the digestive tract.”

Anticipating a little, I should like to report the results of the medico-legal autopsies performed on 112 corpses exhumed from Site Number 1 and of the external examination of approximately 500 bodies. In the first instance exhaustion was proved to have caused the death of 96 victims. In the second case, as stated in the findings—see Page 7—mentioned in Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), (Document Number USSR-5(a)):

“The statement that exhaustion was the fundamental cause of
mortality in the prisoners’ camp was likewise proved by the
results of the external examinations of some 500 corpses, when
it was disclosed that the proportion of victims dead of acute
exhaustion had approached 100 percent.”

A little further on, in the same report, in Subparagraph “d” of Paragraph 5, the experts, supported by numerous witnesses, state that the diet in the Slavuta “Grosslazarett” can be characterized as completely useless for human consumption. I quote, “Bread contained 64 percent sawdust; ‘Balanda soup’ was made of rotten potatoes with the addition of refuse, rat-droppings, _et cetera_.”

Such prisoners of war who had survived the tyranny of the Hitler hangmen and had lived to see the liberation of Slavuta declared—I quote an excerpt from Page 4 of Exhibit Number USSR-5, Page 153 of the document book:

“In the ‘Grosslazarett’ we periodically observed outbreaks of a
mysterious disease of an unknown nature, referred to as
‘para-cholera’ by the German doctors. The appearance of
‘para-cholera’ was the result of barbarous experiments by the
German doctors. These outbreaks would vanish as suddenly as they
appeared. The mortality rate in ‘para-cholera’ rose to 60-80
percent. German physicians performed autopsies on the bodies of
some of the victims, and no captured Russian medical officers
were admitted to these autopsies.”

In conclusion, it is stated in Subparagraph 8 of the medico-legal expert report—Page 7 of Exhibit Number USSR-5(a), Page 159 of the document book—that:

“No objective circumstances can justify the conditions under
which the prisoners of war were housed in the camp. All the
more, since it has been revealed by thoroughgoing investigations
that there were enormous food supplies in the German military
depots at Slavuta and that both medical supplies and surgical
bandages abounded in the military dispensaries.”

The “Grosslazarett” staff included a considerable number of medical personnel. Nevertheless, according to the statement of the government commission, sick and wounded officers and men of the Red Army did not receive even the most elementary medical attention. And how could there be any talk of medical attention when the entire object of the “Grosslazarett” was directly opposed to such assistance? The administration of the “Grosslazarett” not only strove to destroy the prisoners of war physically, but they also endeavored to fill the last days of the sick and wounded with suffering and anguish.

One part of the commission’s statement is entitled “Torture and shooting of Soviet prisoners of war.” I shall read into the Record a passage taken from this part. It is on Page 4, Exhibit Number USSR-5, Page 153 of the document book:

“Soviet prisoners of war in the ‘Grosslazarett’ were subjected
to torture and torment, beaten up when food was distributed and
again when setting out to work. Even the dying were not spared
by the fascist murderers. The medico-legal examination of the
exhumed corpses revealed, among a number of other bodies of
prisoners of war, the body of a prisoner who, in his death
agony, had been wounded in the groin with a knife. He had been
thrown into his grave while still alive, with the knife sticking
in the wound, and was then covered over with earth.

“One method of mass torture in the ‘Lazarett’ consisted in
locking the sick and wounded in a detention cell—a room without
heat and with a concrete floor. The prisoners in this cell were
left without food for days on end, and many died there. In order
to exhaust the ill and weak prisoners still further, the
Hitlerites forced the sick and enfeebled patients to run round
the ‘Lazarett’ building; those who could not run were flogged
almost to death. There were many cases where the German guards
murdered the prisoners just for fun.

“A former prisoner of war, Buchtichyuk, reported how the Germans
threw the intestines of dead horses on the barbed wire
surrounding the interior of the camp. When the prisoners,
maddened with hunger, ran up to the barbed wire, the guards
opened fire on them with submachine guns. The witness, Kirsanov,
saw one prisoner of war bayonetted for picking up a potato
tuber. A former prisoner of war, Shatalov, was an eyewitness to
the shooting of a prisoner by his escort merely for trying to
obtain a second helping of ‘Balanda soup.’

“In February 1942 Shatalov saw a sentry wound a prisoner who was
searching the garbage heap for remnants of food left over from
the kitchen of the German personnel; the wounded man was
immediately brought to the pit, stripped, and executed.”

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 14 February 1946 at 1000 hours._]

FIFTY-NINTH DAY
Thursday, 14 February 1946

_Morning Session_

THE PRESIDENT: I have an announcement to make which concerns the defendants’ counsel. The Tribunal will sit in open session on Saturday morning from 10 o’clock to hear the application of the defendants’ counsel for an adjournment.

They will hear one counsel on either side, that is to say, one counsel for the Prosecution and one counsel for the Defense, for 15 minutes each, and after that open session the Tribunal will adjourn into closed session upon procedural matters.

COL. POKROVSKY: Yesterday, in the course of my representation, I referred to four photographs in our possession, two of which were submitted to the Tribunal there and then. These photographs have been made by the Germans and they show the prisoner-of-war camp at Uman. I must apologize that yesterday, for technical reasons, we were unable to produce the remaining two at the proper time. The first of these photographs shows the distribution of food to the prisoners; the second, hungry Soviet prisoners searching for and eating oil cakes intended as cattle food. I now submit the originals of these two photographs (Document Numbers USSR-358 and 359) as Exhibit Numbers USSR-358 and USSR-359.

An autopsy of the exhumed bodies, performed during the investigation of fascist crimes in the so-called “Lager,” Slavuta, confirms that:

“The headquarters command and the camp guards repeatedly
resorted to refined forms of torture. Among the bodies exhumed
on which autopsies were performed, the medico-legal examination
established that the corpses of four prisoners of war, murdered
with cold steel, had received bayonet wounds penetrating the
cavity of the skull.”

You will find this passage, Your Honors, on Page 153 of the document book.

“The Hitlerites compelled sick and wounded prisoners, despite
their extreme weakness and acute state of exhaustion, to carry
out work which was entirely beyond their strength. The prisoners
had to carry heavy burdens, were forced to shoulder the bodies
of murdered Soviet citizens and carry them out of the camp.
Exhausted prisoners who fell by the way were shot on the spot.
The road to and from work, according to a report of the Roman
Catholic priest at Slavuta, was marked, as by milestones, with
small grave mounds.”

The fascist fanatics did not always have the patience to wait for the actual death of one or another prisoner of war, and they buried persons who were still alive. I quote from a document which I have previously submitted to the Tribunal. You will find this quotation once again on Page 153 of your document book:

“As a result of the discovery of a considerable quantity of
grains of sand in the lower respiratory tracts of the corpses of
four prisoners, grains which penetrated right down to the very
smallest bronchial tube, and which could not have penetrated
thus far unless propelled by the respiratory movements of
persons smothered by sand, the medico-legal experts found that
at the ‘Gross-Lazarett’ the guards of the commander had buried
the Soviet citizens alive. This was done with the connivance of
the German doctors.”

Prisoner-of-war Pankin, a former inmate of the “Gross-Lazarett,” knew of one case where, in February 1943, an unconscious patient was brought to the morgue. There he recovered consciousness, but when it was reported to the officer in charge of barracks that a live man had been taken to the morgue, he ordered him to be left there. The sick man was buried.

Some prisoners, spurred by the intolerable regime, ignored the immense risks attached to the venture and attempted to escape, either singly or in groups. Such martyrs who succeeded in getting out of the “hospital” hell sought refuge with the local population of Slavuta and the surrounding hamlets. The Hitlerite brutes mercilessly shot anybody who had rendered any kind of assistance to a fugitive.

The town of Slavuta lies in the Shepetov district. On 15 January 1942, the District Commissioner of Shepetov, Dr. Worbs, issued a special order to the effect that if those directly responsible for helping escaped prisoners were not found, 10 hostages would be shot in every case. Father Dhynkovsky reported that 26 peace-loving citizens were arrested and shot for helping prisoners of war flee.

A medical examination of the 525 prisoners liberated from the “Gross-Lazarett” revealed that 435 suffered from extreme exhaustion, 59 from complications following untended, infected wounds, and that 31 suffered from neuro-psychiatric disturbances.

The commission notes, and I quote—with the permission of the Tribunal—the last and the penultimate paragraphs of the left column, on Page 5 of our document. In your file this quotation is on Page 154 of the document book:

“During the 2 years of Slavuta’s occupation, the Hitlerites,
with the connivance of the German doctors Borbe, Sturm, and
other medical personnel in the ‘Gross-Lazarett,’ exterminated
about 150,000 Red Army officers and men.”

The German fascist executioners, perfectly aware of the unbounded bestiality of their crimes, attempted to conceal by all possible means the traces of the atrocities committed. They especially endeavored to camouflage the burial sites of the Soviet prisoners of war. Thus, for instance, on the cross of Grave Number 623, only eight surnames of persons buried were indicated, whereas upon excavation 32 bodies were actually found in that grave. Such, too, was the case when Grave Number 624 was opened up. In other graves, layers of earth were placed between several rows of corpses. For instance, 10 bodies were found in Grave Number 625. When a layer of earth, 30 centimeters thick, had been removed, two further rows of corpses were found in the same grave; the same occurred at the excavation of Graves Number 627 and 628.

Numerous graves were camouflaged by flower-beds, trees, plants, paths, _et cetera_, but no disguise can ever hide the bloody crimes committed by the Hitlerite evildoers.

If I am not mistaken, there was a case when one of the participants in these trials, evidently forgetting where he was and under what circumstances, expressed a wish to follow the procedure laid down by German law. The Tribunal immediately made the necessary inquiries, and the intention of operating in accordance with the standards of German law was, of course, promptly rejected. At present I am fully able to submit to the Tribunal documents which, in my opinion, are of importance in our case, although they are compiled in complete accordance with the rules laid down by German law.

Among the numerous documents found in the police archives of the town of Zhitomir, Red Army troops seized a certain piece of correspondence. This is a police inquiry. The authors of this document could not foretell that it would be read into the record at a session of the International Tribunal for the punishment of the major war criminals. The documents constituting this correspondence were intended exclusively for the chiefs of police, and they were compiled in accordance with all the customary requirements of German law and of the police investigations of fascist Germany. From this point of view, those who would like to examine the documentation in question can be well satisfied.

At the same time this correspondence is useful to us. So much has been said in the comparatively small number of pages that I should have to analyze the documentation section by section in order that you could appreciate it fully and from every angle. I submit this correspondence to you both in the German photostats and in the Russian translation. I repeat—this is a police inquiry. The document is submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-311 (Document Number USSR-311); and we have, in accordance with the wishes of the Tribunal, asked for the original copy which we may possibly receive from Moscow this very day.

On 24 December 1942, 78 prisoners of war from the Berditchev section of the Educational Labor Camp were to be subjected to “special treatment.” All the 78 prisoners were Soviet citizens. There is, in the correspondence, a report addressed to the authorities by SS Obersturmführer Kuntze, of 27 December 1942. You will find it on Page 170 of your document book. At the end of the first paragraph there is one sentence which, for greater clarity, has been marked with a red pencil. It says:

“There is no proof that these prisoners of war had ever
participated in any communistic activities during the time of
the Soviet regime.”

Kuntze’s next sentence fully elucidates the question of how and why these prisoners of war entered the Educational Labor Camp. He states:

“It seems that the Wehrmacht had, at the time, placed these
prisoners of war at the disposal of our local authorities for
special treatment. . . .”

We became convinced that they had been directed to this camp by the military authorities. The specialist—in this case undoubtedly Obersturmführer Kuntze—states that they were sent here especially to be subjected to the treatment of the “special regime.”

In an attempt to shorten, if ever so slightly, this very abundant documentation which forms the correspondence, I shall tell you, in my own words, that the 78 people in question were all that remained of a far larger group. Sturmscharführer SS Fritz Knop reports—Page 163 of your document book:

“. . . some of the prisoners at that time were transported in a
truck, to some place in the neighborhood and unloaded. Later on
further unloadings of prisoners of war were suspended, following
objections raised by the Army.”

A little later I shall be more explicit when dealing with the nature of these transfers and the objections raised by the Army. Please permit me now to pass over to a brief summary of the gist of the matter. It appears to me more useful to describe it in the words of one of the documents. I quote:

“Commander of the Security Police and SD in Zhitomir;
Berditchev, 24 December 1942.

“When summoned to appear, SS Sturmscharführer and Chief
Secretary of the Kripo, Fritz Knop, complied. He was born on 18
February 1897, at Neuklinz, in the district of Köslin. Fritz
Knop testified as follows:

“‘As from the middle of August 1 was head of the Berditchev
field office of the commander of the Security Police and SD in
the town of Zhitomir. On 23 December 1942 the Deputy Commander,
Hauptsturmführer of the SS Kallbach, inspected the local office
and also the Educational Labor Camp which was supervised by my
office. In this Educational Labor Camp, as from the end of
October or the beginning of November, there were 78 former
prisoners of war who had been dismissed from the permanent camp
(Stalag) in Zhitomir as being unfit for work. A considerable
number of prisoners of war had, in the past, been handed over
and placed at the disposal of the Commander of the Security
Police and SD.”

I think there is no necessity to explain in detail that the transfer of the prisoners of war and the placing of them at the disposal of the Security Police had been provided for by special directives of the SS and the SD, especially referring to persons condemned to physical extermination. I quote further, on the same page of your document book, 163:

“In Zhitomir a few of them, who up to a certain point were fit
for work, had been set aside. The remaining 78 persons were
transferred to the local Educational Labor Camp.”

I omit two more extracts.

“The 78 prisoners of war in the local camp were, one and all,
severely wounded men. Some had lost both legs; others both arms;
others again had lost one or the other of their limbs. Only a
few of them had all their arms and legs, although they were so
mutilated by other kinds of wounds that they were totally unfit
for work. The latter had to nurse the former.

“At the time he was inspecting the Educational Labor Camp on 23
December 1942, SS Hauptsturmführer Kallbach issued an order to
the effect that the surviving 68 or 70 prisoners of war, the
others having died in the meantime, should this very day be
subjected to ‘special treatment.’ For this purpose he assigned a
motor truck, driven by SS man Schäfer from the command division,
who arrived here today at 1130 hours. I entrusted the
preparations for the execution early this morning to my
colleagues in the local administration, SS Unterscharführer
Paal, SS Rottenführer Hesselbach, and SS Sturmmann Vollprecht.”

I shall, with your permission, omit a further part of the quotation which, in any case, already figures in your files. I think I may safely do so in order to save time. It is a description of the technical preparations for the execution. One passage, however, does appear to me to be of interest; and I quote:

“Usually the execution of the Jews was carried out in the
precincts of the labor camp which could not be seen from the
outside. For this particular execution I issued orders to choose
a site outside on a terrain behind the permanent camp.
Concerning the three above-mentioned persons whom I entrusted
with the shooting of the prisoners of war, I knew that they had,
in Kiev, participated in the mass executions of many thousands
of persons and that they had before, that is during my time of
service, been entrusted by the local administration with the
shooting of many hundreds of victims.”

I should like to invite your attention to another instance which again shows the meaning which the Hitlerites usually attached to the words “execution” and “treatment by special regime.” Here, in one sentence alone, the words “mass execution” and “shooting” are definitely used as synonymous terms, while a little higher up it is made quite clear to us what “transporting by trucks to some place in the neighborhood” and “treatment by special regime” mean. Unquestionably, these four terms have an identical significance.

After this digression I continue my quotation. Having made a few more omissions from the passage already printed in your document book, I proceed to the following paragraph, your Page 165, if only to maintain the sense of the statement:

“They were armed with a German submachine gun, a Russian
automatic rifle, an 0.8 pistol, and a carbine. I would point out
that I had intended to give these three persons, as an
assistant, SS Hauptscharführer Wenzel, but SS Sturmmann
Vollprecht declined, remarking that three men were perfectly
able to execute this order.