Evening star., 1945-10-18

cupation of territories oyerrun by
their armed forces. The defendants.
for the purpose Of systematically
terrorizing the inhabitants, mur-
dered and tortured civilians. and i'll
treated them, and imprisoned them
without legal process.
The murders and i'll treatment
were carried out by divers means,
including shooting, hanging, gas
sing, starvation, gross overcrowding,|
systematic under-nutrition, syste-
matte imposition of labor tasks be-
yond the strength of those ordered
to carry them out, inadequate pro-
vision Of surgical and medical serv-
ices, kickings, beatings, brutality and
torture of all kinds, including the
use of hot irons and pulling out of
fingernails and the performance OF
experiments by means of operations
and otherwise on living human
subjects.
Civilians Were Tortured.
In some occupied territories the
defendants interfered with religious
services, prosecuted members Of the
clergy and monastic orders and ex-
propriated church property. They
conducted deliberate and systematic
genocide. viz, the determination of
racial and national groups, against
the civilian populations of certain
occupied territories in order to de-
stroy particular races in classes of
people and national, racial or re-
ligious groups, particularly Jews,
Poles and gypsies and others. Ci-
villains were systematically sub
jected to tortures Of all kinds, with
the objective of obtaining informa-
ton,
In the concentration camps were
many prisoners who were classified
"Nacht und Nebel" These were en-
tirely cut off from the world and
were allowed neither to receive nor
to send letters. They disappeared
without trace and no announcement
of their fate was ever made by the
German authorities. Such murders
and ill-treatment were contrary to
international conventions.
Such murder and ill-treatment
took place in concentration camps
and similar establishments set up
by the defendants and particularly
in the concentration camps set up
at Belsen. Buchenwald, Dachau,
Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Raw
ensbruck, vught and Amersfoort,
and in numerous cities, towns and
villages, including Oradour sur
Glane, Trondheim and Oslo.
Crimes committed in France or
against French citizens took the fol-
lowing forms:
Arbitrary arrests were carried out
under political or racial pre-
texts. ."
These arrests were followed by
brutal treatment and tortures car
ried out by the most diverse meth
ods, such as immersion in icy water,
asphyxiation, torture of the limbs
and the use of instruments of tor
ture, such as the iron helmet and
electrical current, and practised in
all the prisons of France. OF
228 900 French political and racial
deportees in concentration camps,
only $4,000 survived.
Systematic Murder Policy.
From the 1st September, 1899,
when the German armed forces, in
vaded Poland, and from the .22nd
June, 194l, when they invaded the
USSR, the German government
and the German high command
adopted a systematic policy of mur-
der and Ill treatment Of the civil
ian populations of and In the east
ern countries as they were success
sively occupied by the German
armed forces. These murders and
Ill treatments were carried on con-
tinuously Until the German armed
forces were driven out of the said
countries.
Such murders and i'll treatments
included:
">"* In the Ganov camp 100000
peaceful citizens we're exterminated.
The most refined methods of cruelty
were employed in this extermina-
ton, such as disembowelling and
freezing of human beings in tubs
of water, mass shootings took place
to the accompaniment of the music
OF an orchestra recruited from the
persons interned.
Beginning with June, 1943, the
Germans carried out measures to
hide the. evidence of their crimes,
they exhumed and burned corpses
and they crushed the bones with
machines and used them for fer
tilizer.
Along with adults the Nazi con-
spirators mercilessly destroyed even
children. They killed them with
their parents in groups and alone.
They killed them in children's
homes and hospitals, burying the
living in the graves, throwing them
into flames, stabbing them with
bayonets poisoning them, conduct
ing experiments upon them, ex-
tracing their blood for the use Of
the German army, throwing them
into prison aAd Gestapo torture
chambers and concentration camps
where the children died from