dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): May it please Your Honors, it is my duty to submit to the Tribunal evidence on the last Count of the Indictment. "Crimes against Humanity" are dealt with in Count Four of the Indictment, and by Article 6, and particularly Subparagraph C of Article 6, of the Charter. I shall submit evidence of crimes which the Hitlerites committed on the territories of the temporarily occupied areas of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Greece. The Crimes against Humanity -- just as the other crimes of the German fascists for which evidence has been submitted to the Tribunal by my colleagues -- originated in the criminal nature of fascism, in its endeavors to dominate the world by predatory seizure of whole states in the East and in the West, and by enslavement and mass extermination of people. These crimes were put into effect by adoption of the cannibalistic theories of German fascism. Elements forming the concept of Crimes against Humanity are to be found in nearly all the criminal acts of the Hitlerites. For instance, a considerable amount of probative facts in corroboration of the gravity of the crimes committed by the German fascists has already been submitted to the Tribunal during the presentation of the Count concerning War Crimes against the civilian population. The criminal violation by the Hitlerites of the laws and customs of war, as well as the mass extermination of prisoners of war, are some of the gravest Crimes against Humanity. At the same time, the concept Crimes against Humanity is considerably broader in scope than any definition of German fascist crimes, of which proofs have been hitherto submitted to the Tribunal. Together with the arrival of German forces and the appearance of the swastika on official buildings, life of the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied eastern European countries seemed to stop. The merciless fascist machine tried to force them to be deprived of all that which, as a result of centuries of human development, had become an integral part of humanity.
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Thus, death hung over them constantly, but on their way to death they were forced to pass through numerous and agonizing phases, insulting to human dignity, which constitute, in their entirety, the charge entitled in the Indictment "Crimes against Humanity." Attempts were made to force them to forget their own names by hanging a number around their necks or by sewing a classification mark on their sleeves. They were deprived of the right to speak or to read in their mother tongue. They were deprived of their homes, their families, their native country, forcibly deported hundreds and thousands of kilometers away. They were deprived of the right to procreate. They were daily scoffed at and insulted. Their feelings and beliefs were jeered at and ridiculed. And, finally, they were deprived of their last right -- to live. The numerous investigations noted not only the state of extreme physical exhaustion of the victims of German fascist atrocities; they also usually mentioned the state of deep moral depression of those who, by the hazards of fate, escaped the fascist hell. A long period of time was necessary for these victims of German fascism to return once again to a world of normal conceptions and activities and to man's conventions for human society. All this is very hard to express in legal formula, but, in my opinion, it is very important in the Indictment of the major war criminals. I ask the Tribunal to refer to the report of the Polish Government which has already been submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-93 (Document Number USSR-93). The quotation which I should like now to read is on Page 10 of the document book. On Page 70 of the Russian text of this report, there is a quotation from the statement of Jacob Vernik, a carpenter from Warsaw, who spent a year in the extermination camp of Treblinka 2. Sometimes the official German documents refer to "Treblinka 2" as "Treblinka B," but it is one and the same. This was one of the most terrible centers for mass extermination of people, created by German fascists.
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): In my statement, I shall submit to Your Honors evidence connected with the existence of this camp. This is what Vernik said in presenting a report on Treblinka to the Polish Government; a report which, as he stressed in his foreword, was his only reason "to continue his pitiful life": "Awake or asleep I see terrible visions of thousands of people calling for help, begging for life and mercy. "I have lost my family, I have myself led them to death; I have myself built the death chambers in which they were murdered. "I am afraid of everything, I fear that everything I have seen is written on my face. An old and broken life is a heavy burden, but I must carry on and live to tell the world what German crimes and barbarism I saw." The persons who came to Treblinka entered, as I said, the antechamber of death. But were they the only victims of this fate? An analysis of probative facts connected with the crimes of the German fascists irrefutably testifies to the fact that the same fate was shared not only by those who were sent to special extermination camps, but also all those who became the victims of these criminals in the temporarily occupied countries of Eastern Europe. I ask the Tribunal's permission to bring in evidence a short quotation from a document already submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-46 -- the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union on the crimes committed in the city and region of Orel. In the text of this document there is a special communication of a famed Russian scientist, a doctor, the President of the Academy of Medical Science and member of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, Academician Burdenko. The Tribunal will find this communication on Page 14 of the document book, Paragraph 6: "The scenes I had to witness" -- says Burdenko -- "surpassed the wildest imagination. Our joy at the sight of the delivered people was dimmed by the expression of stupor on their faces. "This led one to reflect -- what was the matter?
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Evidently the sufferings they had undergone had stamped upon them equality of life and death. I observed these people during 3 days. I bandaged them, I evacuated them, but their physical stupor did not change. Something similar could be noticed during the first days on the faces of the doctors." I shall not, Your Honors, waste time in drawing attention to the long and well-known extracts from Mein Kampf or the Myth of the Twentieth Century . We are interested, in the first place, in the criminal practices of the German fascist fiends. I have already said above, that death constantly hung over the people who became the victims of fascism. Death could come unexpectedly, together with the appearance in one or another place of a Sonderkommando; but at the same time, a death sentence would be pronounced for any act in these special decisions so mockingly called German fascist "laws." I and other members of the Soviet Prosecution already have given numerous examples of these terroristic laws, directives, and decrees of the German fascist authorities. I do not wish to repeat myself, but I beg the Tribunal's permission to quote one of these documents as it concerns all the temporarily seized eastern territories. The only justification for the publication of this document for its author, the Defendant Alfred Rosenberg, is that these temporarily occupied districts were populated by non-Germans. This document is a characteristic evidence of the persecution of people for racial, national, or political motives. I beg the Tribunal to enter in the record, as Exhibit Number USSR-395 (Document Number USSR-395), the photostat of the so-called third decree supplementing the penal directives for the Eastern territories which was issued by Alfred Rosenberg on 17 February 1942. Your Honors will find this document on Pages 19 and 20 of the document book.
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): I shall read in full, beginning with Paragraph 1: "The death penalty, or, in lesser cases, penal servitude will be inflicted upon: Those who undertake to use violence against the German Reich or against the high authority established in the occupied territories; those who undertake to commit violence against a Reich citizen or a person of German nationality for his or her belonging to this German nationality; those who undertake to use violence against a member of the Wehrmacht or its followers, the German police including its auxiliary forces, the Reich Labor Service, a German authority or institution, or the organizations of the NSDAP; those who appeal or incite to disobedience of orders or directives issued by the German authorities; those who with premeditation damage the furniture of German authorities and institutions or things used by the latter for their work or in the public interest; those who undertake to assist anti-German movements or to maintain the organizational connection of groups prohibited by the German authorities; those who participate in or incite hostile activity and thus reveal anti-German mentality or who by their behavior lower or injure the authority or the welfare of the German State and people; those who premeditatively commit arson and thereby damage German interests in general or the property. . ."
THE PRESIDENT: Have you read this before?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I checked the transcript, and I do not think that this has been read into the record.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: It may be that similar orders were read; maybe those of Frank or some other orders. They are all alike. In any case I could not find any mention of this document in the transcript. I continue: ". . . damage German interests in general or the property of a Reich citizen or persons of German nationality." Paragraph 2 is very characteristic: "Furthermore, the death penalty and, in lesser cases, penal servitude is to be inflicted upon: Those who agree to commit any punishable action as foreseen by Paragraph 1; those who enter into serious negotiations on that subject; those who offer their services to commit such an action or accept such an offer; or those who possess credible information on such an action or its intention at a moment when the danger can still be averted, and willfully refrain from warning the German authorities or the menaced person in due time. "Paragraph 3. An offense not coming under Paragraphs 1 and 2 is to be punished by death, even if this penalty is not provided for by the general German criminal laws and by decrees of German authorities, if the offense is of a particularly base type or for other reasons is particularly serious. In such cases the death penalty is also permissible for juvenile hard criminals. "Paragraph 4. (1) If there is insufficient justification for turning the case over to competent courts-martial, the special courts are competent. (2) The special instructions issued for the Armed Forces are not hereby affected." I skip Paragraph 5. This decree of Rosenberg's was only one link in the chain of climes committed by the leaders of the German fascism directed toward exterminating the Slav peoples. I pass on to the first part of my statement, which is entitled, "Extermination of Slav Peoples." In this part I shall show how this criminal purpose of the Hitlerites to exterminate the Slav peoples was carried out.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I shall quote data from the report of the Yugoslav Government, which is to be found on Page 56 of the Russian text or on Page 76, Paragraph 3, document book: ''Apart from the thousands of Yugoslavs who died in battle, the occupants exterminated at least one and a half to two million people, mostly women, children, and aged persons. Of the 15 million prewar Yugoslav population, in the relatively short period of 4 years, almost 14 percent of the entire population was exterminated." In the report of the Czechoslovak Government, on Pages 36 and 37 of the Russian text, there is proof of a plan conceived by the Hitlerite criminals for the forceful expulsion of all Czechs and the settling of German colonists in Czechoslovakia. The report quotes an excerpt from a statement of Karl Hermann Frank, who admitted the existence of this plan and declared that he, Frank, had compiled a memorandum in which he objected to a similar plan. I quote the excerpt from the statement of Karl Hermann Frank, which the Tribunal can find on Page 37 in the document book, fourth paragraph. "I considered this plan senseless as, in my opinion, the vacuum created by these measures would have seriously upset the vital functioning of Bohemia and Moravia for various reasons of geopolitical, traffic, industrial, and other character; and the immediate filling of this vacuum with new German settlers was impossible." In Poland a regime of extermination of the Slav population was put into effect by divers criminal methods, among which driving people to an extreme state of exhaustion by excessive labor and subsequent death from hunger, was most prevalent. The criminals quite consciously embarked upon the extermination of millions of people by hunger, which is attested by a number of documents already quoted by me and my colleagues in part, namely, the diary of Hans Frank. I shall quote a few short extracts from this document. Here is an excerpt concerning the minutes of a conference held by the Governor General on 7 December 1942 in Krakow.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: The Tribunal will find the passage I wish to quote on Page 89 of the document book, in the first column of the text, last paragraph: "Should the new food supply plan be put into effect, it means that for the city of Warsaw and its surroundings alone 500,000 people will no longer receive food relief." And here is another short excerpt from the minutes of a governmental conference held on 24 August 1942. The Tribunal will find it on Page 90 of the document book, first paragraph of the text. Dr. Frank states: "With all the difficulties which arise from the illness of workers, or the breaking down of your co-operatives, you must always bear in mind that it is much better if a Pole collapses than if the Germans are defeated. The fact that we shall be condemning 1,200,000 Jews to death by starvation should be mentioned incidentally. Of course, if the Jews do not die from starvation, it is to be hoped that anti-Jewish measures will be expedited in the future." The third short quotation is an excerpt from the minutes of a labor conference held by the political leaders of the Labor Front of the NSDAP in the Government General, on 14 December 1942. The Tribunal will find it on the reverse of Page 89 of the document book, second column, second paragraph: ". . . we are faced with the following problem: Shall we be able, as from February, to exclude from general food supply 2 million persons of non-German nationality or not?" In his preliminary speech, the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R., while speaking of Crimes against Humanity, referred to the notes of Martin Bormann. The notes of Martin Bormann were presented to the Court under Exhibit Number USSR-172 (Document Number USSR-172) in particular. The Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. quoted the following lines, which the Tribunal can find on Page 97 of the document book, last paragraph: "In summing up, the Fuehrer once more stated: The least German workman and the least German peasant must always stand economically 10 percent higher than any Pole." How were things in reality?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I should like to show that, with full approval, the Defendant Frank put these Hitler orders into effect in Polish territory. I beg the Tribunal to take for evidence an original German document. Among the other fascist institutions carrying out various pseudoscientific experiments, the German criminals created a special institute for economic research. This institute issued a document entitled, "What the Polish Problem Means for War Economy of Upper Silesia." The fascist "scientific" institute decided to make such investigations in order to clarify the reason why the output of Polish workers became considerably reduced. Two short excerpts will testify to the aims of this investigation better than anything else. On Page 39 of this original document we read -- the Tribunal will find the passage I wish to quote on Page 101, of the document book, second paragraph. I submit this document as Exhibit Number USSR-282 (Document Number USSR-282). I begin the quotation which is on Page 101 of the document book, second paragraph. "This investigation is in no way to be construed as propaganda to arouse pity." On Page 149 of the quoted document -- the Tribunal will find this on Page 101, third paragraph, of the document book -- it is said: "We raise our voices not to defend the Poles, but to protect the war production for the Armed Forces." Quoting these two short excerpts characterizing the aims and nature of this investigation, I further quote a few excerpts which show the status of the Polish worker and the practical realization by the Defendant Frank of the above-mentioned directives of Hitler. I quote on Page 38 of the original of the document, which corresponds to Page 101, Paragraph 7 of the document book: "Information concerning the situation of the Polish population and considerations as to which measures would be the most suitable in this connection disagree on many points; but there is general agreement on one point, which can be summed up here in three words: The Poles are starving!
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Already some passing observations corroborate these conclusions. One of our investigators visited a war production plant during the lunch recess. The workers are standing or sitting apathetically, warming themselves in the sun, and here and there smoking. The investigator reports that of 80 persons, only one has a piece of bread for lunch. The others, although all working 10 to 12 hours a day, have nothing." I pass to Page 72 of the original, which corresponds to Page 102 of the document book; there is this quotation. "Observations made in the factories prove that the present rations of the Polish workers do not allow them enough food to take with them to work. In many cases, the workers do not even have a piece of bread. When some do bring breakfast, it is only coffee and one or two pieces of dry bread or raw potatoes; at the worst time, they did not even have this, but raw carrots, which were then roasted on a stove during work." I continue my quotation on Page 150 of the same document: "In this connection it could be stated that on visiting the mines, it appeared that nearly 10 percent of the Polish workers went to work underground with only dry bread, or raw potatoes cut in slices which they warmed afterwards on a stove." The institute began its "scientific calculations" with a comparison of the calories received by the Poles in Upper Silesia and the calories received by the German population. I shall not quote large excerpts from the document, but will limit myself to short facts only. I start on Page 63 of this report, which corresponds to Page 102, last paragraph of the document book: "Comparison of the number of calories received by the Poles in Upper Silesia with the number of calories allocated to the German population indicates that the Poles receive 24 percent less than the Germans. This difference reaches 26 percent on food ration cards of nonworking Poles. For youths from 14 to 20, the difference in rations allocated to Germans and to Poles reached almost 33 percent.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: However, it must be stressed that this only applies to working youths over 14. "The difference between what Polish and German children from 10 to 14 receive is even more striking. The difference here is not less than 65 percent. The looks of these underfed youths already testify to this. In a similar way Polish children under 10 receive up to 60 percent less than German children. "If on the other hand the doctors state that the food conditions of the babies are not so unfavorable, it is only an imaginary contradiction. As long as a mother nurses her child, the child gets everything from that source. The consequences of the underfeeding are felt in this period not by the child but by the mother. Her health and working capacity are impaired considerably from the undernourishment." I continue on Page 178 of the original which corresponds to Page 103, Paragraph 2 in the second document book: "In all categories the Polish youth in comparison with the German is more wretched. The difference in rations of the Poles and Germans reaches 60 percent." Extracts from the report of the German Labor Front cited in this investigation also offer some interest. Particularly on Page 76 are quoted excerpts from the report of the German Labor Front, dated 10 October 1941, after a visit to one of the coal mines in Poland: "It was established that daily in various villages Polish miners fall from exhaustion....As the workers constantly complained of stomach pains, doctors were consulted, who answered that this was a symptom of undernourishment." I would conclude the description of the Polish workers' physical condition drawn by the German criminals themselves, and, what is more, by the "learned" criminals, by a short quotation from the same report which the Tribunal will find on Page 106, Paragraph 6 of the document book: "The management of the factories constantly stresses that it is no longer possible by threats of deportation to concentration camps to incite to work underfed people incapable of physical effort.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Sooner or later there comes a day when the weakened body can no longer work." There is also in this document a descriptive sketch of the legal status of the Polish worker during the German occupation which bears no possibility of double interpretation. This descriptive sketch is all the more valuable because, as was already stressed above, the authors of the investigation report expressly emphasized that "all humanitarian tendencies whatsoever were alien to them." I begin the quotation of the produced document on Page 127 which corresponds to Page 110, second paragraph of the document book: "The law does not recognize any legal claim of any member of the Polish nation in any sphere of life. Whatever is granted a Pole is done voluntarily by the German masters. This legal situation is perhaps most clearly mirrored in 'the Pole's lack of possession in the eyes of the law.' In the administration of justice Poles are not permitted to conduct their cases before a court. In criminal procedure the viewpoint of obedience dominates. The execution of legal regulations is in the first place the task of the police, who can decide at their discretion or refer individual cases to the courts." According to an order dated 26 August 1942 Polish as well as German workers were obliged to take out insurance against illness, accidents, and disability. The deductions from the wages for this purpose were larger for the Poles than for the German. However, the German workers profited by this insurance, whereas, in actuality, the Poles were deprived of it. As proof of this I shall present to the Tribunal two short excerpts from the same investigation report which Your Honors will find on Page 111 in the document book, Paragraph 4. It corresponds to Page 134 of the original text of the investigation report quoted above: "Insurance against accidents, which is incumbent on the trade unions, involved particularly stringent measures for the Poles. The recognition of disability caused by an accident is much more limited than in the case of Germans.