dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
GEN. RUDENKO: After 8 minutes the gas chamber was opened, and workmen belonging to a special commando, the so-called Sonderkommando, transported the bodies to the cremation ovens which burned day and night. "There was a shortage of ovens at the time of the arrival of transports from Hungary; consequently enormous ditches were dug for the purpose of cremating the bodies. Fires made of wood soaked in gasoline were laid in these ditches and the bodies were thrown into them. However, the SS men frequently hurled live children and adults into those ditches, where these unhappy victims died a terrible death. To save gasoline, the fats and oils necessary for cremations were partly derived from the bodies of gassed people. Fats and oils for technical purposes and for the manufacture of soap were also obtained from the corpses." The appeal ends with the following words: "Together with 10,000 rescued inmates of all nationalities, we demand that the crimes and the inconceivable atrocities of the Hitlerites should not remain unpunished." This just demand is supported by the entire civilized world and by all freedom-loving people. The organized mass annihilation of prisoners of war constitutes one of the vilest crimes of the Hitlerite conspirators. Numerous facts of murders, tortures, and maltreatment to which prisoners of war were subjected have been definitely established. They were tortured with red-hot irons, their eyes were gouged out, their extremities severed, et cetera. The systematic atrocities and short-shrift justice against captured officers and men of the Red Army were not chance episodes or the results of criminal activities of individual officers of the German Army and of German officials. The Hitlerite Government and the High Command of the German Army ruthlessly exterminated prisoners of war. Numerous documents, orders, and decrees of the fascist Government and orders of the German Supreme Command testify to this fact.
GEN. RUDENKO: As early as March 1941-as the German Lieutenant General Osterreich testified during his interrogation-a secret conference took place at the headquarters of the High Command in Berlin, where measures were planned for the organization of camps for Russian prisoners of war and rules laid down for their treatment. According to Osterreich's evidence these rules and measures for Soviet prisoners of war were essentially a plan for their extermination. Many Soviet prisoners of war were shot or hanged while others perished from hunger and infectious diseases, from cold, and from torture systematically employed by the Germans according to a plan which was developed beforehand and had as its object the mass extermination of Soviet persons. , Appendix 3 to Order Number 8 for the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated 17 July 1941, a list is given of prisoner-of-war camps set up in the area of the 1st Military District and of the so-called Government General. In the 1st Military District camps were set up in particular in Prokuls, Heidekrug, Schierwind, Schutzenrode (Ebenro de) in Prostken, Suwalki, Fischb or- Gersen and Ostrolenko. In the so-called Government General, camps were set up at Ostrov-Mesovetsky, Sedlce, Byelopedlasko, Kholm, Jaroslav, et cetera. In the appendix to Operational Order Number 9, issued in development of Order Number 8 of 17 July 1942, lists are given of the camps for Soviet prisoners of war situated in the territory of military districts II, IV, VI, VIII, X, XI, and XIII, at Hammerstein, Schneidemuhl, and many other places.
THE PRESIDENT: Would this be a convenient time to break off? [The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]
MARSHAL (Colonel Charles W. Mays): May it please the Court, I desire to announce that the Defendants Kaltenbrunner and Hess will be absent until further notice on account of illness.
THE PRESIDENT: Would it be convenient to you and the Soviet Delegation if the Tribunal sat in open session until half past 11 tomorrow morning, and then after that we would adjourn for a closed session for administrative business? Would that be convenient to the Soviet Delegation?
GEN.RUDENKO: We, that is the Soviet Delegation, have no objection.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then, that is what we will do. The Tribunal will sit tomorrow from 10 until half past 11 in open session and will then adjourn.
GEN. RUDENKO: In these prisoner-of-war camps, as well as in camps for the civilian population, extermination and torture were practiced, referred to by the Germans as "filtering," "execution," and "special treatment." The "Grosslazarett" set up by the Germans in the town of Slavuta has left grim memories. The whole world is familiar with the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans against Soviet prisoners of war and those of other democratic states at Auschwitz, Maidanek, and many other camps. The directives of the German Security Police and of the SD- uncorked out in collaboration with the Staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, whose chief was the Defendant Keitel-were applied here. Operational Order Number 8 stated: "Executions must not take place in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp. If the camps in the Government General are situated in the immediate vicinity of the frontier, the prisoners intended for special treatment should, if possible, be transported to former Soviet districts. Should executions be necessary owing to violations of camp discipline, the chief of the operational unit should in this case approach the camp commander. "The activities of the special task forces sanctioned by the army commanders of the rear areas (district commandants dealing with affairs connected with prisoners of war) must be conducted in such a way as to carry out filtering with as little notice as possible, while the liquidation must be carried out without delay and at such a distance from the transit camps themselves, and from populated places, as to remain unknown to the rest of the prisoners of war and to the population." The following "form" for the carrying out of executions is recommended in Appendix 1 to Operational Order Number 14 of the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated "Berlin, the 29th of October, 1941, No. 21 B/41 G R S - IV A.I.Z.": "Chiefs of operational groups decide questions about execution on their own responsibility and give appropriate instructions to the special task forces.
GEN. RUDENKO: In order to carry out the measures laid down in the directives issued, the Kommandos are to demand from the commandants of the camp the handing over to them of the prisoners. The High Command of the Army has issued instructions to the commandants for meeting such demands. "Executions must take place unnoticed, in convenient places, and, in any event, not in the camp itself nor in its immediate vicinity. It is necessary to take care that the bodies are buried immediately and properly." The report of the operational Kommando (Obersturmbannfuehrer Lipper to Brigadefuehrer, Dr. Thomas) in Vinnitza, dated December 1941, speaks of the way in which all the above-mentioned instructions were carried out. It is pointed out in this report that, after the so-called "filtering" of the camp, only 25 persons who could be classed as "suspects" remained in the camp at Vinnitza. "This limited number"-the report states-"is explained by the fact that the local organizations, in conjunction with the commandants or with the appropriate counterintelligence of ricers, daily undertook the necessary measures, in accordance with the rules of the Security Police, against the undesirable elements in the permanent prisoner-of-war camps." Thus, apart from the mass executions conducted by Sonderkommandos specially Created for this purpose, the systematic extermination of Soviet persons was widely practiced by commandants and their subordinates in camps for Soviet prisoners of war. Among the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the investigation of crimes committed by Germans in the temporarily seized territories of the U.S.S.R. there are several notes of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, V. M. Molotov, on the subject of the extermination of prisoners of war and of their cruel treatment, and in these notes numerous instances are given of these monstrous crimes of the Hitlerite Government and of the German Supreme Command. The note of V. M.
GEN. RUDENKO: Molotov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, dated 25 November 1941, on the subject of the revolting bestialities of the German authorities against Soviet prisoners of war, addressed to all ambassadors and ministers plenipotentiary of the countries with which the U.S.S.R. has diplomatic relations, points out that the German High Command and German military units subjected the Red Army soldiers to brutal tortures and killings. The wild fascist fanatics stabbed and shot on the spot defenseless, sick, and wounded Red Army soldiers who were in the camps; they raped hospital nurses and medical aid women, and brutally murdered members of the medical personnel. A special count of the victims of these executions was conducted on instructions of the German Government and the Supreme Command. Thus, the directive given in Appendix 2 to Heydrich's Order Number 8, points out the necessity for keeping an account of the executions performed, that, is, of the extermination of prisoners of war, in the following form: 1) serial number, 2) surname and first name, 3) date and place of birth, 4) profession, 5) last place of domicile, 6) grounds for execution, 7) date and place of execution. A further specification of the tasks to be carried out by the special task forces for the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was given in Operational Order Number 14, of the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated 29 October 1941. Among brutalities against Soviet prisoners of war must be included branding with special identification marks, which was laid down by a special order of the German Supreme Command, dated 20 July 1942. This order provides for the following methods of branding: '`The tightly drawn skin is to be cut superficially with a heated lances dipped in indict ink." The Hague Convention of 1907, regarding prisoners of war, prescribed not only humane treatment for prisoners of war, but also respect for their patriotic feelings and forbids their being used to fight against their own fatherland.
GEN. RUDENKO: Article 3 of the Convention, which refers to the laws and customs of war, forbids the combatants to force enemy subjects to participate in military operations directed against their own country, even in cases where these subjects had been in their service before the outbreak of war. The Hitlerites trod underfoot even this elementary principle of international law. By beatings and threats of shooting they forced prisoners to work as drivers of carts, motor vehicles, and transports carrying ammunition and other equipment to the front, as supply bearers to the firing line, as auxiliaries in anti-aircraft artillery, et cetera. In the Leningrad district, in the Yelny region of the Smolensk district, in the Gomel district of Bielorussia, in the Poltava district, and in other places, cases were recorded where the German command, under threat of shooting, drove captured Red Army soldiers forward in front of their advancing columns during attacks. The mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war, established by special investigations of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, is also confirmed by the documents of the German police and of the Supreme Command captured by the Soviet and Allied armies on German territory. In these documents it is stated that many Soviet prisoners of war died of hunger, typhus, and other diseases. The camp commandants forbade the civil population to give food to the prisoners and doomed them to death by starvation. In many cases prisoners of war who were unable to keep in line on the march because of starvation and exhaustion were shot in full view of the civil population and their bodies left unburied. In many camps no arrangements of any sort were made for living quarters for the prisoners of war. They lay in the open in rain and snow. They were not even given tools to dig themselves pits or burrows in the ground.
GEN. RUDENKO: One could hear the arguments of the Hitlerites: "The more prisoners who die, the better for us." On the basis of the above exposition, I declare, on behalf of the Soviet Government and People, that the responsibility for the bloody butchery perpetrated on Soviet prisoners of war in violation of all the universally accepted rules and customs of war, rests with the criminal Hitlerite Government and German Supreme Command, the representatives of which are now sitting on the defendants' benches. Outstanding in the long chain of vile crimes committed by the German fascist invaders is the forced deportation to Germany of peaceful citizens, men, women, and children, for slave and forced labor. Documentary evidence proves the fact the Hitlerite Government and the German Supreme Command carried out the deportation of Soviet citizens into German slavery by deceit, threats, and force. Soviet citizens were sold into slavery by the fascist invaders to concerns and private individuals in Germany. These slaves were doomed to hunger, brutal treatment, and, in the end, to an agonizing death. I shall dwell later on the inhuman and barbarous directives, edicts, and orders of the Hitlerite Government and the Supreme Command, which were issued for the purpose of effecting the deportation of Soviet persons to German slavery and for which the defendants now being prosecuted are responsible, particularly Goering, Keitel, Rosenberg, Sauckel, and others. Documents at the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution, captured by the Red Army from the staffs of the smashed Germano-fascist armies, demonstrate the defendants to have perpetrated these crimes. In a report read at a meeting of the German Labor Front in November 1942, Rosenberg presented facts and figures confirming the vast scale of the deportation of Soviet citizens to slave and serf labor in Germany which were organized by Sauckel. On 7 November 1941 a secret conference took place in Berlin, at which Goering gave directives to his officials concerning the utilization of Soviet citizens for forced labor.
GEN. RUDENKO: These directives came to our knowledge from a document which is Secret Circular Number 42006/41 of the Economic Staff of the German Command in the East, dated 4 December 1941. This is how these directives run: "1. Russians must be used chiefly for road and railway construction, cleaning-up operations, demining and airfield construction. German construction battalions must be disbanded (for instance those of the air force). Skilled German workers must work in war production; they must not dig and break stones-the Russian is there for that purpose. "2. It is essential to utilize the Russian primarily for the following types of work: Mining, road construction, war production (tanks, guns, aircraft equipment), agriculture, building, in large workshops (shoemaking) and in special detachments for urgent unforeseen jobs. "3. In taking measures to keep order, the decisive considerations are speed and severity. Only the following types of punishment, without any intermediate punitive sanctions, will be imposed: deprivation of food or death by sentence of court-martial." The Defendant Fritz Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor by Hitler's order of 21 March 1942. On 20 April 1942 Sauckel sent to several government and military organs his top-secret "Program of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor," which is no less foul than the circular referred to above. This is what is said in the "Program": "It is extremely necessary fully to utilize the human reserves available in occupied Soviet territories. If attempts to attract the necessary labor voluntarily do not succeed, it will be necessary to resort immediately to recruitment or to the compulsory signing of individual contracts. "Besides the prisoners of war we already have, and who are still located in the occupied territories, there is need mainly for the recruitment of skilled male and female civilian workers over 15 years of age from the Soviet provinces for utilization in Germany.
GEN. RUDENKO: "In order that the burden on the overworked German peasant woman should be noticeably lightened, the Fuehrer has ordered me to bring 400,000 to 500,000 selected, healthy, and strong girls to Germany from the Eastern territories." Yet another secret document concerning the utilization of women workers from the Eastern territories, for domestic labor in Germany, has been presented to the Tribunal by the Prosecution. This document is composed of excerpts from the report on a meeting held by Sauckel on 3 September 1942. I quote some of these excerpts: "1. The Fuehrer has ordered that between 400,000 and 500,000 Ukrainian women aged between 15 and 35 be brought immediately for domestic labor. "2. The Fuehrer has expressed categorically his desire that a large number of these girls...be Germanized. "3. It is the Fuehrer's will that, in 100 years' time, 250 million German-speaking people should live in Europe. "4. · It is to consider these women workers from the Ukraine as workers from the East, and to put the sign 'Ost' "-East-"on them. "5. Gauleiter Sauckel added that apart from the introduction of women workers for domestic labor it was intended to utilize an additional million workers from the East. "6. References to the difficulty of bringing stocks of grain to Germany from other countries did not worry him (Sauckel) at all.
GEN. RUDENKO: He would find ways and means to utilize Ukrainian grain and cattle, even if he would have to mobilize all the Jews in Europe and make of them a living chain of conveyors to get all the necessary boxes to the Ukraine." Foreseeing the inevitability of the failure of existing measures to recruit Soviet citizens by force for labor in Germany, Sauckel ordered, in a secret directive of 31 March 1942, Number PA 578028/729: "The recruitments for which you are responsible must be enforced by all available means, including the severe application of the principle of compulsory labor." Sauckel and his agents used all possible methods of pressure and terror to carry out the plans of recruitment, They starved the Soviet citizens condemned to this recruitment, lured them to the stations under pretense of distribution of bread, surrounded them with soldiers, loaded them into trains under the threat of shooting them, and took them to Germany. But even these coercive methods did not help. The recruitment was not successful. Then Sauckel and his agents had recourse to a quota system. This is testified to by an order of a German commandant, captured by the Red Army forces when the occupied part of the Province of Leningrad was liberated. It runs as follows: "To the mayors of village communities.... Since a very small number of people have so far presented themselves for labor 8Feb.46 in Germany, every mayor of a village community must, in accord with the elders of the villages, provide 15 or more persons from each village community for labor in Germany. Healthy people aged between 15 and 50 must be provided." The chief of the political police and of the Security Service in Kharkov stated in his report on the situation in the town of Kharkov, covering the period from 24 July to 9 September 1942: "The recruitment of labor is worrying the competent agencies, since an extremely antagonistic attitude to transportation for work in Germany is observed among the population.
GEN. RUDENKO: At present the situation is such that everyone tries by every available means to escape recruitment (malingering, escape into the forests, bribery of officials, et cetera. As for working in Germany voluntarily, this has been out of the question for a long time past." That citizens deported to German slavery were subjected to the most brutal treatment is shown by a vast quantity of complaints and statements collected by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for ascertaining and investigating the crimes of the Germano-fascist invaders. Polish, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav citizens deported to German slavery suffered the same fate. In carrying out their plans of conquest and plunder, the Hitlerites systematically destroyed towns and villages, destroyed the treasures created by labors of many generations and plundered the peaceful population. Together with their accomplices-the criminal Governments of Finland and Romania-the Hitlerites developed their plans for the destruction of the largest cities of the Soviet Union. A document, emanating from the naval war staff, dated 29 September 1941 and entitled "The Future of the City of Leningrad," contains the following statement: "The Fuehrer has decided to wipe the city of Leningrad from the face of the earth. Finland has also declared clearly that she is not interested in the further existence of the city in the immediate vicinity of her new boundary." On 5 October 1941 Hitler addressed a letter to Antonescu, the special object of which was to co-ordinate their plans for seizing and destroying the city of Odessa. An order of the German Commander-in-Chief, dated 7 October '1941 and signed by the Defendant Jodl, prescribed that Leningrad and Moscow should be wiped from the face of the earth. "In the case of all other towns, too"-states the order-"the rule should hold that, prior to their occupation, they should be reduced to ruins by artillery fire and by air raids.
GEN. RUDENKO: It is inadmissible that a German soldier's life should be risked in order that Russian towns be saved from fire." These directives of central German authorities were widely applied by military commanders of all ranks. Thus an order to the 512th German Infantry Regiment, signed by Colonel Schittnig, prescribes that the regions and districts conquered by the Hitlerites be turned into a desert area. In order that this crime should lead to the most destructive results, the order gives a detailed plan for the annihilation of inhabited localities. "Preparations for the destruction of inhabited localities"-the order states-"should be made in such a manner that: (a) No suspicion be aroused among the civilian population, prior to announcement; (b) it should be possible to start the destructions at once, by one blow, at an appointed time.... On the day designated, particularly strict watch should be kept on inhabited localities so as not to allow any civilians to leave them, especially from the moment the announcement regarding the destruction is made." An order by the commander of the 98th German Infantry Division, dated 24 December 1941, is even entitled, "Program of Destruction." This order gives concrete directions regarding the destruction of a number of inhabited localities and suggests that: "Available stocks of hay, straw, food supplies, et cetera, are to be burnt. All stoves in homes should be put out of action by hand grenades so that their further use be made impossible. On no account is this order to fall into the hands of the enemy." Special squads of fire raisers (torch bearers) were formed, which set fire to the treasures created by the labor of generations. Your Honors, I wish to draw your attention to the document known as "Directives for the Control of Economy in the Newly Occupied Eastern Territories"-the "Green File." Goering is the author of these directives. This secret document is dated "Berlin, June 1941." I will quote only a few excerpts from it.