dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
COL. POKROVSKY: The report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German invaders on the territory of this republic-we present to the Tribunal this report as Exhibit Number USSR-41 (Document Number USSR-41)-contains the following data on the extermination of 327,000 Soviet prisoners of war. I quote excerpts from Page 7, on the right column of the above-mentioned report. You, Sir, as well as the other members of the Tribunal, will find the excerpt on Page 97 of the document book: "In Riga, the Germans organized a camp, Stalag 350, for Soviet prisoners of war, on the premises of the former barracks on Pernovskaja and Rudolf Streets, which existed from July 1941 to October 1944. There Soviet prisoners of war were kept in inhuman conditions. The building where they were lodged had neither windows nor heat. In spite of heavy forced labor from 12 to 14 hours a day, their rations consisted only of 150-200 grams of bread and so-called soup made of grass, rotten potatoes, leaves of trees, and other refuse." In my opinion, it is necessary to stress the monotony of the rations issued to the prisoners of war. Testimonies given by witnesses coincide entirely with the official directive on the quantities of food allotted to the prisoners of war, which I have already read into the Record today. A former prisoner of war, P. F. Yakovenko, who was imprisoned in Stalag 350, testified-this is on Page 97 in your document book; forgive me, I forgot to mention it: "We were given 180 grams of bread, half consisting OI sawdust and straw, one liter of unsalted soup made of unpeeled rotten potatoes. We slept on the bare ground and were eaten up by lice. Between December 1941 to May 1942, 30,000 prisoners of war perished in this camp from starvation, cold, flogging, typhus, and shooting. The Germans daily shot prisoners of war who, owing to weakness or illness, were unable to go to work; they mocked at them and beat them without any reason at all." G. B.
COL. POKROVSKY: Novitzkis, who had worked as senior nurse in the hospital for Soviet prisoners of war in Number 1, Gymnastitcheskaya Street, testified that she had repeatedly seen patients eat grass and tree leaves in order to quell the pangs of hunger. "In sections of Stalag 350, on the territory of a former brewery, and in the Panzer barracks, over 19,000 persons perished between September 1941 and April 1942 alone, of starvation, torture, and epidemics. The Germans also shot wounded prisoners of war. In addition, Soviet prisoners of war perished en route to the camp, since the Germans left them without food or water." A female witness, A.V. Taukulis testified: "In the fall of 1941 a transport of Soviet prisoners of war, consisting of 50-60 coaches, arrived at the station of Salaspils. When the cars were opened, the stench of corpses spread over a great distance. Half the men were dead; many were at the point of death. Men who were able to climb out of the coaches dashed towards water, but the guards opened fire and shot a score or two of them." I shall not enumerate other facts which took place in Stalag 350, I shall merely read into the Record the final sentence, referring to this camp. I fear that there is a misprint in this sentence in your document book. If I am not mistaken, your document book mentions the shooting of 120,000 Soviet prisoners. This figure is inaccurate; in the original document, which I shall now read into the Record; another figure is mentioned, "In Stalag 350 and in its branches, the Germans tortured to death and shot over 130,000 Soviet prisoners of war." On Page 97 of your document book you can find the following part of this report: "There was a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, Stalag340, in Daugavpilce (Dvinsk), known among the internees and the town's inhabitants as the 'Death Camp,' where in 3 years over 124,000 Soviet prisoners of war perished from starvation, tortures, and shootings." The butchering of prisoners of war by German executioners usually began on the way to the camp.
COL. POKROVSKY: In the summer, prisoners of war were transported in tightly-closed wagons, in winter in freight coaches and on platform trucks. Masses of prisoners perished from hunger and thirst. They suffocated in the summer; they froze in the winter. Witness T.K. Ussenko stated: "In November 1941 I was on duty, as signalman, at the station of Most, and I saw a transport, consisting of more than 30 coaches, move into the 'Kilometer 217' siding"-this was the name given to that particular part of the track-"Not a living soul was discovered in the coaches. No fewer than 1,500 dead bodies were unloaded from this transport. They were dressed in nothing but their underclothes. The corpses lay around the railway track for nearly a week." The hospital attached to the camp was likewise dedicated to the extermination of prisoners of war. Schoolteacher V. A. Efimova, who worked at the hospital, told the Commission: "It was rarely that any one left this hospital alive. Five shifts of grave-diggers, selected from among the prisoners, carried the dead to the cemetery in handcarts. It frequently happened that a man who was still alive would be thrown into the cart and six to seven corpses or bodies of executed people piled on top of him. The living were buried with the dead. At the hospital sick people, tossing in delirium, were bludgeoned to death." When an epidemic broke out in the camp, the Hitlerites drove to the airfield all the prisoners from any barrack where typhus patients had been discovered and shot them. About 45,000 Soviet prisoners of war were thus exterminated. Appalling facts are quoted in the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission, which investigated the crimes of the German fascist invaders in the neighborhood of Sevastopol, Kerch, and at the health resort of Teberda. I shall read into the Record some data from our Exhibit Number USSR-63(5) (Document Number USSR-63(5)). At the Sevastopol prison, the German fascist command organized a hospital for sick and wounded prisoners of war. Here the Soviet warriors perished in masses.
COL. POKROVSKY: I shall quote a few sentences, which you will find in your document book on Page 99: "At the time the hospital was organized, the sick and wounded were not given any water or bread for 5 or 6 days by the Germans, who cynically said: 'This is the punishment for the specially stubborn defense of Sevastopol by the Russians.' "The wounded brought in from the battlefield were given no medical aid. Soldiers and officers were thrown on the cement floor, where they lay bleeding for 7 and 8 days on end. "During the defense of Sevastopol a military hospital and a medico-sanitary battalion, Number 47, were instated in the vaults of the champagne factory at Inkermann. After the retreat of the Red Army, a large number of wounded soldiers and officers were left behind in Vault Numbers 10, It, 12, and 13, since there had been no time to evacuate them. When the German savages captured the factory, they all became drunk and set fire to the vaults." I omit a whole number of facts, the majority of which, strictly speaking, should have been specially reported to the TribunaL I pass on to the description of the last crime mentioned in the statement of the commission. I pay special attention to it because it describes the brutal extermination of a very large number of wounded Red Army soldiers. You wit also find this excerpt on Page 99 of your document book: "On 4 December 1943 there arrived at the station of Sevastopol, from the city of Kerch, three transports of wounded prisoners of war belonging to the Kerch landing forces. Having loaded them on a 2,500-ton barge moored in the southern bay near the landing stage, the Germans set fire to it. The heart-rending screams of the prisoners filled the air. Women who were not far from the barge could render no assistance to the wounded, since they were driven from the site of the fire by gendarmes. Not more than 15 men were saved. Thousands perished in the fire. "On the following day the same barge was loaded with 2,000 men from among the wounded brought from Kerch.
COL. POKROVSKY: The barge sailed from Sevastopol in an unknown direction, and all. the wounded in it were drowned at sea." I repeat that I am omitting a considerable number of facts established by the commission. There is but lithe difference in character between the documentary evidence already read into the Record and the data on the atrocities perpetrated by the German fascist invaders on Soviet prisoners of war in the region of Stalin. In our Number USSR-2(a) we find, among a lot of other documents, two documents about the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. The first document is dated Stalino, 22 September 1943, and is submitted by a special commission with the President of the Stalinozavodsk Regional Council of Workers' Deputies at its head. I shall read into the Record that part of the document which contains items of interest to us. The official report begins in the left-hand column of Page 3 of Document USSR-2(a), and the extracts which I am reading into the Record are printed on Page 108 of your document book: "The circumstances of the case: In the Stalinozavodsk district of the town of Stalino, in the Lenin Club, the German fascist invaders organized a camp for Soviet prisoners of war; at times there were up to 20,000 men in this camp; the camp commandant, a German officer named Gavbel, established an intolerable diet for the Soviet prisoners of war. "Examined as witnesses, Ivan Vasilyetch Plakhoff and Konstantin Semyonovitch Shatzky, former prisoners of war who had been interned in this camp and managed to escape, testified that prisoners of war were starved; a loaf of bread weighing 1,200 grams and made of poor-quality, burned flour was issued to eight men; once a day one liter of hot liquid food was issued, consisting of a small quantity of burned bran, occasionally mixed with sawdust. The premises in which the prisoners of war were housed had no glass in their windows; in summer and winter alike, even in the coldest weather, only 5 kilograms of coal per day were allowed for heating purposes.
COL. POKROVSKY: This amount could not, of course, heat the vast premises where up to a thousand prisoners lived in a perpetual draught.. Mass cases of frostbite were observed. There were no baths. Generally speaking, people did not wash for 6 months and were overrun by enormous quantities of vermin. In the hot summer months the prisoners suffered from the heat. They were left without drinking water for 3 to 5 days on end." The regime in the camp organized in the region of Stalinozavodsk was, as is clear from the extracts read into the Record, precisely the same as the regime in other German prisoner-of-war camps. This has been proved beyond all doubt by the discovery of general directives. The following excerpt shows that, over and above these directives, camp commanders had opportunities for committing atrocities themselves, each man according to his own particular method, and yet remained unpunished. On Page 105 of your document book you will find the following extract which I am now quoting: "Prisoners of war were beaten with sticks and rifle butts on the slightest provocation, and a punishment of 720 strokes with the lash was imposed for any attempt at escape; the strokes were administered over a period of 8 days-30 strokes of the lash at a time-morning, noon, and evening. At the same time, the culprits were deprived of their bread ration, while the liquid ration was halved." Mortality in the camp following this regime was enormous. In winter, up to 200 persons died every day. Epidemics broke out in the camp. Numerous cases of oedemata-the result of hunger and death by starvation-were registered. The guards derived much pleasure in degrading the prisoners of war by setting one against the other. Thus Shatzky testified that he was flogged by German policemen, receiving 120 strokes with the lash and 15 with sticks, for disobeying the order to flog his fellow prisoners of war. The floggings were supervised by German officers. Provisions brought by civilians for handing to the prisoners of war did not reach them.
COL. POKROVSKY: The commission came to the conclusion that no fewer than 25,000 Soviet prisoners of war were buried in the grounds of the camp and of the central polyclinic. This conclusion is based on the measurement and number of graves and on the evidence of witnesses. Mass killings and murders of prisoners of war were also organized by the German fascist invaders in another town in the Don Basin, Artemovsk. A special commission, consisting of the military prosecutor of the town of Artemovsk, of the priest of the Pokrovskaya Church, Ziumin, of representatives of the intelligentsia, public organizations, and army units, drew up an official report on the mass murders of Soviet prisoners of war organized by the fascist invaders. This official report is on Page 4 of Exhibit Number USSR-2(a). It is also on Page 105 of your document book. It is said in the report: "In November 1941, soon after the occupation of the town of Artemovsk by German fascist invaders, a prisoner-of-war camp was established in the territory of the small military town lying beyond the northern station, housing 1,000 captured Red Army prisoners of war." I omit one paragraph and pass on to the question of living conditions in the camp: "In the spring of 1942 prisoners of war, driven desperate by hunger, used to leave the camp and, creeping on all fours like animals, plucked and ate grass. In order to deprive the men even of this modicum of food, the Germans fenced off the camp building by a double row of barbed-wire, with a distance of 2 meters between the rows and barbed-wire entanglements placed between them." I omit one paragraph and am preparing to read the conclusions into the Record: 1 385 "Twenty-five graves were discovered near the camp-three of them mass graves. The first grave measured 20 by 15 meters; it contained the remains of about 1,000 corpses. The second grave measured 27 by 14 meters and contained the remains of about 900 corpses.
COL. POKROVSKY: In the third grave, 20 meters by 1, the remains of up to 500 corpses were discovered; and in the remaining graves, from 25 to 30 in each, making up, all told, a total of some 3,000 corpses." In the neighborhood of the small farm of Vertyatchy, in the Goroditschtchensky region of the Stalingrad area, the Hitlerites established a prisoner-of-war camp. Here, as in other camps, and with their customary and characteristic sadism, they exterminated the war prisoners of the Red Army. , I present to you, as evidence, our Exhibit Number USSR-63(3) (Document Number USSR-63(3)), which contains an official report of 21 June 1943. It is duly drawn up and certified and contains the following information-this is on Page 110 of the document book: "As a result of the atrocious regime, at least 1,500 Soviet prisoners of war perished of starvation, torture, sickness, and executions in the camp near Vertyatchy, during the 31/z months of its existence. "The Germans forced the prisoners to work from 14 to 16 hours per day, and fed them once a day, the ration consisting of 3 to 4 spoonfuls of stewed rye or a ladleful of unsalted rye soup together with a piece of horse carrion. , "A few days before the arrival of the Red Army the Germans ceased to feed the prisoners altogether and condemned them to death by starvation. Nearly all the prisoners suffered from dysentery. Many had open wounds, but the prisoners received no medical assistance whatsoever." I omit one paragraph and pass on to the next, which deals with the humiliating treatment of prisoners of war: "Germans mocked the patriotism of the Soviet prisoners of war by forcing them to work on German military constructions, to dig trenches and dugouts, and to build mud huts and shelters for military technical equipment.
COL. POKROVSKY: The Hitlerites systematically humiliated Soviet prisoners of war by making them kneel before the Germans." 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 1 13 Feb. 46 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 'he 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.
COL. POKROVSKY: In my home, the Gemmans 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 Gorky 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.
COL. POKROVSKY: 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 tine' 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.