dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
GEN. RUIDENKO: When an attempt on Heydrich's life took place, many of the hostages were executed. In 1939 the Gestapo called together factory directors and warehouse supervisors of the various Czech industrial concerns. They were made to sign the following statement: "I am cognizant of the fact that I shall be shot immediately if the plant stops work without a justifiable cause." Schoolteachers in Czechoslovakia similarly had. to. sign declarations making themselves responsible for the loyalty of their students. It was the Gestapo which was responsible for that unheard-of crime of the annihilation of the village of Lidice and its population. The Gestapo terror in Yugoslavia assumed an especially vicious character. The confirmation of the fact can be found in the following quotation from Report Number 6 of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes: "A group of hostages were hanged in Celsje (Cilli) on hooks used by butchers to suspend uncut meat. In Maribor, victims worked in groups of five, placing bodies of shot hostages into boxes and then loading them on to trucks. As each five-man team finished its job, it was shot and the next group of five persons replaced it in the loading job. This went on continuously. The Sodna Street in Maribor was covered with blood from these lorries. The number given of 50,000 victims appears too small, as several hundred were shot each time, in Granz as many as 500 being murdered at once." Numerous documents have been submitted to the Tribunal dealing with the mass shooting of hostages and signed by the competent regional chiefs of the Gestapo in Yugoslavia. I shall not dwell upon the details of these documents, as I suppose the Tribunal still has them clearly in mind. The legal proceedings have thoroughly revealed those monstrous crimes which the Gestapo committed in the temporarily occupied Soviet territory.
GEN. RUIDENKO: There the Gestapo personnel functioned either among the operational units-the Einsatzgruppen, the Einsatzkommandos, and the Sonderkommandos of the SD and of the Security Police--or else it comprised the Secret Field Police, which was also partly composed of both Gestapo and Criminal Police officials. As a rule, it was the Gestapo officials who on all occasions carried out the inhuman executions and mass actions, acting under the general political leadership of the members of the SD staff and with the assistance of officials of other police organizations, as well as units of the Waffen-SS, widely used for these purposes. Numerous cases of mass murder and torture of peaceful Soviet citizens by the Gestapo have been established by the Tribunal. As an example I shall content myself with the description of separate characteristic facts. In the small town of Wjasma alone, by order of the chief of the Gestapo, several thousands of peaceful citizens were killed or tortured to death. The Fascist monsters not only killed their victims, but made them dig their own graves. In the village Zaitchiki, in the Smolensk district, men of the Gestapo drove into one house 23 old men, women, and children and set the house on fire, burning alive all those who were inside. In the psychiatric hospitals of Riga, Gestapo men exterminated all the inmates of these asylums. As stated in the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German Fascist usurpers in the town of Rovno, in the Rovno district, as retaliation for each act, of resistance, the Gestapo men perpetrated mass murder. When a German judge was killed by an unknown person in November 1943 in Rovno, the Gestapo shot more than 350 prisoners who were then being held in the town prison. It is known from the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German Fascist usurpers that the Gestapo used "death-vans" for the extermination of Soviet citizens.
GEN. RUIDENKO: In the town of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar region, the Gestapo men, forming part of operational groups, exterminated through poisoning by carbon monoxide more than 6,700 Soviet citizens, including women, old men, and children who were under treatment in the Krasnodar hospital, as well as persons held in the Gestapo prison. In the outskirts of the town of Krasnodar, in a big anti-tank trench, several thousands of corpses of Soviet citizens were buried who had been poisoned by gas and thrown there by the Gestapo. In the Stavropol region 54 children who were seriously ill and were being treated at the health resort of Tiberda were poisoned by gas in death-vans, as were also 600 patients of the Stavropol psychiatric hospital. The evidence given by Kovaltchouk, who lived in the Stavropol region, gives us an idea of the tortures practised by the Gestapo. They interrogated at night only. These interrogations were made in a separate room, where special torture devices had been set up, amongst them chains with metal bars fixed in the concrete floor, to which the prisoner's arms and legs were chained. The arrested person was first of all stripped naked, then laid on the floor, his hands and legs shackled, after which he was beaten with rubber sticks. Sometimes a wooden board was placed on the back of the victim and sharp blows were then dealt with heavy weights on the board. The torture chamber was arranged in such a way that when an arrested person was being tortured, the other arrested people, who were in an adjoining room awaiting interrogation, were able to watch the scene. When after torture a prisoner became unconscious, he was thrown aside by the modem inquisitors and the next victim, in many cases already half unconscious, was dragged into the room. These unheard-of tortures were used by the Gestapo even on women. I shall mention one example only. Such tortures during interrogation were most extensively used throughout the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R.
GEN. RUIDENKO: Medieval tortures were used during interrogations on special orders emanating from the RSHA and Mueller, Chief of the Gestapo. In one of those strictly secret orders the authorities gave the following instructions: "Third degree can include the following treatment: a very simple diet (bread and water), a hard bunk, a dark cell, deprivation of sleep. exhausting drill, beating with birch rods: The intelligentsia, including distinguished men of science and art who were in the Soviet territories temporarily occupied by the Germans, were likewise subjected by the Gestapo to unheard-of torture and persecution. The persecution by the Gestapo of representatives of the intelligentsia was carried out in accordance with a plan which had been elaborated beforehand. For instance, before the German troops had occupied Lvov, detachments of the Gestapo had in their possession lists of the principal representatives of the Lvov intelligentsia who were to be exterminated. Immediately after the occupation of Lvov by the Germans, mass arrests and shooting of professors, physicians, lawyers, writers, and artists started. Paying no heed to the human dignity of their victims, the Gestapo subjected the arrested scientists to the most cruel tortures, after which they finally shot them. An investigation carried out by the units of the Red Army, after Lvov had been freed from the German occupants, showed that over 70 prominent scientists, technicians, and artists had been killed by the Germans, their bodies being subsequently burned by the Gestapo. Fearing to be held responsible for these acts, the Fascist jackals painstakingly tried to conceal the facts about the extermination of the Lvov intelligentsia. The Gestapo also took part in the torture and killing of prisoners of war. During the court proceedings a directive of Department IV of the Reich Security Main Office, dated 17 June 1941, was read. It concerned the activity of detachments of the Security Police and SD in the prisoner-of-war camps.
GEN. RUIDENKO: Your Honors also know the directive of Mueller, dated 9 November 1941 and sent to all departments of the Gestapo, concerning the disposal of the bodies of prisoners who had died on their way to the place of execution. The written testimony of Kurt Lindorf, a former employee of the Gestapo, is at the disposal of the Tribunal. This document concerns the execution of Soviet political commissars and conscripted Jews. Known too is the order of the Chief of the Security Police and SD which was transmitted to the local offices of the Gestapo and concerned the sending of certain categories of escaped officers from prisoner-of-war camps to Mauthausen concentration camp for the carrying out of the "Kugel" action. The Tribunal is acquainted with the order of the commander of the 6th Military District, dated 17 July 1944, stating that recaptured escaped prisoners of war lose their rights and are to be turned over to the Gestapo, as well as with Keitel's order to the Armed Forces, dated 4 August 1942, which stated that the taking of action against individual paratroopers and groups of paratroopers belongs to the jurisdiction of the SD and the Gestapo. The Gestapo actively co-oporated in the deportation for German slave labor of thousands of peaceful citizens from the territories temporarily occupied by Germany and inflicted cruel repressive measures upon these persons on their arrival in Germany. In a like manner, Mueller, the Chief of the Gestapo, in his telegram of 16 December 1942, stated that the Gestapo could arrest some 45,000 Jews to serve as workers in the concentration camps. In the directive of 17 December 1942, Mueller writes of this in connection with 35,000 Jews. In the secret order of 18 June 1941 Mueller gave instructions to the Gestapo concerning the indispensable measures to be taken in order to prevent agitation among foreign workers. The criminal activity of the Gestapo is especially horrible in connection with the extermination of Jews.
GEN. RUIDENKO: The affidavit of Wilhelm Hoettl, dated 7 November 1945, establishes the fact that the Gestapo exterminated some 6 million Jews. In the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission set up for the investigation of German Fascist atrocities in the territory of the U.S.S.R., and in other documents as well, are brought forward innumerable proofs of torture, of various outrages, and of mass murder of Jews by the Gestapo men. The court proceedings have fully confirmed the charge submitted against the criminal activity of the Gestapo. As an organization of bloodthirsty mass terror the Gestapo must be recognized as a criminal organization. The Security Service or "Sicherheitsdienst" was usually referred to in the official police documents under the abbreviation of "SD." It was a secret espionage SS organization of the Party. The SD, as well as the SS, was organized by Himmler. The SD was that secret organization within the SS system which, after the seizure of power by the Hitlerites, had speedily merged with the police agencies and had promptly been installed in the leading secret police positions and the cadres of both the SA and the SS. It had played a leading role in the German scheme of political intelligence and "preventive examination" of the undesirable elements both before and after the formation of the RSHA. The SD stood particularly close to the central headquarters of the criminal Nazi conspirators, that is to say, the Party Leadership, and that is why the SD participated most actively in planning those police activities which invariably accompanied all Hitlerite plans of aggression. As will be shown below, it was the SD which created the first "Einsatzgruppen," supplied these predatory organizations of German Fascism with executive personnel, and prepared the atrocities which were later committed in the occupied territories of Poland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and other countries.
GEN. RUIDENKO: Attempting to exempt this criminal organization from the responsibilities with which it is charged, the Defense started an argument about the meaning of the very term "SD." The reasons for the Defense starting this terminological discussion are quite clear. The Defense endeavored to support Kaltenbrunner's version of the SD as an organization whose functions were strictly limited to the Reich domestic information services, which remained entirely apart from all police functions. The Defense began this argument so that only the most apparent part of the criminal activity of the SD would be revealed, while the rest could hide behind such terms as "general information services of trends and tendencies among the different circles of German society." All the political and police functions of the SD as a leading organization of the SS police machinery would stand unrevealed. In reality, however, the SD was a widely-spread espionage organization of German Fascism, which actively contributed to the realization of the criminal plans of aggression and operated both inside and outside Germany, in the occupied regions and abroad. Together with the Gestapo, it was the SD cadres who formed the backbone of the Einsatzgruppen, where it was always the SD personnel that occupied leading posts. The functions of the SD can be divided as follows: (1) The general information service which covered, As shown by the SD official documents, the "Lebensgebiete" or spheres vital to the German Reich, all Government offices, and all the best social circles of Fascist Germany. (2) The special tasks, with which was connected the, compilation of card files and lists of persons, primarily with reference to countries which were to be invaded. The card files and lists contained names of people who were to be subjected to the "special treatment," that is to say, either destroyed or confined in concentration camps.
GEN. RUIDENKO: (3) The supplying of personnel to those criminal organizations which were directly concerned with the carrying out of the Hitlerite plans for the annihilation of the politically undesirable elements and of intellectuals in the occupied territories, as well as with committing bestial acts of terrorism and execution. The entire staff of the SD consisted of SS men. This is understandable considering that the SD was an offspring of the SS and up to the very last moment was referred to as the "SD of the Reichsfuehrer SS." The many-branched SD system included the following: Department III of the RSHA (Amt III), which consisted of the domestic and occupied regions political intelligence service; Department VI of the RSHA (Amt VI, consisting of the foreign intelligence service, headed by one of the closest associates of Himmler, Walter Schellenberg, whose testimony is well known to the Tribunal; and Department VII (Amt VII), sometimes called the department for ideological warfare. The latter also included a number of very important auxiliary branches which formed the analytical apparatus for the espionage activities of the SD at home and abroad. In order to refute the statements of the Defense I should like' to refer to one of the documents showing the actual position of the SD in the police and SS scheme of Hitlerite Germany. I am speaking now of the document entitled "Utilization of the SD in case of emergency in Czechoslovakia." The document is marked "Secret" and is dated June 1938, that is, more than nine months before the actual seizure of Czechoslovakia. It was found by the Red Army among the Berlin files of the SD and has been submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution. The contents of the document leave no doubts, first, as to the facts of the active SD participation in the preparation and realization of the criminal plans of aggression, and secondly, of the fact that it was specifically the SD that both initiated and organized the Einsatzgruppen. I have some excerpts from this document, but I will skip them.
GEN. RUIDENKO: The whole territory of Czechoslovakia was, in conformity with the SD regional organization in Germany, divided beforehand into important (Oberabschnitt) and small (Unterabschnitt) territorial units, and for each of these units special Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos were prepared and staffed. In the text of the document we can see that a system of Oberabschnitte for Prague, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Waagtal, and others, was prepared and planned. The staffing of the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos was entirely a task of the SD. In the document we read in this connection that "the staffing of the SD agencies should be effected with respect to the following considerations: (1) the requirements of the SD itself; (2) the requirements of economy." An entire program was prepared for training members of the Einsatzgruppen to be recruited from collaborators and Sudeten-Germans. The utilization of "suitable persons" of German origin living in Czechoslovakia was equally foreseen, and special mention was made of the point that: "...it must, however, be considered that in spite of all precautionary measures we shall not have many such people at our disposal, since under certain conditions a considerable number will be arrested, deported, or killed." The Einsatzgruppen, organized and trained on German territory, were to be concentrated near the German-Czechoslovakian border in order to move into Czechoslovakian territory at the same time as the invading armies. In this connection the document says--I draw the attention of the Tribunal to Page 55: "In compiling the records the official has already to make remarks like arrest, dissolution, dismissal, shadowing, confiscation, surveillance by the Police, cancellation of passport, et cetera ." The compilation of the records and reference lists in which the names of people were entered who were to be killed in the territories temporarily occupied by the Germans was one of the immediate functions of the SD.
GEN. RUIDENKO: The killings were then carried out by the Gestapo or special SS units by Sonderkommandos or the SD. In preparation of the attack on Soviet Russia the SD officials compiled a whole series of reference lists in which the names of members of the Soviet intelligentsia and political leaders were entered whose elimination was, intended in conformity with the cruel directives of the Hitlerite criminals. Appendix Number 2 to Operational Order Number 8 of the Chief of the Security Police of the SD, dated 17 July 1941, said that long before the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union the Security Service had compiled the "German research book," lists of addresses, and a "special research book for the U.S.S.R." where all the names of "Soviet Russians considered as dangerous" were entered. We know from the same order of Heydrich's what the intentions of the Hitlerite criminals were with regard to those "dangerous Russians." All of them, without any' judicial sentence whatsoever, were to be exterminated by the Sonderkommandos in conformity with Orders Number 8 and Number 14 of the Reich Security Main Office, dated 17 July and 29 October 1941. The same criminal task was accomplished by the SD before the invasion of Yugoslavia. The Soviet Prosecution presented to the Tribunal a "research book" prepared by the so-called German Balkan Institute, "Sildostdeutsches Institut," which was connected with the SD. This book contained the names of over 4,000 Yugoslav citizens who were to be arrested immediately after the invasion of Yugoslavia. The completed book was transmitted to the executive police, that is to say, the Gestapo, which itself was to undertake these arrests. This book was found among the records of the Gestapo at Maribor and bore the following note made by a member of the SD: "The persons mentioned herein are to be arrested and the RSHA is to be informed immediately that the action has been carried out." This SD institute carried on a special undermining activity by preparing the Fifth Column in Yugoslavia.
GEN. RUIDENKO: In connection with this a member of the SD, the Dean of the Graz University, Hermann Ibler, issued a special pamphlet which was entitled Des Reiches Sildgrenze and was marked "strictly secret." It contained a list of the Fifth Column agents in Yugoslavia. It was the SD especially who carried out political provocation abroad. The former Chief of the Security Police and SD, Kaltenbrunner, had to confess to that when interrogated by the representative of the Soviet Prosecution. He himself could not deny his signature on the letter to Ribbentrop concerning the allocation by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of one million tomans, for bribing the voters in Iran. The SD members understood perfectly the part they were to play in the occupied territories in the execution of the inhuman plans of the Hitlerites concerning the extermination of the enslaved nations. From this point of view a German document captured by the units of the Polish Army in the building of the SD at Mogilno (Poland) and presented to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution is characteristic. In this letter, addressed to the agents of the SD, the chief of the Blockstelle, some Hauptsturmfuehrer of the SS, informs them of Himmler's speech of 15 March 1940 in which the latter instructed the commanders of the concentration camps situated in Poland first to make use of the Polish skilled workers for military industry in the concentration camps, and later to exterminate all those Poles. This Hauptsturmfuehrer of the SS from Mogilno requested therefore all his trusted agents of the SD to prepare the lists of the Poles they considered as dangerous in order to exterminate them later on. The SD was one of the most important links in the inhuman police machinery of the SS and German Fascism. It was a detective and information organization spread over the whole territory of the "old Reich," as well as throughout all the temporarily occupied territories and states. At a certain time it was the members of the SD who initiated the most cruel police measures of the Hitlerites.
GEN. RUIDENKO: For this reason, the Soviet Prosecution, supported by irrefutable evidence, considers that the whole system of the SD should be declared criminal. In the course of the present Trial, there have been many attempts on the part of several of the defendants, the Defense, and those witnesses for the Defense who were generals in Hitlerite Germany, to represent both the High Command of the Armed Forces and the General Staff as organizations whose activities were guided by the sole principle of "fulfilling their soldierly duty." The higher echelons of the German war machine, according to this concept, were far removed from the criminal politics of the Hitler Government, took no part in political decisions and confined themselves entirely to the fulfilment of orders emanating from their commander-in-chief and dealing with purely military matters. Opinion was expressed to the effect that the German General Staff, in view of the nature of the military structure then existing in Hitlerite Germany, was no more and no less than an auxiliary organization dealing with purely technical matters. Finally, attempts were made more than once, which is also quite understandable, to represent the High Command of the Army as something quite distinct and not having anything in common with the activity of the German police organization and of the SS. Almost every student of European politics since the first World War knows that the generals and officers of the Kaiser's army were only too ready to play again the game they had once lost. For the German military defeat they blamed everything and everybody-- except themselves. Meanwhile they worked on creating undercover military organizations, dreamed of revenge, and appeared prepared to offer their honor and their, swards to any political adventurer who would not stop until another world war had been started. Surrounded by this type of new "tradition" there grew up in Germany the present generation of officers.