dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
COL. POKROVSKY: It is the text of the explanation of the evidence which the signatory of the document handed to his police chief. I, with the permission of the Tribunal, shall quote the original German documents of the inquiry. The persons responsible for carrying out the execution were accused of provoking, by their indiscretion and carelessness, that which they called an "incident" and they produced an explanation of the cause of this indictment. "Concerning the charge: It never entered my head, to ensure the smooth procedure of an ordinary execution, to send a larger detachment, since the execution ground was hidden from public view and the captives were unable to escape by reason of their physical infirmities. "At about 1500 hours I received a telephone call from the camp to the effect that one of the co-workers in my department, in charge of this special task, had been wounded and that one man had run away. I promptly sent SS Hauptscharfuehrer Wenzel and SS Oberscharfuehrer Fritsch to the execution ground in a horse cart. Some time later I received another telephone call from the camp, informing me that the co-workers of my department had been killed." I think it useless to read into the record details of a purely technical nature. I shall omit at this point a considerable part of those references which I had previously intended to quote, and I shall proceed to that part of Knop's evidence which he had handed to his police chief. You will find the passage in question on Page 166: "I wish to point out that the incident I have described took place during the second execution. It had been preceded by the shooting of approximately twenty prisoners of war which had passed without any incident at all. As soon as I returned, I informed the command headquarters at Zhitomir accordingly. "I cannot give any further evidence. I declare that my evidence is absolutely true and I am aware that any false evidence on my part would result in punishment and in exclusion from the SS.
COL. POKROVSKY: "Signed: Fritz Knop, SS Sturmscharfuehrer; certified: Kuntze, SS Obersturmfuehrer." Next to be interrogated was the executioner. We have at our disposal a document on this subject. You will find the extract in question on Page 166 of your document book. I quote the minutes of the inquiry: "SS Rottenfuehrer of the Waffen-SS, Hesselbach, Friederich, born 24 January 1909 in Freudingen, district of Wittgenstein (Westphalia), was then summoned and testified as follows: " 'I have been informed concerning the subject of the forthcoming interrogation. It has been pointed out to me that any false statements on my part will result in punishment and expulsion from the SS."' After this routine part of the investigation-where he was warned of the penalties awaiting him-Hesselbach gave the following testimony on the matter: "Yesterday evening I was told by SS Unterscharfuehrer Paal that I would have to take part in the execution of prisoners of war. Later on I received a corresponding order from Hauptscharfuehrer Wenzel, in the presence of SS Sturmscharfuehrer Knop. This morning, at 0800 hours, SS Hauptscharfuehrer Berger, SS Unterscharfuehrer Paal, SS Sturmmann Vollprecht, and myself, drove in a truck lent us by the tannery and driven by a Ukrainian driver, to a place situated approximately one and a half kilometers behind the camp, in order to dig a pit, with eight inmates of our prison." Later he describes the digging of the pit. I think that we can skip that part. Then they returned. "At the entrance to the camp, Vollprecht, acting on Paal's instructions, left the car. By these instructions Peal intended not to betray our intentions to the prisoners by the presence of a large number of SS men. Therefore, only I, Paal, and a few militia men loaded the prisoners onto the truck.
COL. POKROVSKY: On Paal's order, the whole first group consisted almost exclusively of the prisoners who had lost their legs." I omit a few extracts which are of no interest to the Tribunal and I quote from Page 6 of the Russian translation, the underlined passages, printed on Page 168 of your document book: "After having executed the first three prisoners I suddenly heard shouting beyond the pit. Since the fourth prisoner was already next in line, I shot him on the spot, and looking up, I noticed a terrific disturbance near the truck. A moment before already I had heard some shots being fired and I now saw the prisoners running away in all directions. I cannot give any precise particulars as to what actually happened near the truck, since I was about 40 to 50 meters away from the place and everything was very confusing. I can only say that I saw two of my comrades lying on the ground, and two prisoners shooting at me and the driver with the firearms they had seized. When I realized what was happening, I fired the four remaining cartridges in my magazine at the prisoners shooting at us, put in a new clip, and suddenly noticed that a bullet had struck the ground near me. I had the feeling that I had been hit, but realized later that I was wrong. I now ascribe this sensation to nervous shock. Anyway, I was shooting at the fugitives with the cartridges from To my second clip, though I cannot tell whether I hit any of them." I would inform you that the last part of Hesselbach's testimony deals with the subject of organizing the search for the scattered cripples, a search which yielded no results. Finally, I would like to quote a few excerpts from the last document in the correspondence. This is a report of SS Obersturmfuehrer Kuntze. It concludes with the statement that the funeral of the SS men killed took place at 1400 hours at the Police and SS Heroes' Cemetery in Hegewalde. It seems to me that this detail is of a certain interest. I shall now quote the opening part of the above-mentioned report.
COL. POKROVSKY: I shall omit the first report already appearing in your document book, in order to shorten the time taken by my work. He reports that 78 people were supposed to have been killed after the inspection of the camp by Kallbach. Because of their inability to work, these prisoners of war were a burden to the camp. "For this reason, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Kallbach ordered the execution of the former prisoners of war, and that on 24 December. Neither in the local nor in the regional offices could anybody discover why the former commandant had taken charge of these crippled prisoners and sent them to the Educational Labor Camp. In this case there did not exist any data whatsoever concerning communistic activities of the prisoners in question during the entire period of the Soviet regime. Evidently the military authorities have, in their own time, placed these prisoners at the disposal of the local branch in order to submit them to the 'special regime,' since owing to their physical condition, they could not be made to work. "So SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Kallbach ordered the execution for 24 December. On 24 December at about 1700 hours, the head of the Berditchev regional office, SS Sturmscharfuehrer Knop, telephoned that during the execution of the 'special regime' operation, the two officials of the branch, SS Unterscharfuehrer Paal and SS Sturmmann Vollprecht, were assaulted by the prisoners and killed with their own firearms." I shall now omit a considerable part of SS Obersturmfuehrer Kuntze's idle talk and shall quote only three more paragraphs. You will find them on Pages 172 and 173: "Thus, of the 28 prisoners, 4 were shot in the pit and 2 while trying to escape; the remaining 22 managed to get away. "The efforts to recapture the fugitives, promptly undertaken by SS Rottenfuehrer Hesselbach with the help of the guards from the neighboring camp, were expedient though unsuccessful. The head of the Berditchev Department ordered an immediate search for the fugitives and instructed all the police and military agencies to this effect.
COL. POKROVSKY: However, the names of the fugitives are unknown and this fact alone would render the search more difficult. The records merely contained the names of all the prisoners subjected to the 'special regime' and it was therefore necessary to declare as escapees even those who had already been shot. "On 25 December, on the same spot, a 'special regime' execution of the 20 surviving prisoners of war was carried out under my direction. As I feared that the fugitives might already have established contact with some partisan unit, I again had the camp send a detachment of 20 men, armed with light submachine guns and carbines, in order to guard the surrounding territory. The execution went off without any trouble." It is enough to imagine these 20 unfortunate men, without arms, without legs, being escorted to their death by a strong contingent of SS men and soldiers, soldiers armed with submachine guns. I continue: "As a measure of reprisal I ordered the military police to check up on all released prisoners of war in the adjoining regions to ascertain their political activities during the entire period of Soviet rule, so as to arrest and submit to the 'special regime' 20 activists and members of the Communist Party." To conclude the presentation of the evidence pertaining to this monstrous crime of the Hitlerites, I should like to invite the Tribunal's attention to certain facts. I would, first of all, like to refer to the "objections raised by the Army," reported by the member of the SS, Knop. Knop said-you will find the passage quoted on Page 163: "In the future all evacuations of prisoners of war will be suspended due to objections raised by the Army. I do not wish my words to be misunderstood. The Army did not so much object to such evacuations, rather it expressed the wish that the prisoners of war, once they had been released and sent elsewhere, should be given some kind of shelter." It is not difficult to guess what "shelter" he was referring to.
COL. POKROVSKY: It was the "shelter" provided when, in the words of Knop, they were "transported in a truck to a place in the neighborhood." The second fact which, to me, appears of importance, is the scale of the outrages committed. Referring to the executioners, Paal, Hesselbach, and Vollprecht, Knop writes: 14 Feb. 4B To "With reference to the three above-mentioned persons whom I entrusted with the shooting of prisoners of war, I knew that they had, in Kiev, participated in the mass executions of many thousands of persons and that they had already before, that is, during my period of service, been entrusted by the local administration with the shooting of many hundreds of victims." In reference to Hesselbach, I should like to note two not very important but extremely characteristic traits. The first is his terminology. Here are his words: "After having executed the first three prisoners I suddenly heard shouting beyond the pit; since the fourth prisoner was already next in line, I shot him on the spot." Any bandit, any habitual murderer would, naturally, use such language in speaking of the destruction of a human being. For the fascist executioners the murder of a soldier who had honestly fought for his country and become an invalid, the brief expression "shot on the spot" is good enough; when occupied in killing, the executioners do not even consider it necessary to find out whom they really are murdering. Thanks to this, shame and confusion cover the police. They order a search both for those who had escaped and for those who were shot. Secondly, the very sound of a bullet passing nearby gives him a sensation of being wounded, and people of this type are then called "heroes" by their superiors. It would be an omission on my part not to emphasize the exceptional brutality displayed by Kuntze-this typical representative of the SS. Twenty persons captured at random, captured anyhow, without any fault on their part, must be murdered. What for? Only because 22 armless and legless invalids had succeeded in escaping from death.
COL. POKROVSKY: The Tribunal, of course, is quite aware of the fact that by all the laws of God and man these 22 invalids should not have perished by the hand of the executioner, but should have been placed unaided the protection of the German Government as prisoners of war. The confession of Kuntze, concerning the motives for which the military authorities directed invalids to the camp for treatment by "special regime," is of particular value. He frankly states that the cause of it was their physical condition which had rendered them unfit for any kind of work. In this connection I submit a series of documents to the Tribunal. They show that only from the angle of possibility of obtaining slaves were the representatives of the German Command and the German authorities occasionally interested in the prisoners of war. You have in your possession a circular of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces to the effect that Soviet prisoners of war should be branded and that this branding would not be considered as a medical measure. I am submitting to you another equally shameful document. It bears the following identifying marks: Az. 2,24.82h, Commander of Camps for Prisoners of War, Number 3142/42; Berlin-Schoneberg; 20.7.1942; 51, Badensche Strasse. This document is Exhibit Number USSR-343 (Document Number USSR-343). I shall not read it into the record. It resembles identically those which I have already read into the record. But it is characteristic of the extent to which the Hitlerite conspirators had abandoned the thesis that "a state can do everything which is necessary to hold prisoners of war in their own safekeeping, but it cannot do anything more." A regime based on hard labor, on an unending stream of insult and torture, drove Soviet people to manifestations of stark despair, such as attacks on camp guards who were armed to the teeth. We know of such truly heroic deeds. Testimonies of eyewitnesses are in our hands.
COL. POKROVSKY: I am submitting to you, as Exhibit Number USSR-314 (Document Number USSR-314), the personally written testimony of the witness, Lampe-you interrogated him a few days ago in this court-together with the testimony of the witness, Ribol-our Exhibit Number USSR-315 (Document Number USSR-315). I shall read out such passages of the testimony as appear on Page 348 of your document book. These witnesses reported that in the beginning of February 1945, in the extermination camp of Mauthausen, 800 Red Army prisoners of war who were interned there, had broken out of the fascist hell after first disarming the guards and piercing the electrified barbed wire. Lampe testifies how brutally the SS treated those whom they were able to recapture. I am quoting a few lines: "All those who returned to the camp were savagely tortured and then shot. I myself saw the escaped prisoners, who were being brought back to Block Number 20."-I wish to interpolate that Block 20 was the death block.-"They were beaten and the head of one of them was badly bleeding. They were followed by 10 SS men, among whom were three or four of ricers. They carried whips and were laughing loudly, giving the impression of pleasurably anticipating the tortures they were going to inflict upon the three unfortunate prisoners. The courage of the insurgents and the cruelty of the repression have left an undying impression on all the internees of Mauthausen." The fascist conspirators behaved with equal hatred toward all Soviet citizens. If any altercations ever arose among them, they would only be in connection with the methods of destruction to be inflicted on their victims. Some strove to kill off the prisoners immediately; others deemed it wiser to exploit their prisoners' blood and strength in the mills, factories, military workshops, and in the construction of military undertakings. Any long war is responsible for labor shortage in industry and agriculture. Fascist Germany solved this problem by importing white male and female slaves. The greatest number of them were prisoners of war.
COL. POKROVSKY: They were sent to heavy labor where masses perished from exhaustion, overwork, hunger, and savage treatment by the guards. I submit to the Tribunal Document Number 744-PS, and quote the following three paragraphs: "To carry out the augmented iron-steel industry program, the Fuehrer ordered on 7 July that a sufficient coal supply be guaranteed and that prisoners of war be utilized for this purpose." I am omitting several sentence from the documents dealing with the technicalities of this question and quote Point 2 of this directive: "2. All Soviet prisoners of war, captured since 5 July 1943, are to be sent to the OKW camps and from there directly, or by way of labor exchange, put at the disposal of the Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor, for use in the coal mining industry." The fourth point is of special interest. It contains a definite directive on how to convert all men between the ages of 16 and 55 into prisoners of war. I quote Point 4: "4. All male prisoners between the ages of 16 and 55, captured in battles with the partisans in the operational area of the Army, of the eastern commissariats, of the Government General, and of the Balkans, are to be regarded in the future as prisoners of war. The same applies to men in newly conquered districts of the East. They must be sent to the prisoner-of-war camps and then to work in Germany." The second document, Number 744-PS, issued by the Chief of the OKW on 8 July 1943, duplicates this directive. The document is signed by Keitel. There is a postscript to the text of the document which was signed by Keitel. It is addressed to all the higher authorities of the SS and is signed by Himmler. The text has already been read into the record on 20 December 1945; I shall therefore refer only to the contents. It concerns the transportation of children, old people, and of young women. Himmler indicates how and by what methods they should be sent to Germany through Sauckel's organization. In this case, too, Himmler, Keitel, and Sauckel act in perfect agreement, almost as a single entity.
COL. POKROVSKY: I consider Exhibit Number USSR-354 (Document Number USSR-354) to be of primary importance. It is a report on the prison camp in Minsk. The report was compiled in Rosenberg's office on 10 July 1941.
THE PRESIDENT: Has it been put in already?
GOL. POKROVSKY: This document has not yet been read into the record. Permit me, Your Honor, to read a few excerpts. I quote Page 183: "The prison camp in Minsk, covering a space about the size of the Wilhelmsplatz, accommodates about one hundred thousand prisoners of ever and forty thousand civilian prisoners. The prisoners, crowded together in this small space, can hardly move, and are therefore forced to relieve nature at the very place where they happen to be. The camp is guarded by a detail of soldiers on active duty, of company strength. Due to the small strength of the guard detail, the watch over the camp can only be accomplished by the application of brute force." I omit a paragraph and turn to the page which continues the original idea: " "The only possible language for a small guard, which remains on duty both day and night without being relieved, is the firearm, of which ruthless use is made." Next, the authors of this document complain about the impossibility of carrying out the selection of prisoners according to physical and racial classification for various forms of hard labor: "On the second day this selection of civilian prisoners was forbidden to the O.T., referring to an order of General Field Marshal Kluge, according to which he alone had the right to release civilian prisoners." I shall read into the record two documents demonstrating how the Hitlerites, in their hatred of the Soviet people, considered the regime of bestial cruelty and systematic insults which they had set up for the Soviet prisoners of war as being too mild, and demanded that it be made still more severe. On 29 January 1943 an order was issued on the "Rights of self-defense against the Prisoners of War," under the signature of the Chief of the OKH. This order bears the number 3868/42, and is registered by the United States Delegation as Document Number 696-PS. We submit it to the Tribunal as ExhibitNumberUSSR-355, since it has not been read into the record. I shall read a few short extracts from this document.
GOL. POKROVSKY: You will find the passage quoted on Page 185 of your document book. It starts as follows: "The military organizations and the organizations of the National Socialist Party have, on numerous occasions, raised the question of the treatment of the prisoners of war, and they are of the opinion that the punishments provided for by the 1929 Agreement (H. Dv. 38/2) are inadequate." His document explains that the previous agreement regarding the treatment of all prisoners of war, with the exception of Soviet nationals, remains in force. The Order Number 389/42-S issued by the OKW Section for Prisoners-of-War Affairs, determines the treatment of the latter. This order was issued on 24 March 1942. me second document is the circular of the Nazi Party bureau, submitted as Order Number 12/43-S. This circular, signed by Bormann, was Issued by the chief of the Party bureau, at the Fuehrer's main headquarters on 12 February 1943. me circular was sent out by the Reichsfuehrer to the Gauleiter and to the commanding officers of military units. It speaks of Secret Order Number 3868/42-S of the Chief of the General Staff It is therefore proved once more, and proved beyond any manner of doubt, that the leaders of the Nazi Party and the military command bear equal responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated on the Soviet prisoners of war. The Navy regulations regarding prisoners of war remain in force for all but Soviet prisoners, and where the Soviet prisoners were concerned the "regulations of the OKW" which I have already mentioned, "remain in force." Thus, absolute criminal agreement between the Party leaders and the OKW can be considered as existing as I already have shown to the Tribunal. I stress the circumstance and PI would remind you that all this happened in the country whose representative had declared as far back as 1902: "The only purpose in capturing prisoners of war is to prevent their further participation in the war. Although prisoners of war lose their freedom, they do not lose their rights.
GOL. POKROVSKY: In other words, captivity is not an act of mercy on the part of the conqueror. It is the right of the disarmed soldier."
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Pokrovsky, we have had that document read to us more than once.
COL. POKROVSKY: I am not rereading it. I am merely recalling its contents.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you must give the Tribunal credit for some recollection. As I say, that document has been read more than once before.