dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: They were carried out in co-operation with the army commanders with the full knowledge of Keitel and Jodl and, indeed, because every soldier fighting in the East must have known about them, with the knowledge also of every member of the Government and of the commanders of its Armed Forces. "Our task"-so states the report of the Task Force A-"was hurriedly to establish personal contact with the commanding generals of the armies and with the commanding general of the rear army. It may be stressed from the beginning that co-operation with the Armed Forces was generally good. In some cases, for instance, with Panzer Group 4 under Generaloberst Hoeppner, it was very close, almost cordial" (Document Number L-180). The German generals were "almost cordial" as they weltered in the blood of hundreds of thousands of helpless, innocent men, women, and children. Perhaps they enjoyed this work-in the same way as the members of the Einsatzkommandos themselves apparently enjoyed it. "It should be mentioned"-states- the report-"that the assigned leaders of the Waffen-SS and of the Order Police, as far as they are reserves, have declared their wish to stay on with the Security Police and the SD" (document Number L-180). Again and again, in the reports of the Einsatzkommandos, progress, co-operation with the Army authorities is emphasized. After describing how thousands of Lithuanian Jews had been made harmless, during a particular pogrom in June, it is stated: "These selfcleansing actions went smoothly because the Army authorities who showed full understanding for this procedure were informed of them." Nor was it only cordiality and understanding that the Army authorities showed. In some cases they themselves took the initiative. After describing the murder of inmates of lunatic asylums that had fallen into their hands, the Einsatzkommando report continues: "Sometimes authorities of the Armed Forces asked us to clear out in a similar way other institutions which were wanted as billets.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: However, as the interests of the Security Police did not require any intervention, it was left to the authorities of the Armed Forces to take the necessary action with their own forces." And again: "The advance of the forces of Special Task Group A which were intended to be used for Leningrad was effected in agreement with and on the express wish of Panzer Group 4." How can operations of this kind, extending for months and years over vast territories, carried out with the co-operation of the Armed Forces as they advanced and' in the rear areas that they administered, have remained unknown to the leaders in Germany? Even their own commissioners in the occupied territories protested. In October 1941 the Commissioner for White Ruthenia was forwarding to the Reich Commissioner for Eastern Territories at Riga a report on the operations in his district. Some idea of the horror of those operations can be seen from that report. I quote: "Regardless of the fact that the Jewish people, among whom were also tradesmen, were mistreated in a terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Ruthenian people, the White Ruthenians themselves were also worked over with rubber clubs and rifle butts. . . the whole picture was generally more than ghastly.... I was not present at the shooting before the town. Therefore I cannot make a statement on its brutality. But it should suffice if I point out that persons shot have worked themselves out of their graves some time after they had been covered" (Document Number 1104-PS). But such protests of this kind were of no avail; the slaughter continued with unabated ghastliness. In February 1942, in Heydrich's activity and situation report on the Einsatzkommandos in the U.S.S.R. of which a copy was addressed to Kaltenbrunner personally, it was stated: "We are aiming at cleansing the Eastern countries completely of Jews.... Estonia has already been cleared of Jews. "In Latvia the number of Jews in Riga, of which there were 29,500, has now been reduced to 2,500" (Document Number 3876-PS).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: By June 1943 the Commissioner for White Ruthenia was again protesting. After referring to 4,500 enemy dead, he says: "The political effect of this large-scale operation upon the peaceful population is simply dreadful in view of the many shootings of women and children." The Reich Commissar for Eastern Territories, forwarding that protest to Rosenberg, the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories in Berlin, added: "The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussions. However, it appears hardly believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the Commissioner General.... What is Katyn against this? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other side and exploited by them. Most likely such propaganda would have no effect if only because people who read and heard about it simply would not be ready to believe it" (Document Number R-135). How true that comment is. Are we ready even now to believe it? Describing the difficulty of distinguishing between friend and foe, he says: "Nevertheless, it should be possible to avoid atrocities and to bury those who have been liquidated. To lock men, women, and children into barns and set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable method of combating bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation most severely." Of these Jews murdered in White Ruthenia, over 11,000 were slaughtered in the district of Libau, and 7,000 of them had been killed in the naval port itself (Documents Number L-180, D-841). How can any of these defendants plead ignorance of these things? When Himmler was speaking of these actions quite openly amongst his SS generals and all the officers of his SS divisions in April 1943, he told them: "Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology: it is a matter of cleanliness.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: In just the same way, anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness which now will soon have been dealt with We shall spoon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished off within the whole of Germany" (Document Number 1919-PS). And in October of that year: "Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying, side by side, or 500, or 1,000." Meanwhile, the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz and the other extermination centers was becoming a State industry with byproducts. Bales of hair, some of it, as you will remember, still plaited as it has been shorn off the girls' heads, tons of clothing, toys, spectacles, and other articles went back to the Reich to stuff the chairs and clothe the people of the Nazi State. The gold from their victims' teeth, 72 transports full, went to fill the coffers of Funk's Reichsbank. On occasion, even the bodies of their victims were used to make good the wartime shortage of soap (Document Number USSR-272). The victims came from all over Europe. Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Holland, Soviet Russia, France, Belgium, Poland, and Greece were being herded together to be deported to the extermination centers or to be slaughtered on the spot. In April 1943, Hitler and Ribbentrop were pressing the Regent Horthy to take action against the Jews in Hungary. Horthy asked: "What should he do with the Jews now that he had deprived them of almost all possibilities of livelihood? He could not kill them off. The Reich Foreign Minister declared that the Jews must be either exterminated or taken to concentration camps. There was no other possibility" (Document Number D-736). Hitler explained: "In Poland the state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared up. If the Jews there did not want to work, they were shot. If they could not work they had to succumb. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: This was not cruel if one remembered that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer, have to be killed so that no harm is caused by them." In September 1942, Ribbentrop's State Secretary, Luther, was writing: "The Reich Foreign Minister has instructed me today by telephone to hasten as much as possible the evacuation of the Jews from different countries.... After a short lecture on the evacuation now in progress in Slovakia, Croatia' Romania, and the occupied territories, the Reich Foreign Minister has ordered that we are to approach the Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Danish Governments with the goal of getting evacuation started in those countries" (Document Number 3688-PS). By the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from Hungary alone had been executed in Auschwitz. In the German Embassy in Bucharest the files contained a memorandum: ". . . 110,000 Jews are being evacuated from Bukovina and Bessarabia into two forests in the area of the river Bug.... The purpose of the action is the liquidation of these Jews." (Document Number 3319-PS) , Day by day, over years, women were holding their children in their arms and pointing to the sky while they waited to take their place in blood-soaked, communal graves. Twelve million men, women, and children have died thus, murdered in cold blood; millions upon millions more today mourn their fathers and mothers, their husbands, their wives, and their children. What right has any man to mercy who has played a part-however indirectly-in such a crime? Let Grabe speak again of Dubno (Document Number 2992-PS): "On 5 October 1943 when I visited the building office at Dubno my foreman. . . told me that in the vicinity of the site, Jews from Dubno had been shot in three large pits, each about 30 meters long and 3 meters deep. About 1,500 persons had been killed daily. All of the 5,000 Jews who had still been living in Dubno before the action were to be liquidated. As the shooting had taken place in his presence,-he was still much upset.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: "Thereupon I drove to the site, accompanied by my foreman, and saw near it great mounds of earth, about 30 meters long and 2 meters high. Several trucks stood in front of the mounds. Armed Ukrainian militia drove the people off the trucks under the supervision of an SS man. The militia men acted as guards on the trucks and drove them to and from the pit. All these people had the regulation yellow patches on the front and back of their clothes and thus could be recognized as Jews. "My foreman and I went directly to the pits. Nobody bothered us. Now I heard rifle shots in quick succession from behind one of the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks-men, women, and children of all ages-had to undress upon the orders of an SS man, who carried a riding or dog whip. They had to put down their clothes in fixed places, sorted according to shoes, top clothing, and underclothing. I saw a heap of shoes of about 800 to 1,000 pairs, great piles of under linen and clothing. Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells, and waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the 15 minutes that I stood near I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight persons, a man and a woman both about 50 with their children of about 1, 8, and 10, and two grown-up daughters of about 20 to 24. An old woman with snow-white hair was holding the one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The couple were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head, and seemed to explain something to him. At that moment the SS man at the pit shouted something to his comrade. The latter counted off about 20 persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound. Among them was the family which I have mentioned.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: I well remember a girl, slim and with black hair, who as she passed close to me, pointed to herself and said, '23'. I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people shot were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds full. I estimated that it already contained about 1,000 people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an SS man, who sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigaret. The people, completely naked, went down some steps which were cut in the clay wall of the pit and clambered over the heads of the people lying there, to the place to which the SS man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or injured people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or the heads lying motionless on top of the bodies which lay before them. Blood was running away from their necks. I was surprised that I was not ordered away but I saw that there were two or three guards in uniform nearby. The next batch was approaching already. They went down into the pit, lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot. When I walked back round the mound I noticed another truck load of people which had just arrived. This time it included sick and infirm persons. An old, very thin woman with terribly thin legs was undressed by others who were already naked, while two people held her up. The woman appeared to be paralyzed. The naked people carried the woman around the mound. I left with my foreman and drove in my car back to Dubno.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: "On the morning of the next day, when I again visited the site, I saw about 30 naked people lying near the pit-about 30 to 50 meters away from it. Some of them were still alive; they looked straight in front of them with a fixed stare and seemed to notice neither the chilliness of the morning nor the workers of my firm who stood around. A girl of about 20 spoke to me and asked me to give her clothes and help her escape. At that moment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an SS detail I moved away to my site. Ten minutes later we heard shots from the vicinity of the pit. The Jews still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into the pit, then they had themselves to lie down in this to 'be shot in the neck." That no man in that dock can have remained ignorant of the horrors perpetrated to support the Nazi war machine and the policy of genocide becomes the more clear when you consider the evidence with regard to another great crime little heard of during the course of this Trial but which, as clearly as any other, illustrates the wickedness of These men and of their regime-the murder of some 275,000 persons by so-called mercy killing. To what base uses that beautiful word was put! Sometime in the summer of 1940 Hitler secretly ordered the murder of ill and aged people in Germany who were no longer of productive value for the German war machine. Frick, more than any other man in Germany, was responsible for what took place as a result of that decree. Of his knowledge and of The knowledge of a great many people in Germany there is abundant evidence. In July 1940 Bishop Wurm was writing to Frick (Document Number M-152): , "For some months past, insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic patients of state and private medical establishments have been transferred to another institution on the orders of the Reich Defense Council. Their relatives, even when the patient was kept at their cost, are not informed of the transfer until after it has taken place.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Mostly they are informed a few weeks after that the patient concerned has died of an illness send that owing to the danger of infection the body has had to be cremated. At a superficial estimate Several hundred patients of an institution in Wurttemberg alone must have met their death in this way. . . "Owing to numerous inquiries from town and country and from the most variegated circles, I consider it my duty to point out to the Reich Government that this fact is causing a particular stir in our small province.... Transports of sick people who are unloaded at the small railway station of Marbach on the Lahn, the buses with opaque windows which bring sick persons from more distant railway stations or directly from the institutions, the smoke which rises from the crematorium and which can be noticed even from a considerable distance . . . all this gives rise to speculation the more so as no one is allowed into the castle....Everybody is convinced that the causes of death which are published officially are selected at random. When, to crown everything, regret is expressed in the obituary notice that all endeavors to preserve the patient's life were in vain, this is felt as a mockery. But it is above all the mysteriousness which gives rise to the Thought that something is happening which is contrary to justice and ethics and cannot therefore be openly defended by the Government like other necessary and stringent war measures.... This point is continually stressed by simple people as well as in the numerous oral and written statements which come to us..." Frick's ears were deaf to pleas for justice and ethics such as that. A year later, in August 1941, the Bishop of Limburg wrote to the Reich Ministries of the Interior, of Justice, and Church Affairs (Document Number 615-PS): "About 8 kilometers from Limburg in the; little town of Hadamar, on a hill overlooking the town there is an institution which had formerly served various purposes arid of late has been used as a nursing home.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: This institution was renovated and furnished as a place in which, by consensus of opinion, the above-mentioned euthanasia had been systematically practiced for months, approximately since February 1941. The fact has become known beyond the administrative district of Wiesbaden.... "Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims. School children of the, vicinity know this vehicle and say: 'There comes the murder box again.' After the arrival of these vehicles citizens of Hadamar watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured with the constant thought of the misery of the victims, especially when repulsive odors annoy them.... "The eject of the principles at work here are that children call each other names and say: 'You are crazy, you will be sent to the baking ovens in Hadamar.' Those who do not want to marry or find no opportunity say: 'Marry, never! Bring children into the world so that they can be put into the pressure steamer!' You hear old folks say: 'Do not send me to a state hospital. After the feeble minded have been finished off the next useless eaters whose turn it will be are the old people . . .' "Officials of the Secret State Police, it is said, are trying to suppress discussion of the Hadamar occurrences by means of severe threats. In the interests of public peace this may be well intended, but the knowledge and the conviction and the indignation of the population cannot be changed by it. The conviction will be increased with the bitter realization that discussion is prohibited with threats, but that the actions themselves are not prosecuted under penal law. Facta loqunutur." If the common people of Germany knew and were complaining of these relatively insignificant murders, when the Ministries of Justice, of the Interior, and of Church Affairs were receiving protests from the Bishop of two districts far removed from each other, on what was common knowledge in their dioceses, how much greater were the security problems of the Einsatzkommandos in the East.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: In May 1942 an SS leader reporting to Berlin on a tour of inspection of the progress of the extermination drive wrote of the gas vans: "By having small shutters introduced, one on each side of the smaller van and two on each side of the bigger van> such as one sees often on peasants' houses in the country, I have had the vehicles in Group D disguised to look like vans for living in. The cars were so well known that not only the authorities but also the civilian population allude to it as the 'Death Car' as soon as one of these vehicles appears. In my opinion even with camouflage it cannot be kept secret for any length of time" (Document Number 501-PS). Can these defendants have remained in ignorance? What peculiar dispensation of Providence was there that protected them from knowledge of these matters, matters which were their concern? This slaughter of the aged and imbeciles-the subject of gossip throughout Germany and of articles in the world press-must have been known to every one of these men. How much more then must they have known of the concentration camps which, during those years, covered like a rash the whole of Germany and the occupied territories. If they could only acquiesce in the mercy killings, with what favor they must have regarded the extermination of the Jews. In 1939 there had been six main concentration camps-Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Ravensbruck. Frick's budget for the Ministry of the Interior for that year includes a sum of RM 21,155,000 for armed SS and concentration camps-no less than a fifth of the total budget (Document Number 2873-PS). By April 1942 there had been added to those six camps nine more and more were to follow afterward. But these were only the core of the system. Like planets, each of them had its attendant satellites. Ziereis has given you some idea of the extent of this system (Document Number D-626).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: He describes the subsidiary camps that were based on Mauthausen alone: 33 of them he mentioned by name, giving the numbers of prisoners at each-a total of over 102,000. Besides those 33, there were another 45, also all under the authority of the Mauthausen commandant. You have seen the map of Europe showing the location of as many of these main subsidiary concentration camps as are known. Over 300 of them are marked on that map (Document Number F-321). By August 1944 there was a total of 1,136,000 prisoners, which included 90,000 from Hungary, 60,000 from the police prison and ghetto of Litzmannstadt, 15,000 Poles from the Government General, 10,000 convicts from Eastern Territories, 17,000 former Polish officers, 400,000 Poles from Warsaw and between 15,000-20,000 continually arriving from France (Document Number 1166-PS). These were only the physically fit and therefore permanent residents-permanent, at least until through physical exhaustion their productive capacity was no longer worth the nuisance that their continued existence meant. Then they took their place in the daily detail for the gas chambers. Day after day the chimneys of the crematoria belched their nauseating stench over the countryside. When the Bishop of Limburg could write to Frick of the repulsive odors from the comparatively insignificant ovens at Hadamar, can we doubt the evidence of Hoess that I mentioned? '`The foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz." Day after day trainloads of victims traveled over the railroads of the whole Reich on their way to the extermination centers or their own slavery. Many arrived dying and even dead through the appalling conditions under which they journeyed. An official at the railway station at Essen has described the arrival of workers from Poland, Galicia, and the Ukraine: "They came in goods wagons in which potatoes, building materials, and also cattle had been transported.