-97-

... KILL PEOPLE WITH POISONED SOFT DRINKS

19 Feb. 46

I omit the next three paragraphs and continue my quotation:

"In Fort Number 9 people of different nationalities were shot:

Russians, Ukrainians: Bielorussians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Jews. The following people were shot in this fort: a deputy to the Supreme Soviet Council of the U.S.S.R., Bydzhinskiene; a deputy to the Supreme Soviet Council of the Lithuanian S.S.R., Zhibertas; and others. Besides Soviet citizens the Hitlerites exterminated French, Austrian, and Czechoslovak citizens in Fort Number 9.

"A former supervisor of Fort Number 9, the witness Naudju nas, testified:

"'The first group of foreigners, numbering 4,000, arrived at the fort in December 1941. I talked to one of the women. who said that they were being transported to Russia, allegedly for work. On 10 December 1941 the extermination of foreigners began. They were ordered to leave the fort in groups of 100 people, allegedly for inoculations. Those who left for inoculations did not return. All 4,000 foreigners were shot. On 15 December 1941 another group arrived, numbering approximately 3,000 persons, which was also exterminated.' "

I omit the next paragraph on this page, and nearly the whole of the following page, and quote only the conclusive data:

"The Investigation Commission ascertained that the Hitlerites had exterminated in Fort Number 9 over 70,000 peaceful Inhabitants."

In numerous cases the German fascists used methods full of cruel cunning for the mass extermination of peaceful Soviet citizens. In order to prove this statement, I refer to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Stavropol region, w hiCh has a ready een submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-1 (Document Number USSR-I). The Tribunal will find this excerpt on Page 268 of the Document Book; I quote one paragraph-the second paragraph, of the text:

"It is established that before retreating from the city of Geozgievsk on 9 and 10 January of this year, by order of the chief physician of the German hospitals in the city, Baron Von Heiman, the German soldiers sold alcohol and soda water at the city market, which proved to be methylated spirit and oxalic acid. The result consisted in mass poisoning of the inhabitants of this town."

Among the crimes perpetrated by the German fascists on Soviet territory I must mention especially the treatment to which they subjected the inhabitants of Leningrad. I have already mentioned this in speaking of the Leningrad children yesterday.

IMT VII

570


-98-

... SHOOT 135,000 PEOPLE IN SMOLENSK AND BURY THEM KATYN-STYLE

15 Feb. 41

Le Court was in no wayan exception, and in confirmation of this I shall now refer briefly to the verdict of the trial held in the town of Smolensk by the district military tribunal against a group of former members of the German Army who were brought to justice for committing atrocities against peaceful citizens and prisoners of war in the town of Smolensk. This document was submitted to the Tribunal by my colleague, Colonel Pokrovsky, as Exhibit Number USSR-87 (Document Number USSR-87), and joined to the record of the present Trial. The Tribunal will find this document on Page 71 of the document book.

I omit all the general part of the verdict; and beg to be allowed to draw the attention of the Tribunal to that part of the verdict which is in the ninth paragraph on Page 71 of the document book, which says that in 80 graves alone, which were opened up and examined by legal-medical exp erts in the town of Smolensk and in the district of Smolensk, over 135,000 corpses of Soviet citizens ­ women, children, and men of various ages - were discovered.

I skip the second page of the verdict and come to that part of the document which gives a description of the criminal deeds of individual defendants brought to trial under these charges. I shall not quote data regarding all 10 defendants, but only 2 or 3 of them.

'The Tribunal will find this part on Page 73 of the document book.

This is the sixth paragraph of the text. I quote:

"Hirschfeld was interpreter for the German Military Command in the District Kommandantur of Smolensk. He personally beat and seized for treason perfectly innocent Soviet citizens, without consideration for sex and age, and forced them to make false statements. On receiving these false statements forced from them by beatings, the arrested persons were shot by the Kommandantur troops. Hirschfeld participated personally in the annihilation of Soviet citizens in Smolensk in May 1943, by means of asphyxiation through carbon monoxide in gas vans. In January and February 1943, he participated in punitive expeditions against guerrillas and against peaceful Soviet citizens in the district of Newel­Uswjati. While he was commanding the German punitive unit, he committed, together with his soldiers, acts of violence against the peaceful population."

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, in the Tribunal's translation into English, we have missing pages from 34 up to 45. Do you think that those pages could be found? On our pages - I think your pagination is different - but the document that you are now referring to - begins on page 34 of our translation, and the translation then skips to Page 45.

 

IMT VII

465

-99-

…SHOOT 200,000 PEOPLE IN THE LISENITZ FOREST
19 Feb. 46
and defecations, two symptoms which had formerly been noticed, were no longer observed.
Today I will proceed to Group B, whence I shall send a further report.

Dr. Becker, Untersturmführer“

The names have already been mentioned here of the camps of Maidenek and Auschwitz with their gas-chambers, in which over 5,500,000 completely innocent people, citizens of Poland, Czechoslovakia, U.S.S.R., U.S.A., Great Britain, France, and other democratic countries were killed. I must name the concentration camps of Smolensk, Stravropol, Kharkhov, Kiev, Lvov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel, Rovno, Dniepropetrovsk, Odessa, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Gomel, Kerch, of the Stalingrad region, of Kaunas, Riga, Mariampol (Lithuania) of Kloga (Estonian) and many others, in which hundreds of thousands of Soviet nationals belonging to the civilian population, as well as soldiers and officers of the Red Army, were tortured to death by the Hitlerites.

The Germans also carried out mass shootings of Soviet citizens in the Lisenitz Forest, which is on the outskirts of Lvov in the direction of Tarnopol. It was to this forest that the Germans daily drove, or brought in motor vehicles, large parties of Soviet prisoners of war from the Citadel camp, internees from the Yanov camp and from the Lvov prison, as well as peaceful Soviet citizens who had been seized on the squares and streets of Lvov in the course of numerous roundups. Investigations made by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union established the fact that the Germans shot over 200,000 people in the Lisenitz Forest.

These mass murders, this regime of tyranny and terror, were fully approved by the Defendant Rosenberg who declared in his speech at the meeting of the German Labor Front in November 1942:

“Apparently, if we are to subjugate all these peoples” – that is, peoples inhabiting the territory of the U.S.S.R. – “then arbitrary rule and tyranny will be an extremely suitable form of government.”

Later, when the Red Army began to clear out the Germano-fascist hordes from the Soviet territory they had termporarily occupied and when the Soviet authorities began to discover the abominable crimes perpetrated by the fascist monsters and to find numerous graves of Soviet citizens, soldiers, and officers tortured to death by the fascists, the German Command took urgent measures to conceal and destroy all traces of their crimes. For this purpose, the German Command organized everywhere exhumations of corpses from their graves and their cremation. A special order of an Obersturmfuhrer, dated “Rovno, 3 August 1943-IUAI-No. 35/43c”,

IMT
173

-100-

.. USING THE SAME METHODS OF CONCEALMENT THEY USED AT KATYN

19 Feb. 46

"At a distance of 450 meters from the former hamlet of Petrashkevichi eight ditch graves have been discovered. Their size is 21 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 5 meters deep. Before every ditch grave there are enormous piles of ashes, remainders of the burned corpses.

I omit the next page and. in proof of this same circumstances I am now referring to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission concerning the crimes of the German fascist invaders in the Lvov region. This document has already been submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-6. I quote a very short excerpt from this document. The part which I will quote will be found by the members of the Tribunal on Page 164, on the reverse side, second column of the text, Paragraph 5:

"Upon the order of Reich Minister Himmler and of Major General of Police Katzmann, special measures for exhuming and burning the corpses of murdered, peaceful citizens, Soviet prisoners of war, and citizens of foreign countries were carried out in June 1943. In Lvov the Germans created a special Sonderkommando Number 1005 composed of 126 men. The chief of this Kommando was Hauptsturmbannführer Scherlack; his assistant, Hauptsturmbannführer Rauch. The duty of this Sonderkommando was to exhume and burn the corpses of the civilians and prisoners of war who had been liquidated by the Germans."

I dwell on this extract, and I would beg the Tribunal to remember this. number, "Sonderkommando Number 1005." This Kommando was the prototype of similar Sonderkommandos created by the Germans. Later, the Sonderkommandos created for this task received the numbers of 1005-A, 1005-B, et cetera.

I terminate the quotation with the conclusion of the medical- legal experts. I quote the last paragraph on Page 340 of the text:

"Thus the Hitlerite murderers adopted in the territory of the Lvov region the same methods for concealing their crimes which they employed earlier in connection with the murder of the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.

" The expert commission ascertained full similarity of method in camouftagmg the graves m Lissenitzach Forest with those used to camouflage the graves of the Polish officers killed by the Germans at Katyn.

'To extend the experiments in exterminating people, cremating corpses, and camouflaging the crimes, the Germans set up in Lvov, in the Yanov Camp, a special school for the preparation of qualified cadre. The cornmandants of the camps of Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, and other cities attended the school. The chief of the Sonderkommando Number 1005,

IMT VII

592