The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression
Volume I Chapter III
The First Indictment
(Part 4 of 6)


Such murders and ill-treatments included:

(a) Murders and ill-treatments at concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the Germans in the Eastern Countries and in Eastern Germany including those set up at Maidanek and Auschwitz.

The said murders and ill-treatments were carried out by divers means including all those set out above, as follows:

About 1,500,000 persons were exterminated in Maidanek and about 4,000,000 persons were exterminated in Auschwitz, among whom were citizens of Poland, the USSR, the United States of America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France and other countries.

In the Lwow region and in the city of Lwow the Germans exterminated about 700,000 Soviet people, including 70 persons in the field of the arts, science and technology, and also citizens of the US A., Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Holland, brought to this region from other concentration camps.

In the Jewish ghetto from September 7th, 1941, to July 6th, 1943, over 133,000 persons were tortured and shot.

Mass shooting of the population occurred in the suburbs of the city and in the Livenitz forest.

In the Ganov camp 200,000 peaceful citizens were exterminated.

[Page 36]

The most refined methods of cruelty were employed in this extermination, such as disembowelling and the freezing of human beings in tubs of water. Mass shootings took place to the accompaniment of the music of an orchestra recruited from the persons interned.

Beginning with June, 1943, the Germans carried out measures to hide the evidence of their crimes. They exhumed and burned corpses, and they crushed the bones with machines and used them for fertilizer.

At the beginning of 1944 in the Ozarichi region of the Bielorussian SSR., before liberation by the Red Army, the Germans established three concentration camps without shelters, to which they committed tens of thousands of persons from the neighboring territories. They brought many people to these camps from typhus hospitals intentionally, for the purpose of infecting the other persons interned and for spreading the disease in territories from which the Germans were being driven by the Red Army. In these camps there were many murders and crimes.

In the Esthonian SSR. they shot tens of thousands of persons and in one day alone, 19th September 1944, in Camp Kloga, the Germans shot 2,000 peaceful citizens. They burned the bodies on bonfires.

In the Lithuanian SSR. there were mass killings of Soviet citizens, namely: in Panerai at least 100,000; in Kaunas more than 70,000; in Alitus about 60,000; at Prenai more than 3,000; in Villiampol about 8,000; in Mariampol about 7,000; in Trakai and neighbouring towns 37,640.

In the Latvian SSR. 577,000 persons were murdered.

As a result of the whole system of internal order maintained in all camps, the interned persons were doomed to die.

In a secret instruction entitled "the internal regime in concentration camps", signed personally by Himmler in 1941 severe measures of punishment were set forth for the internees. Masses of prisoners of war were shot, or died from the cold and torture.

(b) Murders and ill-treatments at places in the Eastern Countries and in the Soviet Union, other than in the camps referred to in (a) above, included, on various dates during the occupation by the German Armed Forces:

The destruction in the Smolenck region of over 135,000 Soviet citizens.

Among these, near the village of Kholmetz of the Sychev region, when the military authorities were required to remove the mines from an area, on the order of the Commander of the 101st German Infantry Division, Major-General Fisler, the German [Page 37]

soldiers gathered the inhabitants of the village of Kholmetz and forced them to remove mines from the road. All of these people lost their lives as a result of exploding mines.

In the Leningrad region there were shot and tortured over 172,000 persons, including over 20,000 persons who were killed in the city of Leningrad by the barbarous artillery barrage and the bombings.

In the Stavropol region in an anti-tank trench close to the station of Mineralny Vody, and in other cities, tens of thousands of persons were exterminated.

In Pyatigorsk many were subjected to torture and criminal treatment, including suspension from the ceiling and other methods. Many of the victims of these tortures were then shot.

In Krasnodar some 6,700 civilians were murdered by poison gas in gas vans, or were shot and tortured.

In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were killed and tortured. After the Germans were expelled from Stalingrad, more than a thousand mutilated bodies of local inhabitants were found with marks of torture. One hundred and thirty-nine women ad their arms painfully bent backward and held by wires. From some their breasts had been cut off and their ears, fingers and toes had been amputated. The bodies bore the marks of burns. On the bodies of the men the five pointed star was burned with an iron or cut with a knife. Some were disembowelled.

In Orel over 5,000 persons were murdered.

In Novgorod and in the Novgorod region many thousands of Soviet citizens were killed by shooting, starvation and torture. In Minsk tens of thousands of citizens were similarly killed.

In the Crimea peaceful citizens were gathered on barges, taken out to sea and drowned, over 144,000 persons being exterminated in this manner.

In the Soviet Ukraine there were monstrous criminal acts of the Nazi conspirators. In Babi Yar, near Kiev, they shot over 100,000 men, women, children and old people. In this city in January, 1941, after the explosion in German Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street the Germans arrested as hostages 1,250 persons -- old men, minors, women with nursing infants. In Kiev they killed over 195,000 persons.

In Rovno and the Rovno region they killed and tortured over 100,000 peaceful citizens.

In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot or threw alive into a great ravine 11,000 women, old men and children.

[Page 38]

In Kamenetz-Podolsk Region 31,000 Jews were shot and exterminated, including 13,000 persons brought there from Hungary.

In the Odessa Region at least 200,000 Soviet citizens were killed.

In Kharkov about 195,000 persons were either tortured to death, shot or gassed in gas vans.

In Gomel the Germans rounded up the population in prison, and tortured and tormented them, and then took them to the centre of the city and shot them in public.

In the city of Lyda in the Grodenen region on 8th May, 1942, 5,670 persons were completely undressed, driven into pens in groups of 100 and then shot by machine guns. Many were thrown in the graves while they were still alive.

Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly destroyed even children. They killed them with their parents, in groups and alone. They killed them in children's homes and hospitals, burying the living in the graves, throwing them into flames, stabbing them with bayonets, poisoning them, conducting experiments upon them, extracting their blood for the use of the German Army, throwing them into prison an Gestapo torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children died from hunger, torture and epidemic diseases.

From 6th September 1942 to 24th November 1942, in the region of Brest, Pinsk, Kobren, Dyvina, Malority and Berezy- Kartuzsky about 400 children were shot by German punitive units.

In the Yanov camp in the city of Lwow the Germans killed 8,000 children in two months.

In the resort of Tiberda the Germans annihilated 500 children suffering from tuberculosis of the bone, who were in the sanatorium for the cure.

On the territory of the Latvian SSR. the German usurpers killed thousands of children, which they had brought there with their parents from the Bielorussian SSR., and from the Kalinin, Kaluga and other regions of the R.S.F.S.R.

In Czechoslovakia as a result of torture, beating, hanging, and shootings, there were annihilated in Gestapo prisons in Brno, Seim and other places over 20,000 persons. Moreover many thousands of internees were subjected to criminal treatment, beatings and torture.

Both before the war, as well as during the war, thousands of Czech patriots, in particular catholics and protestants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., were arrested as hostages and imprisoned. A large number of these hostages were killed by the Germans. [Page 39]

In Greece in October, 1941, the male populations between 16 and 60 years of age of the Greek villages Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia Mesovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion and Kato- Kerzilion were shotin all 416 persons.

In Yugoslavia many thousands of civilians were murdered. Other examples are given under paragraph (D), "Killing of Hostages", below.

B) DEPORTATION FOR SLAVE LABOUR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF AND IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

During the whole period of the occupation by Germany of both the Western and the Eastern Countries it was the policy of the German Government and of the German High Command to deport able bodied citizens from such occupied countries to Germany and to other occupied countries for the purpose of slave labour upon defence works, in factories and in other tasks connected with the German War effort.

In pursuance of such policy there were mass deportations from all the Western and Eastern countries for such purposes during the whole period of the occupation.

Such deportations were contrary to international Conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars of deportations, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows:

1. From the Western Countries:

From France the following deportations of persons for political and racial reasons took place each of which consisted of from 1,500-2,500 deportees:

1940 3 Transports
1941 14 Transports
1942 104 Transports
1943 257 Transports
1944 326 Transports

Such deportees were subjected to the most barbarous conditions of overcrowding; they were provided with wholly insufficient clothing and were given little or no food for several days.

The conditions of transport were such that many deportees died in the course of the voyage, for example:

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In one of the wagons of the train which left Compiegne for Buchenwald, on 17th September 1943, 80 men died out of 130;

On 4th June, 1944, 484 bodies were taken out of the train at Sarrebourg;

In a train which left Compiegne on 2nd July 1944, for Dachau, more than 600 dead were found on arrival, i.e., one- third of the total number;

In a train which left Compiegne on the 16th January 1944, for Buchenwald more than 100 men were confined in each wagon, the dead and the wounded being heaped in the last wagon during the voyage;

In April, 1945, of 12,000 internees evacuated from Buchenwald, 4,000 only were still alive when the marching column arrived near Regensburg.

During the German occupation of Denmark, 5,200 Danish subjects were deported to Germany and there imprisoned in concentration camps and other places.

In 1942 and thereafter 6,000 nationals of Luxembourg were departed from their country under deplorable conditions as a result of which many of them perished.

From Belgium between 1940 and 1941 at least 190,000 civilians were deported to Germany and used as slave labour. Such deportees were subjected to ill-treatment and many of them were compelled to work in armament factories.

From Holland, between 1940 and 1944 nearly half a million civilians were deported to Germany and to other occupied countries.

2. From the Eastern Countries:

The German occupying authorities deported from the Soviet Union to slavery about 4,978,000 Soviet citizens.

750,000 Czechoslovakian citizens were taken away for forced labor outside the Czechoslovak frontiers in the interior of the German war machine.

On June 4,1941, in the city of Zagreb (Yugoslavia) a meeting of German representatives was called with the Councillor Von Troll presiding. The purpose was to set up the means of deporting the Yugoslav population from Slovenia. Tens of thousands of persons were deported in carrying out this plan. [Page 41]

(C) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR, AND OF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE COUNTRIES WITH WHOM GERMANY WAS AT WAR, AND OF PERSONS ON THE HIGH SEAS

The Defendants murdered and ill-treated prisoners of war by denying them adequate food, shelter, clothing and medical care and attention; by forcing them to labor in inhumane conditions; by torturing them and subjecting them to inhuman indignities and by killing them. The German Government and the German High Command imprisoned prisoners of war in various concentration camps, where they were killed and subjected to inhuman treatment by the various methods set forth in paragraph VIII (A). Members of the armed forces of the countries with whom Germany was at war were frequently murdered while in the act of surrendering. These murders and ill-treatment were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, and to Articles 2, 3, 4 and 6 of the Prisoners of War Convention (Geneva 1929) the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.


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