Wilhelm Metzick, from Altona, Hamburg, cites the following case:
"When on 23 June we entered Russia we came to a small place near Beltsa. guns five Russian prisoners in the back." of the Red Army, the soldier of Company 2 of the 3rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, Wolfgang Scharte, of Gerhardtshagen, near Braunschweig, testified:
"One day before the beginning of our campaign against the Soviet Union the officers told us the following: if you happen to meet Russian Commissars, who can be recognized by the Soviet star on their sleeve, and Russian women in uniform, they must be immediately shot. Anyone who does not do so and fails to carry out this order will be held responsible and punished. On 29 June 1941 I myself saw how commanders of the German Army shot wounded Red Army men who were lying on a field of grain near the town of Dubno. were dead. German officers stood nearby and laughed."
Joseph Berdsen of Obernausen, a soldier of the 6th Tank Division, stated:
"Even before entering Russia we had been told at one ot the briefing sessions: Commissars must be shot." 112th Infantry Division, Jacob Korzillias, of Horforst, near Trier, certified as follows:
"At a village near Bolva, in accordance with the order by Lieut. Kierick, the Headquarters Adjutant of the 112th Engineer Battalion, fifteen wounded Red Army men were thrown out of the hut in which they were lying. They were stripped an bayoneted. This was done with the knowledge of the Division Commander, Lieut-Gen. Miet." Infantry Regiment stated:
"On 27 June in the forest near Augustovo, on the order of the battalion Commander, Captain With two Red Army Commissars were shot."
Paul Sender of Koenigsberg, a soldier of the 4th Platoon of Cannon Company 13 of the 2nd Infantry Regiment: Page 135 of the Document Book.
"On 14 July on the road between Porchov and Staraya Russia in the gutter, corporal Schneider of Company 1 of the 2nd Infantry Regiment shot twelve captured Red Army men. When I asked him about it, Schneider said: "Why should I bother with them. They are not even worth a bullet." I know also of another case.
Soon after that he was shot by the acting corporal of Company 1. As soon as the Red Army men tell, the corporal took out of the man's bread bag all the food which was there." prisoners of war, I would like to quote two more depositions of Fritz Rummler and Richard Gilling respectively. Their depositions we find on the lower part of page 4. Fritz Rummler of Streilen in Silesia, a corporal of Company 9 of the 3rd Battalion of the 518th Regiment of the 295th Division, reported the following facts:
"In August, in the town of Zlatopol, I saw how two officers belonging to SS units and two soldiers shot two captured Red Army soldiers after having taken off the army overcoats from these men. These officers and soldiers belonged to the armoured troops of General von Kleist. In September the crew of a German tank on the road to Krasnograd crushed with their vehicle two Red Army men who had been taken prisoner. This was done simply for lust of blood and murder. The tank commander was non-commissioned officer Schneider who belonged to von Kleist's armoured troops. I saw how in our battalion four captured Red Army men were questioned. This took place at Voroshilovsk. The Red Army men refused to answer questions of a military nature which the battalion commander, Major Warnecke asked them. He flew into a rage and personally beat up the prisoners until they lost consciousness. Richard Gilling, stated:
"Many a time I was witness of the inhuman and cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war. Before my own eyes, acting on the orders of their officers, German soldiers took off the boots from the captured Red Army men and drove them on bare-footed.
Many such facts I witnessed at Tarutino. I was an eyewitness of the following fact. One captured Red Army man refused to give up his boots voluntarily. Soldiers of the escort beat him up to such an extent that he could not move. I saw how prisoners had taken away from them not only their boots but also all their clothing including underwear."
Here I omit a few sentences, and turn to the end of Gilling's statement:
"During the retreat of our column I saw not far from the town of Medyn how German soldiers beat captured Red Army men. One captured man was very tired and unsteady on his legs. One soldier of the escort jumpted at him and began to kick him with his boots and hit him with the butt of his rifle. The same was done by other soldiers. Near the town this prisoner dropped dead."
The statement further reads:
"It is no secret that in the German Army at the front, at Division Headquarters, there are specialists whose particular work is to torture Red Army men and Soviet officers in order to force them in this manner to disclose military information and orders."
The photostate of this statement I submit to the Tribunal. The Tribunal will satisfy itself that there are sixty signatures personally executed by the members of the German armed forces followed by the names of the regiments and smaller units to which they belonged.
I submit to the Tribunal four photographs of German origin. Each of these photographs was taken by a German; the time and place being indicated. One of these photographs is a picture showing the distribution of food; the second shows search for food; the third and fourth are pictures of the Uman prisonerof-war camp.
THE PRESIDENT: Where are the pictures?
COLONEL POKROVSKY: If I am not mistaken, you have been given the photostats.
THE PRESIDENT: This isn't a copy of the photographs; these are the signatures of the sixty German prisoners.
COLONEL POKROVSKY: They will be submitted very shortly, those four photographs.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on. distributed is insufficient. New are almost fighting to get some. The second photograph shows hungry Soviet prisoners of war wandering around an empty barn and eating oil-cakes which they have discovered stored away in the barn as foo for cattle. With respect to the third and fourth photographs, I can submit to the Tribunal important testimony by the witness Bingel. Excerpts from his testimony have a direct hearing on the question of the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. to the Tribunal as Exhibit USSR-111. On December 27, 1945, Bingel, who was formerly company commander in the German Army, testified -- I quote the excerpt from the eighth page of the record of his interrogation.
"I have already made one statement concerning the interior regime in the prisoners-of-war camp at Uman. This camp was guarded by one company of the 783rd Battalion, and therefore I had knowledge of everything which took place there. It was the task of our battalion to guard the prisoners of war and to supervise highways and railroads.
"This camp was normally designed for six to seven thousand men; however, at that time seventy-four thousand men were kept there.
"Q. Were those barracks?
"A. No. It was formerly a brickyard, and on the site of it was nothing but low sheds for drying bricks.
"Q. Were the prisoners of war quartered there?
"A. It can be hardly said that they were quartered there, because each shed at the most could contain not more than 2-- to 300 men; the rest had to sleep in the open "Q What was the regime at that camp?
"A The regime at the camp was somewhat peculiar. The conditions at the camp created the impression that the commanding officer, Captain Bekker, was unable to handle such a large mass of people and to feed it. In the camp there were two kitchens; though they couldn't really be called kitchens. On concrete and on stones, iron barrels were placed, and in them the food for the prisoners of war was prepared. If these kitchens were to operate for twentyfour hours a day they could prepare food for approximately 2000 men. The usual diet for the prisoners of war, the daily ration, consisted of one loaf of bread for every six men. The bread, however, could hardly be called bread. During the distribution of cooked meals disorders often took place as the prisoners of warand there were more than 70,000 of them in the camp-struggled to get at the food. In such cases the guards used clubs which were the usual thing at the camp. I got the general impression that at these camps the club was the foundation of all things." the Tribunal; the other two will be given you very shortly.
"Q Do you know anything about the death rate at the camp? "A Sixty to seventy men died at the camp daily.
"Q What were the causes? "A Before epidemics broke out it was mostly because the men were being killed.
"Q Killed during the distribution of food? "A Either during the distribution of food or during working time, and generally men were being killed throughout the whole day." shown the photographs of the Uman camp. Bingel was asked the following question.
"The camp shown here, is it the one you spoke about, or some other camp?"
After this he was shown photographs from negative 13/18 of August 14, 1941, and from negative 13/22, of the same date. Bingel replied:
"Yes, it is the same camp of which I spoke.
"This actually is not the camp, but a claypit which belongs to the camp, where the prisoners of war coming from the front were placed. Later on they were distributed among the different sections of the camp."
"Q. What can you say about the second photograph?
"A. The second photograph shows the same camp only taken from another side, from the right side. These buildings which are shown here were actually the only brick buildings at that camp. This brick building, though entirely empty and undamaged, and which had excellent large quarters, was not used for housing the prisoners of war." to the Soviet prisoners of war at the so-called "Grosslazarett" of the town of Slavuta in the Kamenez-Podolsk region should not be considered as the limit of human baseness. Be that as it may, the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by the Hitlerites at the "Grosslazarett" is one of the darkest pages in the history of Fascist crimes. Extraordinary State Commission, and will read into the record several excerpts from the report itself as well as the appendices thereto. units of the Red Army discovered on the site of the restricted military area what the Germans called the "Grosslazarett" for the Soviet prisoners of war. In the "Lazarett" there were found more than 500 emaciated and critically ill men. The interrogation of these men and the special investigation carried out by medico-judicial exports, and by the expert members of the Central Institute of Food of the Peoples Commissariat of Health of the USSR, enabled a detailed reconstruction to be made of the extermination of a large number of Soviet prisoners of war which took place at that appalling institution.
On page 153 of the book of documents you will find the place from which I am going to cite.
"In the fall of 1941 German Fascist invaders occupied the town of Slavuta and organized a 'Lazarett' there for the wounded and sick officers and men of the Red Army, the designation of which was 'Grosslazarett, Slavuta Zailage 301.'" The "Lazarett" was located approximately 1 1/2 to 2 kilometers to the south east of Slavuta, and occupied ten three-story buildings-blocks.
All these buildings the Hitlerites surrounded by a dense net of wire entanglements. Along those entanglements, at a distance of every 10 meters, were built towers in which machine guns search lights, and guards were placed. "Grosslazarett," as represented by the commanding officer, Captain Plank, and later Major Pavlisk, who replaced him, the Deputy Commander Kronsdorfer, Captain Boie, Stabsarzt Dr. Borbe, his deputy Dr. Sturm, Master Sergeant Ilsemann and Technical Sergeant Bekker, carried out a mass extermination of prisoners of war by means of creating a special regime of hunger, congestion and insanitary conditions, the use of tortures and outright killings, by with-holding medical treatment from sick and wounded, and by forcing utterly emaciated men to perform the hardest work. "Grosslazarett" the hospital of death. I quote a small part of the section thus entitled. This is the third page of the Russian original.
"At the 'Grosslazarett' the German authorities concentrated 15 to 18 thousand critically and slightly wounded Soviet prisoners of war, as well as those suffering from different contagious and noncontagious diseases.
prisoners of war were continuously moved in. On their way the prisoners of war were subjected to tortures, starved and killed.
From each train which arrived at the "Lazarett" the Hitlerites throw out hundreds of corpses." each train unloaded at a branch line, 800-900 corpses used to be thrown out. The report of the Commission states further as follows.
"In the course of their march thousands of Soviet prisoners of war perished from hunger, thirst, lack of care, savage arbitrary practices of the German guard. war at the gate of the "Lazarett" with beatings with butts and rubber clubs, and then the leather footgear, warm, clothing and personal belongings of the newcomers were taken away. reports that infectious diseases were deliberately spread by the German medical officers among the prisoners of war in the "Lazarett." "The German medical officers artificially created in the 'Grosslazarett' an unbelieveable congestion. The prisoners of war were forced to stand up close to each other, broke down with fatigue and exhaustion, fell and died. The Fascists used different methods of 'congestion' in the 'Lazarett.'" A former prisoner of war, I. Y. Chuazhev, reported that the Germans, "by shooting sub-machine guns created a congestion in the place and the men perforce pressed closer to each other; then the Hitlerites pushed in some more sick and wounded and the door was closed."
of war suffered in one chamber and one block. not more than 400 patients, the number of typhus and tuberculosis cases amounted to 1800.
"The rooms were never cleaned. The sick remained, for months on end, in the same linen they had worn when captured. Many were half-dressed; others were entirely nude. The buildings were not heated and the stoves fell apart. There was no water for washing. As a result of these unsanitary conditions, the death rates were very high." food consisted of 250 grams of flour which was supposed to be given to the prisoners, and such flour was found in the "Lazarett" in the quantity of tons. On the bags made of paper there was the label "Scholmehe". Samples of this flour were sent for investigation to the Central Food Institute of the Commission for USSR National Welfare. of War by the Hitlerites in the "Gross-Lazarett", as No. USSR 5a, on pages 9, 10 and 11 of this document. out by this institution and, on the other hand, by the analysis which was carried out in the institute, there was "Ersatz-Flour" with the addition of some authentic flour. It was proved that it was impossible to bake a loaf with "Ersatz-Flour" alone. It was found that the bread was made with the addition of some quantity of natural flour, and the user of that bread was driven into starvation. The analysis has shown that the flour is nothing else but particles of flour as low as two millimeters and sometimes three; and under the microscope they showed, together with food and vegetable fiber, they found grains of starch and the institute came to the conclusion that the use of such bread, on account of the irritation of the intestines, led to diseases of the alimentary tract.
I wish to report the result of the examination of 112 corpses. In the first case, the cause of death was found with respect to 96 victims, was exhaustion. of death, has been determined on the basis of the examination of the 500 corpses.
diet in the Slavutsk "Gross-Lazarett" can be characterized by entirely inadequate food. The bread was 64 percent with the addition of sawdust and from foul potatoes and other excrement.
I am citing from page 4 of Document USSR 5:
"In the "Gross-Lazarett" we periodically observed outbreaks of a disease of an unknown nature, called 'para-cholera' by the German doctors. The appearance of 'para-cholera' was the result of barbarous experiments by the German doctors. Quite suddenly these outbreaks would appear and as suddenly they would vanish. The mortality in 'para-cholera' was from 60 to 80 percent. Autopsies were performed on some of the victims of the disease, to which autopsies no captured Russian Medical Officers were admitted." sub-division S. conditions of searched war prisoners kept in the camp; more so, with a lot of material, the food also was terrible.
In the "Gross-Lazarett" there was a considerable number of medical help. At the same time, as stated in the communication of the Government Commission, sick and wounded officers and soldiers of the Red Army did not receive even the most elementary medical attention. And how can there be any talk of medical attention when the entire task of the "Gross-Lasarett" was diametrically opposed to such assistance. The administration of the "Gross-Lazarett" not only strove to destroy the Prisoners of war physically; they endeavored to fill the last days of the sick and wounded with suffering and anguish.
I quote part of this section. It is printed on page 4 of Document USSR 5.
"In the "Gross-Lazarett", the Soviet Prisoners were subjected to torture and torment; they were beaten when food was distributed, they were beaten again when sent out to work. The legal-medical examination of the exhumed bodies brought to light, amongst a number of other bodies of Prisoners of War, the body of a prisoner who, in his death agony had been wounded with a knife in the inguinal region with the knife still sticking in the wounded. He was thrown in a grave still alive and covered With earth.
"One variety of mass torture in the hospital consisted in locking the sick and wounded in an unheated cell. The cell had a concrete floor. and many died there. For the purpose of still further exhausting the Prisoners, the Hitlerites forced the sick and debilitated captives to run round the "hospital" building; those who could not run were then beaten to death. It was by no means uncommon for the German guards to murder the prisoners just for the fun of the thing.
"A former prisoner of War, Buchtichyuk, tells us that the Germans threw dead horses on the barbed wire protecting the interior of the camp and when the Prisoners of War, maddened with hunger ran up to the barbed wire, the guard opened fire on them with machine guns. The witness, Kirsanov, saw one Prisoner of War bayonetted to death for picking up a potato tuber. A former Prisoner of War, Shatalov, was art eyewitness when the escort shot a Prisoner of War who had tried to obtain a second helping of 'Balanda'.
"In February, 1942, Shatalov saw a sentry wounding one of the prisoners who was searching the garbage heap for remnants left over from the German kitchen of the service personnel; the wounded man was immediately brought to the pit, undressed and shot." THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now. (The Tribunal adjourned until 14 February, 1946, at 1000 hours.)
Defendants Counsel. The Tribunal will sit in open session on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock to hear the application of the Defendants Counsel for an adjournment. They will hear one counsel on either side, that is to say, one counsel for the Prosecution and one counsel for the Defense, for 15 minutes. After that open session the Tribunal will adjourn into closed session upon procedural matters.
COLONEL POKROVSKY: Yesterday I referred to four photographs which were submitted to the Tribunal. These photographs showed the camp of prisoners of war. I beg to excuse myself that we could not show the other photographs to the Tribunal, one of which shows the distribution of food and the second how hungry Soviet prisoners of war search and eat fodder for cattle. I now submit these original photographs as USSR Exhibit 358 and 359.
An examination of exhumed bodies confirmed that in the "Gross-Lazaret" of Slavouta the commandant and guards of the camp repeatedly applied refined forms of torture. Amongst the bodies on whom autopsies had been performed and those which had been exhumed, the medical-legal examination discovered four bodies of prisoners of war who had been murdered with cold steel weapons, with bayonet head wounds penetrating the region of the skull. You will find this part on page 159 of the document. debility and exhaustion, to carry out physical work entirely beyond their strength. The exhausted and fallen prisoners of war were killed on the spot by the military escort. According to Milevsky, the Catholic priest of the town of Slavouta, the road along which the prisoners went to work and back again came to be marked by little grave mounds, as by milestones.
actual death of some one or other prisoner of war, and they buried persons alive. page 153 of your file of documents:
"A considerable quantity of grains of sand was found in the respiratory tracts of the corpses of four prisoners, reaching to the smallest bronchial tubes, and since the sand could have penetrated so far only if respiration took place underground, under the sand, the legal-medical experts stablished that at "Gross-Lazaret" the guards of the Kommandantur, with the knowledge of the German doctors, buried the Soviet citizens alive."
Prisoners of war Pankin, one of the former inmates of the "Gross-Lazaret", knew of a case when in February 1943 an unconscious patient was brought to the morgue. He recovered consciousness in the morgue, but when it was reported to the Barrack Chief that a live man had been taken to the morgue, he ordered him to be left there, and the sick man was buried alive. of enormous risk tried to organize escapes both individually and in groups. in the local population of Slavouta and the surrounding villages. The Hitler blackguards mercilessly shot anyone who gave any kind of assistance to a fugitive.
The town of Slavouta was part of the Shepotov province. On the 15th of January, 1942, the Shepotov Gebiets-Kommissar, Dr. Worbs, issued a special order. This order specified that if the people directly responsible for helping the escaped prisoners were not found, ten hostages would be shot in each case. Father Zhukovsky reported that 26 peaceful citizens were arrested and shot for helping the prisoners of war to escape. The medical examination of the 525 prisoners liberated from the "Gross-Lazaret" revealed that 435 suffered from extreme infection, 59 had secondary infected wounds, while 31 were the victims of neuro psychiatric disturbances. column on page 5 of the document. In your file it is on page 154 of your file of documents?
"During the two years that Slavouta was occupied, the Hitlerites, with the participation of the German doctors Borbe, Schtur and other medical assistants, exterminated about 150,000 Red Army officers and men." crimes and wished to conceal all traces of the atrocities committed. They especially endeavored to camouflage the burial sites of the Soviet prisoners of war. For instance, on the cross of Grave No. 623, 8 names only of persons buried were indicated, whereas 32 bodies were actually found upon the excavation of that grave. Such was also the case upon the excavation of Grave No. 624 In other grave, layers of earth were placed between several rows of corpses. Fir instance, ten bodies were found in Grave No. 625. When a layer of earth 10 centimeters thick had been removed, two further rows of corpses were found on the same grave, and such was the case at the excavation of Grave No. 627 and 628.
Numerous graves were camouflaged with flowers, trees, plants, paths, etc., but no disguise exists which can ever hide the bloody crimes committed by the Hitlerite miscreants. trial, evidently forgetting where and in what circumstances he was placed, wished to keep within the limits of the German law was, of course, rejected. At the present I am fully able to submit to the Tribunal documents which, in my opinion, are of imprtance in our case, although they are compiled in complete accordance with the rules laid down by the German law. of Djitomir, Red Army troops seized a certain piece of correspondence. This is a policy inquiry. The authors of this document could not foretell that it would be read into the record at the session of the International Military Tribunal for punishment of the manor war criminals. for the ciefs of police, and they were compiled in accordance with all the requirements of German law and of the police investigations of fascist Germany. be quite satisfied.
At the same time, this correspondence is useful to us as well. So much is said in the comparatively small quantity of pages that I should have to analyze the documentation in several sections, in order that you could appreciate it fully and from every angle. I submit this correspondence to you both in the German photostat and in the Russian translation. I repeat -this is a police inquiry. This document is submitted to the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit 311, and we have asked for the original copy, which we may receive from Moscow today, in accordance with the wish of the Tribunal. Educational Labor Camp were to be subjected to special treatment. All the 78 prisoners were Soviet citizens. In the correspondence there is a report to the authorities by the Obersturmfuehrer Kunze, of 27 December 1942. You will find this on page 170. At the end of the first abstract there is a sentence which has been marked with a red pencil to facilitate your reading. It says:
"In this particular case there has been no evidence regarding any communistic activity of these war prisoners during the existence of the Soviet Government." Kunze's next sentence makes perfectly clear the question of how and why these war prisoners got into the educational labor camp. He states:
"It seems that the military authorities have left the prisoners of war at the disposal of the local section in order to submit them to the special-regime treatment." authorities. The specialist, who in this case was doubtlessly Obersturmfuehrer SS Kunze, states that they were sent here specially so that they could become objects of the special regime treatment. more than that 78 people were the remnants of a large group. Sturmscharfuehrer SS Fried Knopp reports --this is at page 163 of the document book:
"Some of the prisoners of war were sent away on a lorry somewhere nearby." objections coming from the army. Somewhat later I shall be more explicit concerning the nature of these transfers and objections raised by the army.
Permit me now to pass over to a circumstantial description of the core of the matter. It appears to be more useful to describe it in the words of one of the documents. I quote:
"Commander of the Security Police and SD in Djitomir:
"When called upon to appear SS Sturmbannfuehrer and Kripo Obersekretaer Friederich Knopp replied: He was born on the 18th of January, 1897, in Neuklints, district of Kessling. Friederich Knopp testified as follows:
"As from the middle of August I was the leader of the Berdichov Section of the Security Police Command and SD in the town of Djitomir. On the 23rd of December, 1942, the Deputy Commander, Hauptsturmbannfuehrer of the SS Kallbach, surveyed the local section of the educational labor camp of the department entrusted to my supervision. In this educational labor camp, from the end of October or the beginning of November there were 78 former prisoners of war who, in their time, had been transferred from the permanent camp in Djitomir as being incapable of work. A considerable number of prisoner of war in the past had been handed over and placed at the disposal of the Commander of the Security Police and SD." of the prisoners of war and placing them at the disposal of the Security police had been provided for by special SS directives and of the SD, especially in connection with persons condemned to physical annihilation.
I quote further; same page --163:
"Of their number in Djitomir, a few had been set aside who, to a certain point, were capable of working. The remaining 78 persons were transferred to the local aducational labor camp."
"The 78 prisoners of war in the local camp were exclusively severely wounded prisoners. Some lacked both legs; others had lost both their hands; others again had lost one or the other of their limbs. Only a few of them were not wounded in the limbs, but they were so mutilated by other kinds of wounds that they were auite unable to work. The latter had to assist the former.
"During the survey of the educational labor camp by SS Hauptsturmbannfuehrer Kallbach on the 23rd of December, 1942, the latter gave the order that those who had survived the death of the 68 or 70 prisoners of war should this very day be subjected to special treatment. For this purpose he handed over a motor truck with an SS chauffeur from the command administration, who arrived here today 11:30 a.m. The prepation for the execution I entrusted early this morning to my colleague in the local administration, SS Unterscharfuehrer Vollbrecht." the statement. They describe how the execution was prepared. One point if of importance, however: Usually the execution was don in the precincts of the camp.
"For this execution I have orders to choose a spot outside the camp. Of the three above-mentioned persons, whom I have entrusted with the shooting of prisoners of war, I knew that when they were in Kiev they had taken part in mass exeuctions of many thousands of persons, and that in the local administration during my sojourn there they had already keen entrusted with the shooting of many hundreds of victims."
again the meaning the Hitlerites usually put on the words "execution" and "special regime" treatment. Here, in only one sentence, the terms "mass execution" and "shooting" are used as precisely equal, and a little above it became clear what "transportation by trucks somewhere nearby" and "special regime treatment" mean, Without any doubt, these four terms have an identical meaning.
After this interruption, I continue my quotation:
"They were armed" -- I am speaking of the German executioners -"with German sub-machine guns, Russian automatic gun CD, a pistol and a carbine. I must point out that I intended to give these three persons, as a help, SS Hauptscharfuehrer Wensel, but SS Sturmann Vollbrecht weclined, remarking that three of them were quite able to carry out this order."
"Concerning the Indictment:
"I did not think it wasnecessary to send a larger detachment to do the work of a usual execution, as the place of execution was hidden from outside glances, and the prisoners were -
THE PRESIDENT: These words "concerning the Indictment", are they in the original document?
COL. POKROVSKY: It is a text of explanation of this evidence which is given by the signatory of this report. I am quoting original German documents. The persons responsible for the execution were accused of having revoked an incident, and that is how they are explaining this incident:
"Concerning the Indictment:
"I did not think it was necessary to send a larger detachment to do the work of a usual execution, as the place of execution was hidden from outside glances, and the prisoners were unable to escape on account of their physical shortcomings.
"Around 15 o'clock, I was telephoned from the permanent camp that one of my co-workers was injured and that another had run away. Frich to the place of execution in a horse-cart. After a certain time they telephoned me again from the permanent camp to tell me that two co-workers of my section were killed." tails, and I skip here a few sentences, even these extracts which I wanted to quotepreviously, and I skip to the last part of the statement. You will find that part on page 166:
"I would like to point out that the above-mentioned incident took place during the second execution. The shooting of about 20 prisoners that took place earlier was carried out without any incident. As soon as I came back, I reported this incident by telephone to the commaning officer in Djitomir.
"It is all I can testify. I declare that my testim ny is entirely true and I know that for false testimony I will be punished and expelled from the SS.
"Signed: Fritz Knapp, SS Schturmanscharfuehrer.
"Countersigned: Kunze, SS Obersturmbannfuehrer."
The hangman was interrogated next. On this matter we have at our disposal the following document. You will find, that extract on page 166 of your file of documents. I quote the minutes of the inquest:
"Then we summoned the SS Rettenfuehrer Gosselbach Friedrich, born 24 January 1909, a native of Feidingen, district Vitgenstein (Westphalia, and gave the following testimony:
"I was informed about the subject of the forthcoming interrogation. a punishment and expelled from SS." the penalities expecting him, -- Gesselbach gave on the subject the following testimony:
"Yesterday evening I was told by SS Scharfuehrer Paal that today I have to take part in the execution of prisoners of war. Lateren, I re ceived also a corresponding order concerning the matter from Hauptscharfuehrer Venzel in the presence of SS Sturmscharfuehrer Knopp.
This morning at 8 A.M., SS Hauptscharfuehrer Berger, SS Unterscharfuehrer Paal, SS Sturmbannfuehrer Vollbrech and myself, together with 8 inmates from our prison, arrived in a car taken from the tannery and driven by a Ukrainian driver, to a place situated, approximately one and onehalf kilometers behind the camp, in order to dig a grave."
He describes later how they dug the grave. I think that we can skip that part. Then they returned to the entrance of the camp. Vollbrecht, upon the order of Paal, left the car.
"When giving this order Paal had in view to conceal ourintentions from the prisoners and not to arouse any suspicions by the presence of a large number of SS men in the camp. That is why only Paal, myself, and a few militia men were leading the prisoners on the car. Upon Paal's order, the whale first group consisted, almost without any exception, of the prisoners who had no legs or feet." I quote the sixth page of the Russian translation, which is marked on page 168 of your file of documents:
"After having executed the first three prisoners I suddenly heard shouting from above. As the fourth prisoner was already on the spot I quickly killed him, and looking upwards, saw that there was a great confusionnear the truck. Even before I had heard some shooting and now I saw the prisoners running away in all directions. I cannot give any details as to what actually happened because I was at the distance of about 40-50 meters from the place. I can say only that I saw two of my comrades lying on the ground, andtwo prisoners shooting at me and the driver with weapons they got hold of. When I realized what was happening, I fired a fourth cartridge left in my magazine at the prisoners when were shooting, at us, put in a new clip, and noticed suddenly that a bullet hit right next to me. I had the feeling as if I was hit, but afterwards I realized that I had been wrong. I explain that now as a nervous shock. Anyhow, I was firing out the cartridges of my second clip, shooting after the fugitives, though I cannot tell whether I hit any of them or not."