"Two kilometers from the city of Artemovsk in the tunnel of the alabaster quarries, at a distance of 400 meters from the entrance, there is a small hole which is covered with brick. After the bricks were removed, there was a continuation of the tunnel which was discovered. This was a narrow passage, going steeply up, and at the entrance there was a wide broad cavern, 200 meters in length, 300 meters in width, and three or four meters high. The whole cavern was filled with bodies, and only a small area at the entrance and a very narrow strip in the center were free from the corpses. They were closely pressedn one to the other, and their backs were towards the entrance to the cavern.
"This is quite typical because it shows the usual methodical German routine, shooting at the back of the head. The corpses were wedged in so closely that at first lance, it appeared as though there was just one mass of bodies intertwined one with another. The rear ranks were thrown on first and they were pressed to the walls of the cavern. They laid in several ranks." Legal-Medical Commission. You will find this on page 366, volume two, second columns "According to thetestimony of the inhabitants of Artemovsk, on 9 November 1942, in the abandoned alabaster quarries, several thousand people were driven.
They had with them their small household possessions and food."
I omit the remaining part of the paragraph and continue: either in a standing position or feeling down. Then another group would be driven in and would be shot right on the corpses of the first group, and then the corpses that were shot were piled one on top of another. Several people tried to run away from the murderers but died in tortures."
on page 209 of my presentation. In the period of mass executions, the Germans fascist criminals created definite methods, and I would like to cite several of the most typical, because, as in the matter of presentation, the Tribunal will see how this criminal technique was effected by the Germans and how more and more cynical and mere and more cruel and premeditated those atrocities were, and in confirmation of this, I would like to present several documents to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: We shall have to break off now. It is four o'clock. will be.
COLONEL SMIRNOV: I shall finish my presentation of evidence tomorrow.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 19 February 1946 at 1000 hours.)
Military Tribunal in the matter of: The
THE PRESIDENT: I have an announcement to make.
The defense motion for a recess cannot be granted. When a recess at Christmas was decided upon the Tribunal informed the Defense Counsel that no further recess would be granted. already had several months in which to prepare their defenses to a case which depends principally upon documents in the German language, written by the defendants themselves or their associates. They have also had constant assistance from the Tribunal and the Prosecution in connection with documentary evidence and witnesses. found it possible, quite properly, to absent themselves from Court and the Tribunal sees no reason why some of the time which must elapse for the conclusion of the case for the Prosecution should not be utilized in preparation of their defenses out of Court. case against the individual defendants, the argument on the groups or organizations alleged to be criminal shall take place and that thereafter applications for documents and witnesses by those defendants whose witnesses and documents have not already been decided upon shall be heard in open session. In this way several days will be occupied in which many of the Defense Counsel can be absent from Court and they can prepare their defenses out of Court.
COLONEL SMIRNOV: May I continue?
Mr. President: Yesterday you asked me who, in January 1942, was the Chief of the Armament and Equipment Department of the German Army. I could not answer yesterday but I report to you today that that person was General of the Infantry Thomas.
were taken as to the report of Major Roesler, I questioned Moscow, where this correspondence is being kept. There are only excerpts from this correspondence there and the rest of the correspondence is in another archive. We questioned this archive yesterday and as soon as the further disposition of this correspondence is ascertained I will immediately report to the Tribunal. It will be a day or two. my statement today. I have to submit a considerable number of documents and therefore, the following statement will be rather fragmentary. I will not dwell on particulars and will endeavor not to repeat what has already been said by the Prosecutors of other countries, therefore, my statement will be rather summarized and I beg the indulgence of the Tribunal.
The legal-medical experts' report has already been submitted to the Tribunal as U.S.S.R. Exhibit Number 48, It was signed by the President of the Medical Academy Burdenko, by the principal legal-medical expert Dr. Prozorovsky and other experts. Besides these conclusions which have already been submitted by my colleague Colonel Pokrovsky, I now submit to the Tribunal a detailed conclusion of this expert commission. From this the Tribunal will not only be able to judge the conclusions but also the methods. I will not now again cite these parts of the account which were already quoted by Colonel Pokrovsky, in part.
I will skip four pages of my statement and pass on to page 213. That part which I wish to quote now the Tribunal will be able to find on page 307-308 of the document book. Volume 2, second part of the page. This is a typical scene of victims of German terror in 1941 and the beginning of 1942.
"The ditches from which the corpses were exhumed do not represent common burial grounds. The corpses were not laid out in rows and did not lie one next to the other but constituted multi-levered or a compact mass of women and men's bodies massed in disorder and clutching each other. In this mass of corpses son were bent or half bent, some were lying on their sides, standing on their knees, with their heads downwards or upwards, with legs and arms mixed.
It was impossible to determine the contours of each corpse before they were exhumed from the ditch." ize only the mass burials which were performed towards the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. very many burial grounds where the corpses were laid down in an orderly fashion, layer on layer. the album regarding the Lvov Camp, on page 13 of this album, where there is a picture of a burial ground. The bodies are lying in regular layers.
THE PRESIDENT: Which album is this?
COLONEL SMIRNOV: It is the album which concerns the Lvov Camp. It was submitted to the Tribunal yesterday. This scent is on page 15 of the album. It is a photograph which was discovered in the Gestapo headquarters at Lvov. will be able to judge by excerpts from the report of the Extraordinary State Commission.
THE PRESIDENT: Is this a photograph of the bodies as they lay in the trench or after they had been moved?
COLONEL SMIRNOV: No, it is a photograph taken by the Gestapo, Mr. President. It was taken by some member of the Gestapo and was discovered in archives. You will see how they march in rows to the execution.
What provoked this regular laying out of the bodies? The Tribunal will find the answer to this on page 213 of the document book, paragraph eight. This is a report of the Extraordinary State Commission on Atrocities in the Town of Rovno.
"The witness Karpuk, who worked on a German farm near the stree Belaya testified: Ukrainians Russians, Poles and Jews. This took place usually in the following manner:
"The German henchmen brought the condemned to the execution place, forced them to dig a ditch, ordered them to undress and to lie dawn in the ditch, face downward. The Nazis fired at the back of the necks of the victims with machine pistols. Then another group of people lay down on top of the bodies of the shot and were finished off in the same manner and then a third row and so on until the ditch was filled. Then they poured quicklime over the corpses and covered them with earth." by an excerpt concerning the executions in Maidanek. I quote from a document by a Soviet-Polish Commission, already admitted by the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit Number 29. The Tribunal will find this on page 65 of the document book, first column of the text:
"On 3 November, 1943, 18,400 people were shot in the camp. 8,400 originated from the camp itself, whereas 10,000 were brought there from the city or from other camps."
"The shootings started early in the morning and ceased late in the evening. The people had been stripped naked, were brought in groups by the SS. These groups were fifty or one hundred people. They were laid down in the ditch with their faces down and shot with automatic rifles. Then a new group of people were laid on the corpses and shot in the same manner until the pits were full." epoch of the appearance of this method. The Soviet documentation is testimony to the fact that this started in the second half of 1942 and similar methods of shooting were adopted by the German police Detachments in Poland, beginning with 1939. a document which was received by the British Prosecution. It is a photostatic copy -- the original is in the archives of the British delegation and I think I can state that if the Tribunal need s the original copy the British delegation will be so kind as to submit it to the Tribunal. The authenticity of the information which is contained in this document cannot be questioned. It is a German report which was taken from the archives of Hitler's headquarters. document book. The German staff doctors considered it necessary to report to Hitler about these shootings. I quote:
"These shootings, since they are done publicly, give a great deal of food to enemy propaganda." examination of Corporal Paul Kluge. Paul Kluge belonged to a sentry detachment. He heard that on Sunday October 8, 1939, at the Jewish cemetery, shooting of Poles would take place and out of curiousity he decided to visit the place of execution. I quote only that part of the examination which speaks of the methods of shooting. The Tribunal will find this quotation on page 393 of the document book, second volume, second paragraph. to our barracks, when suddenly a large truck full of women and children drove into the cemetery.
We returned to the cemetery. Then we saw how a party consisting of one woman and three children of three to eight years old were led to an open grave about two meters wide and eight meters long. The woman was forced to get into this grave and she took her youngest child with her in her arms. Two men, members of the punitive expedition took the other two children and gave them to her. The woman was forced to lie down face downwards in the ditch and her three children lay down in the same manner at her left side. After that four men of the punitive detail also climbed down into the grave and aimed their guns so that the barrels were about ten centimeters away from the nape of the neck. In this fashion they shot the woman and her three children. Then the supervising Sturmbannfuehrer called on me to help fill in the grave. I obeyed this order and therefore being quite near, I was able to see how the next party of women and children were shot in the same manner as were the first persons.
"In all, nine or ten groups of women and children were shot, every time four at a time in the same grave." origin. examination and submit to the Tribunal proof of other, even worse methods of mass shootings which were invented by the Hitlerite criminals, beginning with 1943 and until the end of the war. methods of hide their crime and then they started to burn the bodies. It has been proved by documents that in many cases the Hitlerites compelled their victims first to prepare the firewood, then to lie down on these piles of wood and they were then shot. The next party of condemned persons brought fresh firewood, laid it down on the layer of corpses and then lay down themselves on this stack of firewood and were shot. You will find there a typical example of this cruel manner of shooting. In order to prove this statement, I turn to a document which has already been submitted previously to the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit 39. The excerpt which I wish to quote is on page 233 of the document book, second column of the text:
"On the 19 of September, 1944 the Germans began the liquidation of the Kloga camp. Camp Unterscharfuehrer Schwarze, the head of the main camp and Scharfuehrer Max Dalmann selected three hundred people from among the prisoners, and forced them to carry firewood to a clearing in the woods.
Seven hundred other men were forced to build funeral pyres. When these pyres were ready the German henchmen began mass shootings of the internees.
"In the first place were shot these who carried the wood and built up the pyres of firewood and then the others. The shooting occurred in the following manner:
"At the point of a pistol members of the Security Service Police forced the prisoners to lie face downwards on the prepared funeral pyres and then they shot then with submachine guns or revolvers. The bodies were burned on the funeral pyres." methods were even more cruel, I beg the Tribunal to turn to a document, which has already been submitted as USSR Exhibit 38. It is the report on the atrocities of the German usurpers in the town of Minsk. I refer to a quotation which the Tribunal will find on page 214 of the document book in the second column of the text, last paragraph. to hide the traces of their crimes the German Hitlerite usurpers built up near the Village Maly Trostianets a concentration camp. I begin my quotation from that part of the report which speaks of the shootings which occurred in the immediate neighborhood of this primitive camp. stated as fallows;
"Having reached a point ten kilometers from Minsk, near the Village of Maly Trostianets, the car stopped near one of the barns. We all understood that we were brought here to be shot.
"By order of the German henchmen the interned women were brought out in groups of four from the car."
THE PRESIDENT: I cannot find where this is. What is the name of the witness?
COLONEL SMIRNOV: Savinsky -- it is on page 228 or 229 of the translation.
"Soon it was my turn. With Anna Golubovich, Yulia Semashko and another woman, whose name I do not know, I climbed on to the pile of bodies. Shots were fired. I was slightly injured on the head and fell."
herself. these bodies there were bullet wounds and the bodies of 63 persons were discovered. proof of the -
THE PRESIDENT: The translation came through to us that 63 people were killed. The translation in writing is 65,000.
COLONEL SMIRNOV: That is agross mistake on the part of the interpreter. They diminished the number of shot by ten times. It is 65,000. existence of special places of mass executions where the number of persons shot was numbered in the hundreds of thousands of persons and where the condemned were brought not only from the surrounding regions but from many countries of Europe. acquired an especially grim reputation. It was in the locality of Panarai, eight kilometers from Vilnus. It acquired a very grim reputation and it was called Fort Number 9 of the Fort of Death. the Extraordinary Commission on the Atrocities of the Hitlerite Usurpers in Lithuania. The Tribunal will find this quotation on page 293, second column of the text, last paragraph. I skip the first lines, which states that the mass execution place at Panarai was organized in July 1941 and existed until June 1942, I start with the fourth paragraph where it refers to the Hitlerite attempts to obliterate the traces of their crimes.
"In December 1943, (stated witness Saydel Matvey Fedorovich) we were forced to exhume and burn the corpses."
I skip the next sentence and continue:
"In this way we placed on each bonfire approximately three thousand corpses, poured crude oil over them, placed incendiary bombs on four sides and set it on fire." period more than one hundred thousand corpses were dug out from nine pits of a total volume of 21,179 cubic meters and they were burnt on bonfires.
legal expert commission.
"The corpses that were examined were for the most part these of the civilian population. A small number of corpses was found dressed in military uniforms. On same of the corpses were found items of religious worship of the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches. According to the objects and documents found it has been established that among those who were shot were physicians, engineers, students, chauffeurs, mechanics, railroad workers, and so on."
I skip the next three paragraphs and pass on to the conclusion:
"The Medico-Legal. Expert Commission has established that the German Fascist henchmen shot and burned in Paneriay not less than 100,000 people."
I quote further proof concerning the Fort of Loath in Kaunace. Fort No.9 was called by the residents of Kaunace the "Fort of Death". This fort is located six kilometers northwest of the city and represents an old concrete fortification work. Inside of it there are numerous vaults, which have been used by the Germans as cells for prisoners. On all sides, this fort is surrounded by a concrete wall and barbed wire. In the very first days after their arrival in Kaunace, the Hitlerites drove into the fort approximately 1,000 Soviet war prisoners and forced them to dig ditches in a field of an area of some five odd hectares at the western wall of the fort. each of them three meters wide, 200 meters long, and over two meters in depth. All those persons who happened to get into Fort No. 9 never survived.
In columns of several thousand people, the Hitlerites drove here women, children, adolescents, men and aged persons with the purpose of shooting them and turning their bodies.
I skip the next three paragraphs and continue my quotation:
"In Fort No. 9 people of different nationalities were shot: Russians, Ukrainians, Byelo-Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Jews were shot there.
"The following people where shot in this fort: A representative of the Supreme Soviet Council of SSR, Bougginskiene; Representative of the Supreme Soviet Council of the Lithuanian SSR, Sibertas, and others.
"Besides Soviet citizens the Hitlerites exterminated in Fort No. 9 citizens from France, Austria and Czechoslovakia."
A former supervisor of Fort No. 9, the witness Nauggunas, testified:
"The first group offoreigners, 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 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." page, and give only conclusive data. Fort No. 9 over 70,000 people, peaceful inhabitants. mention some methods which are vile indeed. In order to prove this statement, I refer to the Report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Stavropol region, which has already been submitted to the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit No. 1. The Tribunal will find this excerpt on Page 268 of the document book, second paragraph of the text:
"It is established that prior to deserting the city of Gerogievsk on 9 January of this year, obeying the command of the Chief Physician of the German hospitals in the city, Baron Dr. von Heiman, the German soldiers were selling at the city market methyl alcohol and oxalic acid, pretending the first to be drinking alcohol and the second soda water.
This was done with the intentional purpose of poisoning the people." I must mention especially the terror which the inhabitants of Leningrad were subjected to. I have already mentioned this in speaking of the city of Leningrad yesterday. In order to shorten my quotation -- although, being a citizen of Leningrad myself, I would like to dwell on this part -- I will only quote general data regarding these crimes. The Tribunal will find this quotation on page 345 of the document book, second volume, last paragraph.
"During the 900 day siege of Leningrad when the Germans were in possession of its suburbs the atrocities they perpetrated on the civilians were countless.
"The Germans dropped on Leningrad 107,000 demolition and incendiary bombs and 150,000 heavy artillery shells. Every Leningrad resident, every minute, all through the days of the seige, was in the same danger as if he had been on a field of battle. He was threatened with death every instant. Bombing and artillery fire killed a total of 16,747 and wounded 33,782 persons." the Tribunal to pay attention to page 347 of the second volume of the document book, an excerpt from the report of the German artillerist who shelled Leningrad. I will now only give figures concerning the persons who died of hunger in Leningrad. It is the terrible winter of 1941-1942. I quote only one line:
"as a result of the hunger blockade of Leningrad, 632,253 people perished." adoption by the Hitlerites of special machines for the killing of people. People were poisoned by gas, by special machines, "sondermaschinen", or gas vans, by asphixiation vans. people constitutes a very heavy charge against the leaders of German fascism.
The special equipment for the mass extermination of people in hermetically closed machines, such as exhaust pipes of motors which were connected to the bodies of machines by means of special mobile tubes were utilized by the German Fascists for the first time in the USSR in 1942. sable only to remind the Tribunal that for the first time these machines of death were mentioned in an act which I have already submitted to the Tribunal concerning the atrocities of the German Fascist aggressors, in the town of Kerch. This document was submitted as USSR 63 and refers to the spring of 1942. Darya Demchenko, who saw how the German servicemen in Kerch threw out the bodies of the murdered into an anti-tank ditch. However, it can not be contested that the mass extermination of people in gas vans was ascertained for the first time in the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on atrocities of the German occupants in the Stavropol region. This document was submitted to the Tribunal by me earlier as USSR 1. Stavropol region was directed by the presently deceased, prominent Soviet writer and member of the Extraordinary State Commission, Academician Tolstoi. the most prominent specialists in judicial medicine as human imagination, which has definite logical limits, could with difficulty accept the existence of these machines. However, as a result of the investigation, as the testimony of witnesses regarding the murder vans and mass murders of peaceful citizens -
THE PRESIDENT: What page is this?
THE RUSSIAN-ENGLISH INTERPRETER: Page 246.
THE PRESIDENT: We've got it.
COLONEL SMIRNOV: The interpreter translated that and asked me what was the date of this document, and that is why I was looking for a date.
Forgive me, please. region, we read the first detailed description of the mechanism of these murder vans, and I am quoting in this excerpt which the Tribunal will find on page 268 of the document book, fourth paragraph. I quote this excerpt in full as the technical details which we find here coincide fully with those technical details which were so fully reported to the Tribunal by the American Prosecution. This is corroborative evidence, and, therefore, is important. I begin my quotation:
"Mass extermination by the Germans of the peaceful citizens of the USSR by means of poisoning by carbon monoxide in specially constructed machines or motor vans was definitely determined. The prisoner of war Fenichel testified:
"'While working as a mechanic, I had the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with the mechanisms of these machines, which were specially equipped for strangulation and extermination of people by means of gases. of the Gestapo.
"'Their construction was as follows: The body was approximately five meters long and two and a half meters wide; the height of the body was approximately two and a half meters. The body had the shape of a wagon without windows. Inside, it was lined, with galvanized iron. On the floor; which was also lined with galvanized iron, there were wooden grills. The door of the body was lined with rubber and could be hermetically closed by means of an automatic lock. On the floor of these machines under the grill, there were placed two metal pipes."
"These pipes were interconnected by means of a cross pipe of similar diameter."
"These pipes had frequent openings of one and a half centimeters in diameter. From the cross pipe led a rubber tube through an opening in the iron lined floor. At the end of the tube was a sextagonal spike with threading which corresponded to the threading at the end of the motor exhaust pipe. This tube could be screwed to the exhaust pipe. During the use of the motor, all the gas which was thus obtained penetrated into the body of this hermetically closed machine.
As a result of the accumulation of these gases, a man who was placed inside the body died within a short time. The body of the machine could contain approximately 70-80 people. The motor of this machine usually bore the trademark 'Sauer'." are already known to the Tribunal and beg the Tribunal to pay attention to page 270 of the document book, first paragraph, which says that in the Stavropol district the motor van was used for the murder of 660 people who were ill. State Commission regarding the crimes of the German criminals in the Krasnodar district. I submit this document to the Tribunal as USSR 42. It concerns data of the mass killing of people in murder vans. I will not quote this document. as USSR Exhibit 65 the verdict of the military tribunal of the North Caucasion Front. I wish only to quote a short excerpt. The Tribunal will find this on page 239 of the document book, volume 2. systematic torture and burning by the Hitlerite criminals of many arrested Soviet citizens, which were in the cellars of the Gestapo, as well as the facts of the extermination by asphixiation by gases of carbon-monoxide in specially built cars, machines of death; namely, the asphixiation of 7,000 innocent Soviet people, including more than 700 ill persons who were in the hospitals of the town of Krassnodar and the Krassnodar region. Among them were 32 children, from five to 16 years old. but I will not do so, in order to save time, and I skip four pages of the text and pass on to page 249 of the Russian text. mission on the atrocities of the German Fascist criminals in the town of Krarkov and the Kharkov district. I submit this document to the Tribunal as USSR 43. I will not quote this document, and will only draw the attention of the Tribunal to a summarizing document; namely, the verdict of the military tribunal of the Ukrainian Front, a verdict which was pronounced in this case.
This has been introduced to the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit 32. The Tribunal will find this excerpt on page 22 of the document book, first paragraph. I quote:
"In the mass killing of Soviet citizens, the German Fascist usurpers adopted the so-called gas wagons, large closed cars which were known to the Russians as 'machines of death'. Into these gas wagons by letting out special poisonous gas, carbon-monoxide.
In order to victims."
THE PRESIDENT: We have just had handed up to us in the written translation of your address, page 234.
We already had page 234. Do you want this to be 234A? Is it just one page that you are handing up now?
COLONEL SMIRNOV: There is a different numbering in the English possession, and I do not know this new numbering.
I can therefore not follow.
I am on page 251 of the Russian text.
THE PRESIDENT: I think the better course will be to adjourn now (A recess was taken.)
COLONEL SMIRNOV: May I continue?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COLONEL SMIRNOV: In confirmation of the wide application of 291, second column of the page, 10th paragraph.
I limit my "Extermination of peaceful citizens and prisoners of war in the they were alive, and buried alive."
I end my quotation here. To confirm the same, I further refer in the second paragraph, second column, of the page.
I read one quotation from it.
I begin.
"Thousands of Soviet citizens have perished in Minsk concentration camps at the hands of the German executioners."
"I was eye witness of how Germans killed people in their murder vans.
From 70 to 80 people were forcibly put into a murder van and they were carried in an unknown direction."
I end my quotation, and I ask the Tribunal's permission to draw it which was usually done in bath houses.
It is also mentioned in the of 1942.
At the time the chief criminals were still quite convinced Europe.
They were not afraid of responsibility for those crimes.
sway. It created murder vans, gas chambers and concentration camps, Now, I pass over to the next section of my presentation:
concentration camps. I refer to the report of the Polish Government the Camp Treblin Number 2. The Germans called this Treblin B.Commission relating to Auschwitz.
The members of the Tribunal will "In 1941 the crematorium for burning the corpses of murdered people was built in the Camp of Auschwitz.
This crematorium had three ovens.
Attached to the crematorium there was a so-called bath house for a special purpose.
That is a gas chamber for murdering people.