Читать книгу The History of Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Various - Страница 45

Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and ill-treated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.

The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered with religious services, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others.

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to “protective arrests” whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified “Nacht und Nebel”. These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and ill-treatment 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.

The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and ill-treatment of civilians.

1. In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the “Western Countries”) and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called “Western Germany”).

Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the defendants and particularly in the concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Vught and Amersfoort, and in numerous cities, towns and villages, including Oradour sur Glane, Trondheim and Oslo.

Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following forms:—

Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts; they were both individual and collective; notably in Paris (round-up of the 18th Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in August, 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals in December, 1941, round-up in July, 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand, (round-up of professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermon-Ferrand[Clermont-Ferrand?] on 25th November, 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January, 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24th December, 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24th December, 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May, 1944); at Saint Pol de Leon (round-up in July, 1944); at Locminé (round-up on 3rd July, 1944); at Eyzieux (round-up in May, 1944) and at Moussey (round-up in September, 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and practised in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Bethune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes and Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centres.

In the concentration camps, the health regime, and the labour regime, were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:—

1.

Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from Compiegne to Auschwitz in January, 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the end of four months.

2.

143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23rd March and 6th May, 1943, in Block 8 at Dachau.

3.

1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21st November, 1943, and 15th March, 1945, in the Block at Dora.

4.

465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November, 1944, at Dora.

5.

22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1st January, 1943, and 15th April, 1945.

6.

11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and infirm) between 1st January and 15th April, 1945.

7.

780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.

8.

Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg Camp, 1,600 died from supposedly natural causes.

Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps were:—bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbruck, study of the evolution of cancer of the womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at Natzweiller, heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular excisions at Ravensbruck, etc.), gas-chambers, gas-wagons and crematory ovens. Of 228,000 French political and racial deportees in concentration camps, only 28,000 survived.

In France also systematic extermination was practised, notably at Asq on 1st April, 1944, at Colpo on 22nd July, 1944, at Buzet sur Tarn on 6th July, 1944 and on 17th August, 1944, at Pluvignier on 8th July, 1944, at Rennes on 8th June, 1944, at Grenoble on 8th July, 1944, at Saint Flour on 10th June, 1944, at Ruisnes on 10th July, 1944, at Nimes, at Tulle, and at Nice, where, in July, 1944, the victims of torture were exposed to the population, and at Oradour sur Glane where the entire village population was shot or burned alive in the church.

The many charnel pits give proof of anonymous massacres. Most notable of these are the charnel pits of Paris (Cascade du Bois de Boulogne), Lyons, Saint Genies Laval, Besancon, Petit Saint Bernard, Aulnat, Caen, Port Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, L’hermitage, Lorges, Morlaas, Bordelongue, Signe.

In the course of a premeditated campaign of terrorism, initiated in Denmark by the Germans in the latter part of 1943, 600 Danish subjects were murdered and, in addition, throughout the German occupation of Denmark, large numbers of Danish subjects were subjected to torture and ill-treatment of all sorts. In addition, approximately 500 Danish subjects were murdered, by torture and otherwise, in German prisons and concentration camps.

In Belgium between 1940 and 1944 tortures by various means, but identical in each place, were carried out at Brussels, Liege, Mons, Ghent, Namur, Antwerp, Tournai, Arlon, Charleroi and Dinant.

At Vught, in Holland, when the camp was evacuated about 400 persons were murdered by shooting.

In Luxembourg, during the German occupation, 500 persons were murdered and, in addition, another 521 were illegally executed, by order of such special tribunals as the so-called “Sondergericht”. Many more persons in Luxembourg were subjected to torture and mistreatment by the Gestapo. Not less than 4,000 Luxembourg nationals were imprisoned during the period of German occupation, and of these at least 400 were murdered.

Between March, 1944, and April, 1945, in Italy, at least 7,500 men, women and children, ranging in years from infancy to extreme old age were murdered by the German soldiery at Civitella, in the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, and at other places.

2. In the U.S.S.R., i.e., in the Bielorussian, Ukrainian, Esthonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republics, in 19 regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Balkans (hereinafter called “the Eastern Countries”) and in that part of Germany which lies East of a line drawn North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called “Eastern Germany”).

From the 1st September, 1939, when the German armed forces invaded Poland, and from the 22nd June, 1941, when they invaded the U.S.S.R., the German Government and the German High Command adopted a systematic policy of murder and ill-treatment of the civilian populations of and in the Eastern Countries as they were successively occupied by the German armed forces. These murders and ill-treatments were carried on continuously until the German Armed Forces were driven out of the said countries.

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 U.S.S.R., 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 U. S. A., Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Holland, brought to this region from other concentration camps.

In the Jewish ghetto from 7th September, 1941, to 6th July, 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. 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 S.S.R., 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 neighbouring 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 S.S.R. 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 S.S.R. 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 S.S.R. 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 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 had 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.

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 and Gestapo torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children died from hunger, torture and epidemic diseases.

From 6th September 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 S.S.R. the German usurpers killed thousands of children, which they had brought there with their parents from the Bielorussian S.S.R., 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.

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 shot—in all 416 persons.

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