Deportation into Slavery.
Outstanding in the long chain of vile crimes committed by the German Fascist invaders in the, forced deportation to Germany of peaceful citizens, men, women and children, for slave and serf labor.
Documentary evidence proves the fact that the Hitlerite government and the German Supreme Command carried out the deportation of Soviet citizens into German slavery by deceit, threats and force. Soviet citizens were sold into slavery by the fascist invaders to concerns and private individuals in Germany. These slaves were doomed to starvation, brutal treatment and, in the end, to an agonizing death. I shall dwell later on the inhuman and barbarous directives, edicts and orders of the Hitlerite government and the Supreme Command, which were issued for the purpose of effecting the deportation of Soviet persons to German slavery, and for which the defendants now being prosecuted are responsible, particularly Goering, Keitel, Rosenberg, Sauckel and others. Documents at the disposal of the Soviet Delegation, captured by the Red Army from the staffs of the smashed German Fascist armies, expose the defendants as perpetrators of these crimes.
In a report read at a meeting of the German Labor Front in November 1942, Rosenberg presented facts and figures confirming the vast scale of the deportation of Soviet citizens to slave and serf labor in Germany which were organized by Sauckel.
On the 7th of November, 1941, a secret conference took place in Berlin, at which Goering gave directives to his officials concerning the utilization of Soviet citizens for forced labour.
These directives came to our knowledge from a document which is Secret Circular No. 42006/41 of the Economic Staff of the German Command in the East, dated the 4th of December, 1941. This is how these directives run:
1. "Russians must be used chiefly for road and railway construction, clean-up operations, de-mining and airfield construction.
German construction battalions must be disbanded (e.g. those of the air force). Skilled German workers must work in war production; they must not dig and break stones - there is theRussian for that."
2. "It is essential to utilize the Russian primarily for the following types of work: mining, construction, war production (tanks, guns, aircraft equipment), agriculture, building, in large workshops (shoe making) and in special detachments for urgent unforeseen jobs."
3. "In taking measures to keep order, the decisive considerations are speed and severity. Only the following types of punishment, without any intermediate punitive sanctions, will be imposed: deprivation of food or death by sentence of court-martial."
The defendant Fritz Sauckel was appointed General-Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Labor by Hitler's order of the 21st of March, 1942.
On the 20th of April, 1942, Sauckel sent to the government and military organs his "Program of the General-Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Later" (top secret), which isno less foul than the circular referred to above. This is what is said in the "Program":
"It is extremely necessary to utilize fully the human reserves available in occupied Soviet territories. If attempts to attract the necessary labor voluntarily do not succeed, it will be necessary to resort immediately to mobilization or to the compulsory signing of individual contracts.
"Besides the prisoners of war we already have, and who are located for the most part in the occupied territories, there is need for the mobilization of skilled male and female civilian workers over 15 years of age from the Soviet Provinces for utilization for labor in Germany.
"In order that the burden on the overworked German peasant women should be noticeable lightened, the Fuehrer has ordered me to bring 400,000 to 500,000 selected, healthy and strong girls to Germany from the Eastern territories."
Yet another secret document concerning the utilization of women workers from the Eastern territories for domestic labor in Germany has been presented to the Tribunal by the prosecution.
This document is composed of excerpts from the report on a meeting held by Sauckel on the 3rd September 1942.
I quote some of these excerpts:
1. "The Fuehrer has ordered that between 400,000 and 500,000 Ukrainian women aged between 15 and 35 be brought, immediately for domestic labor".2. "The Fuehrer has expressed categorically his desire that a large number of these girls should be Germanised."
3. "It is the Fuehrer's will that, in 100 years' time, 250 million German-speaking people should live in Europe."
4. "Consider these women workers from the Ukraine as workers from the East, and put the sign 'Ost' (East) on them."
5. "Gauleiter Sauckel declared that, apart from the introduction of women workers for domestic labor, it was intended to utilize an additional million workers from the East."
6. "References to the difficulty of bringing stocks of grain to Germany from other countries did not worry him, Sauckel, at all.
He would find ways and means to utilize Ukrainian grain and cattle, by mobilizing all the Jews in Europe andmaking of them a living chain of conveyors to get all the necessary equipment to the Ukraine."
Foreseeing the inevitability of the failure of measures to recruit Soviet citizens by force for later in Germany, Sauckel ordered, in a secret directive of the 31st of March, 1942, No. FA 578028/729:
"The recruitments for which you are responsible must be enforced by all avail able means, including the severe application of the principle of com pulsory labor."
Sauckel and his agents used all possible methods of pressure and terror to carry out the plans of recruitment.
They starved the Soviet persons condemned to this recruitment, enticed them to the stations under pretence of distribution of bread, surrounded them with soldiers, loaded them onto transports under the threat of shooting them, and took them to Germany.
But even these coercive methods did not help. The recruitment was not successful.
Then Sauckel and his agents had recourse to a quota system.
This is testified to by an order of a German commandant, captured by Red Army forces when the occupied part of the province of Leningrad was liberated. It runs as follows:
"To the mayors of village communities ..... Since a very small number of people have so far presented themselves for labor in Germany, every mayor of a village community must, in concert with the elders of the villages, provide 15 or more persons from each village community for later in Germany. Healthy people aged between lit and 50 must be provided."
The chief of the political police and of the Security Service in Kharkov stated in his report on the situation in the town of Kharkov covering the period from 24 July to 9 September 1942: "The recruitment of labor is worrying the competent agencies, since an extremely antagonistic attitude to deportation for work in Germany is to be observed among the population. At present the situation is such that everyone tries by every available means to escape recruitment (they pretend to be ill, escape into the forests, bribe officials, etc.). For a long time now it has not been possible even to speak of anyone going to Germany voluntarily."
That citizens deported to Germany slavery were subjected to the most brutal treatment is shown by a vast quantity of complaints and statements collected by the Extraordinary Government Commission for ascertaining and investigating the crimes of the German-Fascist invaders.
Polish, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav citizens deported to German slavery suffered the same fate.
Destruction of Towns and Villages, Plunder of Public and Private Property In carrying out their policy of aggression and plunder, the Hitlerites systematically destroyed towns and villages, annihilated treasures created by the labors of many generations, and plundered the peaceful population.
Together with their accomplices - the criminal Governments of Finland and Roumania, - the Hitlerites developed their plans for the destruction of the largest cities of theSoviet Union.
A document, emanating from the Naval War Staff, dated 29 September 1941, and entitled "The Future of Petersburg", contains the following statemeat:
"The Fuehrer has decided to wipe the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth.
Finland has also declared that she is net interested in the further existence of the city in the immediate vicinity of her new boundary."
On the 5th of October 1941, Hitler addressed a letter to Antonescu, the special object of which was to coordinate their plans for seizing and destroying the city of Odessa.
An order of the German Commander-in-Chief, dated 7 October 1941, and signed by the defendant Jodl, prescribed that Leningrad and Moscow should be wiped from the face of the eart. "In the case of all other towns, too", states the order, "The rule should hold that, prior to their occupation, they should be reduced to ruins by artillery fire and by air raids. It is inadmissible that a German soldier's life would be risked in order that Russian towns should be saved from fire."
These directives of the Central German agency were widely applied by military commanders of all ranks. Thus an order to the 512 th German Infantry Regiment, signed by Colonel Schietzrig, prescribes that the regions and districts seized by the Hitlerites be turned into a desert area. In order that this crime should lead to the most destructive results, the order gives a detailed plan for the annihilation of inhabited localities.
"Preparations for the destruction of inhabited localities", the order states, "Should be made in such a manner that (a) no suspicion be aroused among the civilian population, prior to announcement; (b) it should be possible to start the destructions, at one blow, by means of a simple operation at an appointed time. On the designated day particularly strict watch should be kept in inhabited localities so as not to allow any civilians to leave them, &specially from the moment the announcement regarding the destruction is made."
An order by the Commander of the 98th German Infantry Division, dated 24 December 1941, is even entitled? "Program of destructions." This order gives concrete directions regarding the destruction of a number of inhabited localities and suggests that:
"Available stocks of hay, straw, food supplies, etc., are to be burnt.
All stoves in homes should be put out of action by hand grenades so that their further use be made impossible.
On no account is this order to fall into the hands of the enemy."
Special squads of arsonists - torch bearers - were formed, which set fire to the treasures created by the labor of generations.
Your Honors, I wish to draw your attention to the document known as "Directives for the Control of Economy in the Newly Occupied Eastern Territories." (The "green file"). Goering is the author of these directives. This secret document is dated - "Berlin, June 1941." I will quote only a few excerpts from it. The first quotation is:
"Pursuant to the Fuehrer's (Hitler's) orders, it isnecessary to take all measures for the immediateand full exploitation of the occupied territories for Germany's benefit. To obtain for Germany the largest possible amount of food supplies and crude-oil - such is the main economic objective of the campaign. At the same time, German industry must also be supplied with other kinds of raw materials from the occupied territories. The first task is to supply the German armies with the utmost speed entirely from the resources of the occupied territories.
Second quotation : "The opinion that the occupied territories should be restored to order as soon as possible, and their economy re-established is ill-conveived. The restoration of order must take place only in areas from which we can obtain considerable supplies of agricultural products and crude-oils; in others, economic activity must be limited to the exploitation of such stocks as are discovered."
Third quotation : "All raw materials, semi-manufactured and finished goods must be withdrawn from the markets by means of orders, requisitions, and confiscations. Platinum, magnesium, and rubber should be collected immediately and removed to Germany. Foodstuffs, as well as articles of domestic and personal use, and dothing discovered in the combat zone and in the rear areas, are to be placed, in the first instance, at the disposal of the boards to satisfy the needs of the armies. What is rejected by them will be passed on to thenext highest war-economy agency."
As I have already said at the beginning, the main objective of the German aggression against the Soviet Union was to plunder the Soviet country in order to obtain the economic resources which were necessary for Hitlerite Germany and without which she could not carry out her imperialistic plans of aggression.
Goering's "Green File" represented the wide program, developed beforehand by the Fascist conspirators, for the organized plunder of the Soviet Union.
This program laid down in advance concrete plans for plunder: the forcible confiscation of valuables, the organization of slave labor in our cities and villages, the abolition of wages inindustrial establishments, the uncontrolled issue of fully insecure currency, etc. In order to carry out this program of plunder, the creation of special machinery was provided for with its own economic command, economic staffs, its own intelligence, inspectorate, army units, detachments for collecting means of production, detachments for collecting raw materials, military agronomists, agricultural officers, etc.
Together with the advancing German armies, there also moved detachments of the economic departments of the army whose task was to detemine the available supplies of grain and cattle, fuel, and other property. These detachments were subordinated to a special economic inspectorate which had its seat in the rear area.
Soon after the attack on the USSR, Hitler's decree of the 29th of June 1941 placed the whole direction of the plunder of occupied territories in the hands of the defendant Goering.
By this decree Goering was given the right to take "all measures necessary for the maximum utilization of all stocks discovered and of the country's economic capacity in the interests of German was economy. The defendant Goering directed the predatory activities of the German armies and conomic detachments with the greatest zeal.
At a conference held on the 6th of August 1942 with the Reich commissars and representatives of the military command, Goering demanded that the plunder of occupied territories be intensified. "You are sent there," Goering pointed out, "not to work for the benefit of the peoples entrusted to you, but in order to pump out of them all that is possible."
And further on: "I intend to plunder and to do effectively."
As established by the Extraordinary State Commission, these directives of Goering were carried out by the Reich ministers and representatives of German firms, under whose control there were various kinds of economic groups, technical battalions, economic staffs, and economic inspectorates. Particularly active in the plunder of property of the Soviet Union were the German firms Friedrich Krupp & Co., Herman Goering, Siemens Schuckert, the Mining and Metallurgical Company, Ost, the corporation Word, Heinrich Lana, Landmaschinebauindustrie, I.G. Farben Industrie, and many others.
While they plundered and pillaged state and private property, the Hitlerite invaders doomed to starvation and death the population of the districts they thus plundered. Field Marshal Reichenau's order of the 10th of October 1941, which was distributed as a model among all German units, together with a note saying that Hitler considered it an excellent order, contained the following incitement to plunder and exterminate the population: "To supply local inhabitants and prisoners of war with food is an unnecessary act of humanity."
The notes on the conference held in Rowno from the 26th to the 28th of August 1942, which were discovered in defendant Rosenberg's files, state: "The object of our work is to make the Ukrainians work for Germany; - we are not here to make these people happy. The Ukraine can give us what is lacking in Germany.
This object must be achieved irrespective of losses."
Following the directives of the defendant Goering, the local authorities plundered the population of the occupied territories mercilessly and to the fullest. An order discovered at a number of places in the Kurst and Orel districts by units of the Red Army contains a list of property to be handed over to the military authorities. Things like scales, sacks, salt, lamps, saucepans, oilcloth, blinds, and gramaphones with records are mentioned in the order. "All this property," the order states, "must be delivered to the Kommandatur. These guilty of infringing this order will be shot." DESTRUCTION AND PLUNDER OF CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC TREASURES, MONASTERIES, CHURCHES, AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS FOR RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES.
In their burning hate of the Soviet people and its culture, the German usurpers destroyed scientific and artistic institutions, historical and cultural monuments, schools and hospitals, clubs and theaters.
"No historic or artistic treasures in the East", Field Marshal Reichenau decreed in his order, "are of any importance".
The destruction of historical and cultural treasures carried out by the Hitlerites assumed vast proportaions. Thus, in a letter of 20 September 1941, from the Plenipotentiary General for Byelorussia to Rosenberg it is stated:
"According to the report of the major of the 707th Division, who today handed over to me the remaining treasures, the SS men left the rest of the pictures and works of art to be plundered by the armed forces, these included extremely valuable pictures and furniture dating from the 18th and 19th Centuries, vases, marble sculptures, etc.
The History Museum was also completely destroyed. From the geographical section, valuable, precious, and semi-precious stones were looted. In the university scientific instruments to a total value of hundreds of thousands of marks were senselessly smashed or stolen.
In the territory of those districts of the Moscow province, which were temporarily occupied by the Fascists, the occupants destroyed and looted 112 libraries, four museums and fifty-four theatres and cinemas. The Hitlerites looted and burnt the Famous museum at Borodino, whose historical relics per-taining to the Patriotic War of 1812 are particularly dear to the Russian people.
In the village of Polotnyanny Zavod the occupants looted and burnt Pushkin's house, which had been turned into a museum. The Germand destroyed manuscripts, books, and pictures which had belonged to Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyona. The German barbarians desecrated the grave of the great author.
The occupants looted the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences with its extremely rare collections of historic documents and books which were kept ther, and destroyed hundreds of schools, clubs, and theatres in Byelorussia.
From the Pavlovsk Palace in the town of Slutzk, the very valuable palace furniture, made by the most outstanding craftsmen of the 18th Century, was removed to Germany. From the Peterhof Palaces the Germans removed all the sculptured and carved ornamentations, carpets, pictures, and statues. The Great Palace of Peterhof, dating back to the reign of Peter I, was barbarously burnt after it had been looted.
The German vandals destroyed the State Public Library at Odessa, containing over 2,000,000 volumes.
At Tchernigov a famous collection of Ukranian antiquities was looted. At the Kievo-Petersk Monastery the Germans seized documents from the archives of the Metropolitans of Keiv and books from the private library of Peter Mogilla, who had collected very valuable works of world literature. They looted the very valuable colloections of the museums of Lvov and Odessa, and removed to Germany or partially destroyed the treasures of the libraries of Vinnitza and Poltava, where extremely rare copies of mediaeval literary manuscripts, the first printed editions of the 16th and the 12th centuries and ancient church books, were kept.
The wholesale blunder in the occupied regions of the USSR, carried out on the barbaric orders of the German Government, was not only directed by the defendants Goering and Rosenberg and by the various staffs and detachments subordinated to them, but the Ministry for Foreign Affairs with the Defendant Ribbentrop at its head, also took part in this through a special organization.
The statement by Obersturmfuehrer Dr. Norman Foerster of the 4th company of the Special Purposes Battalion of the Waffen SS, published by the press at the time, bears witness to this.
In his tesitmony, Foerster stated:
"In August 1941, while I was in Berlin, through the help of my old acquaintance at the University of Berlin, Dr. Focke, who was working in the Press Division of the Ministre for Foreign Affairs, I was detached from the 87th Antitank Battalion and assigned to the Special Purposes Battalion of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This battalion was formed on the initiative of Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, and acted under his direction. The task of the Special Purpose Battalion consisted of seizing immediately, after the fall of large cities, cultural and historical treasures and the libraries of institutions of learning, and in selecting valuable editions of books and films and then sending all these to Germany. And further:
"We obtained righ trophies in the library of the Ukranian Acedemy of Science, where very rare manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian, and Chinese literature, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles; and the first copies of books printed by the first Russian printer, Ivan Fedorov; and rare editions of works by Shevtchenko, Mitzkevitch, and Ivan Franko were kept."
Side by side with the barbarous destruction and looting of villages, towns, and national cultural monuments, the Hitlerites also mocked at the religious feelings of the believers amont the Soviet population.
They burnt, looted, destroyed, and desecrated on Soviet territory 1,670 Greek-Orthodox churches, 237 Romen Catholic churches, sixty-nine chapels, 532 synagogues, and 258 other buildings belonging to religious institutions.
They destroyed the Uspensky church of the famous Kievo-Petchersky Monastery, built in 1073, and with it eight monastery buildings.
At Tchernigov, the German Fascist armies destroyed the ancient Borisoglebski Cathedral, built at the beginning of the 12th Centruy; the Cathedral of the Efrosiniev Manastery of Polotzk, built in 1160, and the Church of Paraskeva-Piatnize-in-the-Market, a very valuable monument of 12th Century Russian achitecture.
At Novgorog, the Antoniev, Khutynski Zverin, Derevyanitzki, and other ancient monasteries, the famous church of Spas-Nereditza, and a series of other churches were destroyed by the Hitlerites.
The German soldiers *ooffed at the religious feelings of the people. They dressed up in church vestments, kept horses and dogs in the churches, and made bunks out of the ikons.
In the ancient Staritzki Monastery, units of the Red Army found the unclother corpses of tortured Red Army prisoners of war stacked up in piles.
The damage done to the Soviet Union as the result of the destructive and predatory activities of German army units is extremely great.
The German armies and occupation authorities, carrying out the orders of the criminal Hitlerite Government and of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, destroyed and looted Soviet towns and villages; industrial establishments and collective farms taken by them; destroyed works of art; demolished, stole, and removed to Germany machinery, stocks of raw and other materials and finished goods, art and historic treasures; and carried out the general plundering of the urban and rural population. In the territories of the Soviet Union, which suffered occupation, 88,000,000 persons lived before the war; gross industrial production amounted to forty-six billion roubles at the fixed Government prices of 1926-27; there were 109,000,000 head of livestock, including 31,000,000 head of cattle and 12,000,000 horses, 71,000,000 hectares of cultivated land, and 132,000 kilometres of railway lines.
The German Fascist invaders completely or partially destroyed or burnt 1,710 towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets; burnt or destroyed over 6,000,000 buildings; and rendered some 25,000,000 persons homeless. Among the damaged towns which suffered most were the biggest industrial and cultural centers of Stalingrad, Sebastopol, Leningrad, Keiv, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Oral, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, and many others.
The German Fascist invaders destroyed 31,850 industrial establishments employing some 4,000,000 workers; they destroyed or removed from the country 239,000 electric motors and 175,000 metal-cutting machines.
The Germans destroyed 65,000 kilometers of railway lines, 4,100 railway stations, 36,000 post and telegraph offices, telephone exchanges, and other communication installations.
The Germans destroyed or devastated 40,000 hospitals and other medical institutions, 84,000 technical and other schools, universitites and research institutes, and 43,000 public libraries.
The Hitlerites destroyed and looted 98,000 collective farms, 1,876 state farms, and 2,890 machine and tractor stations, they slaughtered, took, or drove into Germany 7,000,000 horses, 17,000,000 head of cattle, 20,000,000 pigs, 27,000,000 sheep and goats, and 110,000,000 head of poultry.
The total damage caused to the Soviet Union by the criminal acts of the Hitlerite armies has been placed at a figure of 679 billion roubles at the Government prices of 1941.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY All the Defendants prepared, organized and perpetrated indescribable and blasphemous crimes, such as have never before been committed in history, against humanity and against the principles of human ethics and of international law.
In the statement of the offense in Count IV of the Indictment, it is rightly pointed out that the very plan or conspiracy was organized also for committing crimes against humanity.
The Fascist conspirators started committing crimes against humanity from the moment of the formation of the Hitler Party.
These crimes attained vast proportions after the coming to power of the Hitlerites.
The concentration camp of Buchenwald, set up in 1933, and that at Dachau, founded in 1934, turned out to be only the anaemic prototypes of Maidanek, Auschwitz, Slavuta, and numerous death camps set up by the Hitlerites in the territories of Latvia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine.
The very coming to power of the Hitlerites was marked by many provocations which served as an excuse for committing grave crimes against humanity.
Inflicting revengeful punishments without due process of law by the Hitlerites upon all who did not share the "ideology" of the Fascist clique became quite widespread.
"We deny the protection of law to the enemies of the people.
We National Socialists knowingly take a stand against false soft heartedness and false humaneness.
We do not recognize tricky lawyers sophistry and cunning juridical subtilities," wrote Goering as early as 1934 in an article published overseas in the Hearst Press.
In one of the articles dated 1933 Goering regarded it as his special merit that he had reorganized the entire management of the Gestapo, having placed the Secret Police under his immediate control and organized concentration camps to be used in fighting political opponents.
"Thus," spoke Goering, "arose the concentration camps in which we soon had to stick thousands of workers belonging to the Communist and Social-Democratic Party machines."
At the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution are the notes of Martin Bormann, found in the archives of the German Foreign Office, and captured by the Soviet troops in Berlin, on the conference held by Hitler on 2 October, 1940.
This document refers to occupied Poland.
It will be submitted to the Tribunal. At the moment I shall only quote from it a few points of the Hitlerite leadership program.
The conference started with the statement by Frank that his activities as Governor General could be considered very successful:
the Jews in Warsaw and other cities were locked up in ghettos.
"Very soon Cracow will be entirely cleared of Jews. There must be no Polish landlords," the document went on to state.
"Wherever they may be, they must be exterminated, no matter how brutal this may sound.
"All representatives of the Polish intelligentsia must be exterminated.
This sounds brutal, but such is the law of life.
Priests will be paid by us and, as a result, they will preach what we want.
If we find a priest acting otherwise we will make short work of him.
The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-witted.
This is entirely in our interests.
The lowest German workman and the lowest German peasant must always stand above any Pole economically."
A special place among the unheard of crimes of the Hitlerites is occupied by the bloody butchery of the Slavonic and Jewish peoples.
Hitler said to Rauschning:
"After all these centuries of whining about the protection of the poor and the lowly, it is about time we decided to protect the strong against the inferior.
It will be one of the chief tasks of German statesmanship for all times to prevent by every means in our power the further increase of the Slav races.
Natural instincts bid all living beings not merely to conquer their enemies but destroy them.
In former days it was the victor's prerogative to destroy entire tribes, entire peoples."
If your Honors please, you have already heard the testimony of the witness Erich von den Bach-Zelewsky about Himmler's aims, as given by him in his speech at the beginning of 1941.
In answer to a question by a representative of the Soviet Prosecution, the witness declared, "In Himmler's speech it was mentioned that it was necessary to cut down the number of Slavs by 30 million."
You see by this what monstrous proportions the criminal ideas of the Hitlerite fanatics attained.
The Hitlerites vented their ferocity particularly on the Soviet intelligentsia.
Even before the attack on the USSR, directives were prepared regarding the merciless annihilation of Soviet people for political and racial reasons.
In Appendix 2 to Operational Order No. 8 of the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated the 17th of June, 1941, it was stated, "It is above all essential to ascertain the identity of all prominent government and party officials, particularly professional activists and revolutionaries, persons working for the Comintern, all influential members of the Communist Party of the USSR and the affiliated organizations in the Central Committee and the district and regional committees, all people's commissars and their deputies, all former political commissars in the Red Army, leading personalities of the state institutions of the central and middle administrative levels, leading personalities in economic life, the Soviet Russian intelligentsia and all Jews."
In a directive of the 17th of June, 1941, for Security Police and SD detachments, it is pointed out that it is necessary to take such measures, not only against the Russian people, but also against the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Azerbaidzhianians, Armenians, Georgians, Turks and other nationalities.
The Soviet Prosecution will present to the Tribunal actual documents and facts in this connection.
The Fascist conspirators planned the extermination to the last man of the Jewish population of the world, and carried out this extermination throughout the whole of their conspiratorial activity from 1933 onwards.
My American colleague has already quoted Hitler's statement of the 24th of February, 1942, that "the Jews will be annihilated."
In a speech by the Defendant Frank, published in the "Cracow Gazette" on the 18th of August, 1942, it is stated:
"Anyone who passes through Cracow, Lvov , Warsaw, Radom, or Lublin today must in all fairness admit that the efforts of the German administration have been crowned with real success, as one now hardly sees any Jews."
The bestial annihilation of the Jewish population took place in the Ukraine, in Byelorussia, and in the Baltic States.
In the town of Riga some 80,000 Jews lived before the German occupation.
At the moment of the liberation of Riga by the Red Army there were 140 Jews left there.
It is impossible to enumerate in an opening statement the crimes committed by the Defendants against humanity.
The Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal considerable documentary material which will be presented to the Tribunal.
If your Honors please, I am appearing here as the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which bore the main weight of the attack of the Fascist invaders and which contributed on an enormous scale to the smashing of Hitlerite Germany and its satellites.
On behalf of the Soviet Union, I charge the Defendants on all the counts enumerated in Article VI of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
Together with the Chief Prosecutors of the United States of America, Great Britain and France, I charge the Defendants with having prepared and carried out a perfidious attack on the peoples of my country and on all freedom-loving nations.
I accuse them of the fact, that, having initiated a world war, they, in violation of the fundamental rules of international law and of the treaties to which they were signatories, turned war into an instrument of extermination of peaceful citizens; an instrument of plunder, violence and pillage.
I accuse the Defendants of the fact that, having proclaimed themselves to be the representatives of the "Master Race," a thing which they have invented, they set up, wherever their domination spread, an arbitrary regime of tyranny; a regime founded on the disregard for the elementary principles of humanity.
Now, when as a result of the heroic straggle of the Red Army and of the Allied Forces, Hitlerite Germany is broken and overwhelmed, we have no right to forget the victims who have suffered.
We have no right to leave unpunished these who organized and were guilty of monstrous crimes.
In the name of the sacred memory of millions of innocent victims of the Fascist terror, for the sake of the consolidation of peace throughout the world, for the sake of the future security of nations, we are presenting the Defendants a just and complete bill which must be paid.
This is a bill on behalf of all mankind, a bill backed by the will and the conscience of all freedom-loving nations.
May justice be done.
THE PRESIDENT:General Rudenko, your Delegation will be prepared to go on after the adjournment, will you not?
GENERAL RUDENKO:I would prefer that there should now be an adjournment.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you mean an adjournment altogether for the day or--what the Tribunal proposed now was to adjourn now for ten or fifteen minutes, then continue until five o'clock.
Would that not be convenient to you?
GENERAL RUDENKO:All right: yes, sir.
(A recess was taken.)
GENERAL RUDENKO:If it please your Honors, Colonel Kareyev will report on the order of submitting the documents to the Tribunal.
COLONEL S. D. KAREYEV:The Soviet Prosecution begins its presentation of evidence on all counts of the Indictment.
The Tribunal is already familiar with the large number of documents presented on behalf of the Prosecution by our honorable American, British and French colleagues.
On its part the Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal numerous documents relating to the criminal activities of the Fascist conspirators.
In connection with Count I, dealing with the Crimes against Peace, we will submit the following types of documents:
administrative regulations by the German authorities, orders and plans by the German Military Command, diaries and personal files of several of the leaders of the Fascist Party and German Government, as well as other documents.
These documents were found by units of the Red Army on German soldiers and officers, or were discovered in concentration camps and in the offices of German authorities.
In connection with Counts II and III, that is, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, we will offer in evidence, in the first place the communiques and the official reports of the Extraordinary Government Commission for the Determination and Investigation of Crimes Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices.
This Commission was set up by the decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet ox the USSR, dated 2 November 1942.
For field work there were set up Republican, Regional. District Municipal Commissions to assist the work of the Extraordinary Government Commission for the Dertimination and Investigation of the Crimes Committed by the German FascistInvaders. Both the central office, as well as the field offices of the Extraordinary State Commission, were composed of prominent statesmen and representatives of different public, research, and cultural organizations, as well as religious denominations.
The Extraordinary State Commission, through its representatives, for whose assistance representatives of local groups and local state authorities were called in, had collected and checked data and drew up protocols on the atrocities of the German invaders and the damage caused to the Soviet Union and its citizens.
Counting only the crimes committed by the German fascist monsters against peacful citizens, 54,784 protocols were drawn up. In accordance with Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, these protocols unquestionably represent admissible evidence. Of all these protocols of the Extraordinary State Commission, only a small number will at present be submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution.
In the possession of the Soviet Prosecution are also photographs showing the atrocities and destruction committed by the German invaders in the territorities of the USSR they had temporarily occupied. Part of these photographs will be submitted to the Tribunal. Several documentary films will be offered to the Tribunal in evidence by the Soviet Prosecution.
In submitting evidence relating to war crimes committed by the conspirators, the Soviet Prosecution mil also use several German documents photographs and films which were captured from the Germans. The Soviet Prosecution will also submit evidence relative to crimes committed by the defendants and their accomplices against Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia, Among this evidence special mention must be made of the official report be the Czechoslovakian Government entitled "German Crimes against Czechoslovakia." This report was prepared on the direction of the Czechoslovakian Government by the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Dr. Boguslav Echer, the representative of Czechoslovakia in the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.