http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-14-46.asp
Nuremberg
Trial Proceedings Vol. 7
[…]
COL. POKROVSKY:
[…] This circumstance must be stressed so that the Tribunal may have a
perfectly clear picture of the food situation prevalent among Soviet
prisoners
of war in the various camps. Regardless of the
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14 Feb. 46
territory in
which the camp was located, all Soviet prisoners of war were exposed to
a
regime of hunger with the same sustained and systematic cruelty.
While I am thus
reporting on the Hitlerian atrocities perpetrated on the prisoners, I
find that
we now have at our disposal several court verdicts pronounced on the
fascist
criminals who committed their crimes in the temporarily occupied
territories.
In accordance with Article 21 of the Charter, I submit to the Tribunal
as
Exhibit Number USSR-87 (Document Number USSR-87) the verdict of a
district
military tribunal. You will find the entire verdict on Page 214 up to
Page 221.
It was pronounced in Smolensk, on 19 December 1945. The Tribunal
inflicted
penalties varying from 12 years hard labor to death by hanging, on 10
Hitlerites directly guilty of the numerous crimes committed in the city
and
region of Smolensk.
I shall not quote
the document, but shall merely mention that on Pages 4, 5, and 6 of the
verdict, in passages marked in your copies-these pages, that is, 4, 5,
and 6 of
the verdict, are to be found in your document book on Pages 218, 219,
and
222-information is contained how, as a result of pseudo-scientific
experiments
on prisoners of war by persons who, to the undying shame of German
medicine,
were known in Germany as professors and doctors, tortured and murdered
the prisoners
by blood poisoning. The sentence presents further evidence that, as a
result of
savage ill-treatment by the German escort conveying Soviet prisoners of
war,
some 10,000 exhausted, half-dead captives perished between Vyasma and
Smolensk.
It is precisely
this passage, this information, which you will find in Subparagraph 3
of the
verdict. It appears on Page 218 of your document book. The verdict
reflects the
systematic mass shooting of prisoners of war in Camp 126, in the city
of
Smolensk-'`in Transit Camp 126 South"-during the transfer of the
prisoners
to the camp and to the hospital. The verdict particularly emphasizes
the fact
that prisoners of war, too exhausted to work, were shot.
I should now like
to turn to the brutalities committed by the Hitlerites towards members
of the
Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Yugoslavian Armies. We
find, in the Indictment, that one of the most important criminal acts
for which
the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution
of Polish
prisoners of war, shot in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk by the German
fascist
invaders.
I
submit to the Tribunal, as a proof of this crone, official documents of
the
special commission for the establishment and the investigation of the
circumstances which attended the executions. The commission acted in
accordance
with a directive of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet
Union. In
addition to
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46
members
of the Extraordinary State Commission-namely Academicians Burdenko,
Alexis
Tolstoy, and the Metropolitan Nicolas- this commission was composed of
the
President of the Pan-Slavonia Committee, Lieutenant General Gundorov;
the
chairman of the Executive Committee of the Union of the Red Cross and
Red
Crescent, Kolesnikov; of the People's Commissar for Education in the
R.S.S.F.R., Academician Potemkin; the Supreme Chief of the Medical
Department
of the Red Army, General Smirnov; and the Chairman of the District
Executive
Committee of Smolensk, Melnikov. The commission also included several
of the
best known medicolegal experts.
It
would take too long to read into the record that precise and detailed
document
which I now submit to you as Exhibit Number USSR-54
(Document Number
USSR-54), which is a result of the investigation. I shall read into the
record
only a few comparatively short excerpts. On Page 2 of the document,
which is
Page 223 in your document book, we read-this passage is marked in your
file:
"According
to the estimates of medico-legal experts, the total number of bodies
amounts to
over 11,000. The medico-legal experts carried out a thorough
examination of
the bodies exhumed, and of the documents and material evidence found on
the
bodies and in the graves. During the exhumation and
examination of the
corpses, the commission questioned many witnesses among the local
inhabitants.
Their testimony permitted the determination of the exact time and
circumstances
of the crimes committed by the German invaders."
I
believe that I need not quote everything that the Extraordinary
Commission
ascertained during its investigation about the crimes of the Germans. I
only
read into the record the general conclusions, which. summarize the work
of the
commission. You will find the lines read into the record on Page 43 of
Exhibit
Number USSR-54 if you turn to the original document, or on Page. 264 of
your
document book:
"General
conclusions:
"On
perusal of all the material at the disposal of the special communion,
that is,
the depositions of over 100 witnesses questioned, the data of the
medico-legal
experts, the documents and the material evidence and belongings taken
from the
graves in Katyn Forest, we can arrive at the following definite
conclusions:
"1.
The Polish prisoners of war imprisoned in the three camps west of
Smolensk and
engaged in railway construction before the war, remained there after
the
occupation of Smolensk by the Germans, right up to September 1941.
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46
"2.
In the autumn of 1941, in Katyn Forest, the German occupational
authorities
carried out mass shootings of the Polish prisoners of war from the
above-mentioned camps.
"3.
Mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest were carried
out by
German military organizations disguised under the specific name, 'Staff
537,
Engineer Construction Battalion,' commanded by Oberleutnant Arnes and
his
colleagues, Oberleutnant Rex and Leutnant Hott.
"4.
In connection with the deterioration, for Germany, of the general
military and
political machinery at the beginning of 1943, the German
occupational
authorities, with a view to provoking incidents, undertook a whole
series of
measures to ascribe their own misdeeds to organizations of the Soviet
authorities, in order to make mischief between the Russians
and the Poles.
"5.
For these purposes:
"a.
The German fascist invaders, by persuasion, attempts at bribery,
threats, and
by barbarous tortures, endeavored to find 'witnesses' among the Soviet
citizens
from whom they obtained false testimony, alleging that the Polish
prisoners of
war had been shot by organizations of the Soviet authorities in the
spring of
1940.
"b.
The German occupational authorities, in the spring of 1943, brought
from other
places the bodies of Polish prisoners of war whom they had shot, and
laid them
in the turned up graves of Katyn Forest with the dual purpose of
covering up
the traces of their Own atrocities and of increasing the numbers of
'victims of
Bolshevist atrocities' in Katyn Forest. "c. While preparing their
provocative measures, the German occupational authorities employed up
to 500
Russian prisoners of war for the task of digging up the graves in Katyn
Forest.
Once the graves had been dug, the Russian prisoners of war were shot by
the
Germans in order to destroy thus all proof and material evidence on the
matter.
"6.
The date of the legal and medical examination determined,
without any shadow
of doubt:
"a.
That the time of shooting was autumn 1941.
"b.
The application by the German executioners, when shooting
Polish prisoners
of war, of the identical method-a pistol shot in the nape of the
neck-as used
by them in the mass murders of the Soviet citizens in other towns,
especially in Orel, Voronetz, Krasnodar and in Smolensk itself."
THE
PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now recess.
[The
Tribunal recessed until 1400 Hours.]
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14 Feb.
46
Afternoon Session
COL.POKROVSKY:
Point 7 of the general conclusions of the Extraordinary State
Commission of the
Soviet Union, on which I reported in the preceding session, states:
"The
conclusions reached, after studying the affidavits and medico-legal
examinations concerning the shooting of Polish military prisoners of
war by
Germans in the autumn of 1941, fully confirmed the material evidence
and
documents discovered in the Katyn graves.
"8.
By shooting the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest, the German
fascist
invaders consistently realized their policy for the physical
extermination of
the Slav peoples."
Here
follow the signatures of all the members of the Commission.
The
Katyn massacres did not exhaust the Hitler crimes against the soldiers
of the
Polish Army. In
the report of the Polish Government, submitted by me to the Tribunal as
Exhibit
Number USSR-93 (Document Number USSR-93), we find a series of proofs
confirming
the breach by the Hitlerite conspirators of the elementary rules of
international law governing the customs and laws of war; on Page 36 of
this
report by the Polish Government-it is on Page 285 of your document
book-we
find, as an outstanding part of the material collected, the
ill-treatment of
prisoners of war and their extermination. It is said in the report-and
I quote:
"As and when
the Polish officers and other ranks returned from German
prisoner-of-war camps,
we learn further details concerning conditions prevailing in the German
camps.
All these details undeniably prove the existence of a line of policy,
instructions, and orders concerning the Polish prisoners of war.
Ill-treatment,
hardship, and inhuman conditions were of common occurrence. Murders and
grievous bodily injuries were frequently encountered. A few examples
confirmed
by witnesses under oath are submitted later on."
I take the
liberty of reading into the record some of the examples quoted in the
Polish
report. As a first example, I shall quote the description of an
incident which
occurred in a temporary prisoner-of-war camp in the city of Belsk. This
material figures on Page 285 of your document book:
"On 10
October 1939 the camp commandant assembled all the prisoners and
ordered those
who had joined the Polish Army as volunteers to raise their hands.
Three
prisoners obeyed his order. They were immediately led out of the rank
and
placed at a distance of 25 meters from a detachment of German soldiers
armed
with machine guns. The commandant gave the
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