Sixtieth Day:
Friday, 15th February, 1946 [Page 59]
Top Secret.
The Fuehrer has been informed that certain members of
the Wehrmacht who took part in fighting against
bandits..."
In this connection the Fuehrer ordered:
The troops therefore have the right and the duty to use,
in this fight, any means, even against women and
children, provided they are conducive to success."
These principles must serve as a basis for operations
against bandits in the East.
2. No German participating in action against bandits or
their associates is to be held responsible for acts of
violence either from a disciplinary or a judicial point
of view.
Commanders of troops engaged in action against the
bandits are obliged to see to it that all officers of
units under their command be immediately and thoroughly
notified of this order, that their legal advisers be
immediately acquainted therewith, and that no judgements
be passed which are in
contradiction thereto.
/s/Keitel." [Page 60]
2. Special education by the Hitler Leadership of
criminal units for the practical realisation of its
plans for the mass extermination of entire races.
3. General unleashing of the criminals' basest instincts
in an atmosphere of complete impunity for the
perpetrators of the crimes.
SETTING UP OF THE FASCIST REGIME OF TERROR
I should like to show exactly what Keitel's order for the
"pacification" of the occupied territories meant in the life
of the peaceful population.
The introduction of this regime of terror was the first sign
of the arrival of the fascist authorities, whether military
or civilian, in the territory of the USSR or of other
Eastern European countries.
Moreover, this regime of terror was not exclusively confined
to more savage forms of brutality. It also assumed the form
of shameless outrages perpetrated against the honour and
dignity of the victims of the German fascists. The
terrorists first committed their crimes against such
citizens whom they considered politically active and most
capable of resisting them.
In confirmation of this fact I refer to a document which I
have previously presented to the Tribunal as Exhibit USSR 6,
which is a report of the Extraordinary State Commission on
"Crimes Committed by the Germans on the Territory of the
Lvov Region". The Tribunal will find the passage to which I
am referring on Page 58 of the document book, in the last
paragraph:-
[Page 61]
B. O. Galtsman, an inhabitant of Lvov, has testified before
the Special Commission that he personally saw how, in July,
1941.
While lifting the corpses from the pit we found the
documents of Professor Ostrovsky, of the Doctor of
Natural Science, Otoshek, and of Professor of the
Polytechnical Institute, Kasimir Bartel.
The investigation established that during the first
few months of the occupation the Germans arrested or
killed over seventy of the most prominent scientists,
technologists and artists in the city of Lvov.'"
But one of the characteristic features of Hitlerite
terrorism was the fact that it was decreed by the German
fascist leaders and carried out by the executioners as a
general reign of terror.
To confirm this I refer to a document previously submitted
to the Tribunal but not read into the record. It is Exhibit
USSR 63, which is a report of the Extraordinary State
Commission for the Investigation of German Atrocities in the
town of Kerch.
Kerch is a comparatively small town. It is distant from Lvov
by many hundred kilometres. The German invaders arrived in
Lvov in the beginning of July, 1941, but only reached Kerch
in November. By January, 1942, they had already been driven
out by Red Army units.
Thus the entire period of the first occupation of the town
of Kerch by the Germans did not last more than two months.
But here are the crimes perpetrated by the German fascists
in this town. The Tribunal will find the passage in question
on Page 227 of the document book, paragraph 5:-
[Page 62]
By the next order, No. 2, the Town-Council ordered the
inhabitants to register immediately all hens, ducks,
chickens, turkeys, geese, sheep, cows, calves and
cattle. Poultry owners were strictly prohibited from
using fowl and cattle for their own needs without
special permission of the German Commandant. After the
publication of these orders a wholesale search of all
apartments and houses began.
The members of the Gestapo behaved outrageously. For
each kilogram of beans or flour discovered in excess,
the head of the family was shot.
The Germans initiated their monstrous atrocities by
poisoning 245 children of school age."
Those who arrived at the square on 29 November were
persuaded that they had been summoned in order to be
sent to work. At noon over 7,000 people assembled in the
square. There were young boys, young girls, children of
all ages, very old men and pregnant women. All were
transferred to the city prison by the Gestapo.
A monstrous and treacherous extermination of the
peaceful population in the prison was carried out by the
Germans according to a previously formulated plan of the
Gestapo. First of all, the prisoners were asked to hand
over the keys of their apartments and to give their
exact addresses to the prison commandant. Then all their
valuables were taken from them, including watches, rings
and other trinkets.
In spite of the cold, boots, underclothing, shoes,
costumes and coats were removed from all the persons
incarcerated. Many women and girls in their teens were
separated from the rest of the internees by the fascist
blackguards and locked in separate cells, where the
unfortunate creatures were subjected to particularly
outrageous forms of torture. They were raped, their
breasts cut off, their stomachs ripped open, their feet
and hands cut off and their eyes gouged out.
After the Germans had been thrown out of Kerch, on 30
December, 1941, Red Army soldiers discovered, in the
prison yard, a formless mass of bodies of young girls,
naked, mutilated and unrecognisable, who had been
savagely and cynically tortured to death by the
fascists.
[Page 63]
When the Red Army entered Kerch, in January, 1942, the
Baguerovo ditch was investigated. It was discovered that
this ditch - 1 kilometre in length, 4 metres in width
and 2 metres in depth - was filled to overflowing with
bodies of women, children, old men, and boys and girls
in their teens. Near the ditch were frozen pools of
blood. Children's caps, toys, ribbons, torn-off buttons,
gloves, milk bottles and rubber comforters, small shoes,
golloshes together with torn-off hands, feet and other
parts of human bodies were lying nearby. Everything was
spattered with blood and brains.
The Fascist savages shot down the defenceless population
with dum-dum bullets. Near the edge of the ditch lay the
mutilated body of a young woman. In her arms was a baby
carefully wrapped
up in a white lace cover. Next to this woman lay an
eight-year-old girl and a boy of five, killed with dum-
dum bullets. Their small hands still gripped the
mother's dress."
Twenty-year-old Anatolyi Ignatievich Bondarenko, now a
soldier in the Red Army, states:-
Then, when the Germans went off to dinner, an inhabitant
of my village called from the ditch: 'Get up, those of
you who are still alive'. I got up and the two of us
began to drag out the living from underneath the
corpses. I was covered with blood. A light mist hung
over the ditch - steam arising from the rapidly
congealing mass of dead bodies, from the pools of blood
and from the last breath of the dying. We dragged out
Theodor Naoumenko and my father, but my father had been
killed outright by a dum-dum bullet in the heart. Late
at night I reached the house of some friends in the
village of Baguerovo and stayed with them until the
arrival of the Red Army." [
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(Part 5 of 8)
"Contents: Anti-partisan Warfare.
My colleague, Colonel Pokrovsky, Mr. President, explained to
the Tribunal yesterday that any resistance movement on the
part of the peaceful population was termed "banditry". I
will therefore not detain the Tribunal's attention any
longer in an attempt to decode this German-fascist term -
"were later called to account for their behaviour while so
fighting."
"If the repression of the bandits in the East, as well
as in the Balkans, is not pursued with the most brutal
means, it will not be long before the forces at our
disposal will prove insufficient to exterminate this
plague.
I emphasise that the directive mentions all possible means
of retribution against women and children. I continue to
quote:-
"Scruples, of any sort whatsoever, are a crime against
the German people and against the front-line soldier who
bears the consequences of attacks by bandits and who
cannot understand why any regard should be shown to them
or their associates.
I hereby conclude the presentation of the documents
referring to the first two sections of the list read into
the record at the opening of the report. The documents which
I have hitherto submitted to the Tribunal were to prove
three facts:-
1. Direct instigation, by the major criminals, to the
perpetration of appalling
These purposes were fully achieved by the major war
criminals. The Hitlerites committed crimes against the
peaceful populations in the occupied territories of the
Soviet Union and in the Eastern occupied countries which, in
their extent, in the cruelty of the methods applied, as well
as in the cynicism and brutality of purpose of the
organisers and perpetrators of the crimes, are without
precedent in the history of the world.
"Even before the seizure of Lvov the Gestapo detachments
had at their disposal, pursuant to an order by the
German Government lists of the most prominent
representatives of the intelligentsia doomed a priori to
annihilation. Mass arrests and executions began
immediately after the seizure of Lvov. The Gestapo
arrested a member of the Union of Soviet Authors, an
author of numerous literary works, Professor Thaddeus
Boi-Yelensky; a Professor of the Medical Institute,
Roman Renzky; the Principal of the University, Professor
of Forensic Medicine, Vladimir Seradsky; Doctor of
Jurisprudence, Roman Longsham-de-Berye, together with
his three sons, Professor Thaddeus Ostrovsky, Professor
Jan Grek, Professor of Surgery, Heinrich Hilrevich ..."
There follows a long list containing thirty-one names of
outstanding intellectuals of the town of Lvov. I omit the
enumeration of their names and continue quoting from the
next paragraph:-
"F. B. Groer, Professor at the Medical Institute at
Lvov, who fortunately escaped death, has told the
Commission what follows:-
In order to outrage dignity, the Germans resorted to the
most refined methods of torture and then shot their victims.
'When I was arrested at midnight of 5 July, 1941, and
placed in a truck, I met Professors Grek, Boi-
Yelensky and others. We were taken to the hostel of
the "Abragamovitch Theological College". While we
were led along the corridor the members of the
Gestapo jeered at us, hitting us with rifle butts,
pulling our hair and hitting us over the head. Later
on I saw, from the hostel of the Abragamovitch
Theological College, the Germans leading, under
escort, five professors, four of whom were carrying
the blood bespattered body of the son of the famous
professor Rouff, murdered by the Germans during his
interrogation. Young Rouff too had been a specialist.
The entire group of professors,
"Twenty people, including four professors, lawyers and
physicians, were brought by the S.S. into the courtyard
of House No. 8, in Artshevsky Street. One of them I knew
by name, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Kreps. Among them were
five or six women. The S.S. forced them to wash the
stairs leading from the seven entrances to the four-
storey house with their tongues, and after those
stairways were washed, the same people were forced to
collect garbage in the courtyard with their lips. All
garbage had to be transferred to one place in the
courtyard ..."
I omit the end of this paragraph and continue from the next
paragraph-
"The fascist invaders carefully concealed the
extermination of the intelligentsia. To repeated
requests of their relatives and friends concerning the
fate of these men of science, the Germans replied,
'Nothing is known.' In the autumn of 1943, on the order
of Reichsminister Himmler, the Hitlerites burned the
bodies of the murdered professors. Former internees of
the Yanovsky Camp, Mendel and Corn, who dealt with the
exhumation of the bodies, have told the Commission the
following:
What I have just said must not in any way be taken to infer
that the leaders of local organisations and representatives
of the intelligentsia alone were victims of the fascist
terror. I merely wanted to make it clear that the fascist
terror was directed in the first instance against these
people.
'During the night Of 5 October, 1943, acting on
orders from the Gestapo, we opened a pit between
Cadetskaya and Bouleskaya Streets by the light of
searchlights and took from it thirty-five bodies. We
burned all these corpses.
"After capturing the city in November, 1941, the
Hitlerites immediately issued an order to the following
effect:-
Later on you will see the small bodies of these children in
our documentary film. The infants' bodies were thrown into
the city moat.
"According to instructions issued by the German
Commandant, all the school children were ordered to
appear at the school at a given time. On arrival, the
245 children, school books in hand, were sent to a
factory school outside the town, allegedly for exercise.
There the cold and hungry infants were offered coffee
and poisoned pies. Since there was not enough coffee to
go round, those who did not get any were sent to the
infirmary where a German orderly smeared their lips with
a quick-acting poison. In a few minutes all the children
were dead. School children of the higher grades were
carried off in trucks and shot down by machine-gun fire
eight kilometres outside the town. The bodies of the
first batch of murdered children were brought to the
same spot - a very large, very long anti-tank trench."
I continue the quotation:-
"On the evening of 28 November, 1941, an order, No. 4,
of the Gestapo was posted in the town. In compliance
with this order the inhabitants who had previously been
registered with the Gestapo were to present themselves
on 29 November between o8oo hours and 1200 hours at the
Sermaya Square, with a three-days' supply of food. All
the men and women were to appear, regardless of their
age or state of health. Those who did not present
themselves were threatened with a public execution.
The circumstances of the executions are confirmed by the
statements of numerous witnesses who were lucky enough to
escape unharmed from the open grave. I am going to quote two
statements:
"When we were brought up to the anti-tank ditch and
lined up alongside this fearful grave, we still believed
that we had been fetched in order to fill in the ditch
with earth or to dig new ones. We did not think we had
been brought there to be shot, but when we heard the
first shots from the automatic guns trained on us, I
realised we were about to be murdered. I immediately
hurled myself into the ditch and hid between two
corpses. Thus, unharmed and half-fainting, I lay until
nearly evening. While lying in the ditch I heard several
of the wounded call to the gendarmes shooting them
'Finish me off, blackguard!' - 'You missed me,
scoundrel! Shoot again!