Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-06-58.16
Last-Modified: 1997/10/21

COLONEL POKROVSKY: On Page 115 of the document book you will
find the excerpt I am about to quote from the testimony of
Citizeness P.Y. BulytchyevA.

     "P.Y. Bulytchyova, born in the city of Kerch in 1894,
     testified:
     
     'I witnessed how our Red Army prisoners of war, both
     soldiers and officers, were repeatedly driven along the
     street, and how the weak and wounded were shot out of
     hand by Germans in the street itself when, through
     sheer debility, they fell out of the ranks. Many times
     I witnessed this terrible scene. Once, in the freezing
     cold, I saw a group of exhausted, ragged and barefooted
     prisoners driven along. Those who attempted to snatch
     the pieces of bread thrown to them by the citizens were
     beaten up with rubber truncheons and rifle butts. Those
     who fell under the blows were promptly shot.'"
     
I am omitting a few sentences which, in my opinion, need not
be read into the record.

     "At the time of the second occupation, when the Germans
     broke into Kerch again, they began to avenge themselves
     with even greater fury on perfectly innocent people."
     
The witness testifies that the Fascist butchers first of all
avenged themselves on the military personnel and that they
beat wounded soldiers to death with rifle butts.

On the same page you will find the following excerpt:

     "The prisoners of war were driven into large buildings,
     which were then set on fire. Thus, the Voikov school
     was burned down, together with the Club for Engineering
     and Technical Workers, where were 400 soldiers and
     officers of the Red Army.
     
     Not a man succeeded in escaping from the burning
     building. All those who attempted to save themselves
     were mowed down by machine gun fire. Wounded soldiers
     were savagely tortured to death in the small fishing
     village of Mayak."
     
Another woman witness who lived in this village, A. P.
Buryatchenko, testified:

     "On 28th May, 1942, the Germans shot all the peaceful
     inhabitants who had remained in the village and had not
     succeeded in hiding. The Fascist monsters mocked the
     wounded Soviet prisoners of war, beat them with rifle
     butts, and then shot them. In my home, the Germans
     discovered a girl in military uniform, who resisted the
     Fascists, crying: 'Shoot, you vipers, I die for the
     Soviet people and for Stalin, but you, you monsters,
     will die a dog's death.' This girl patriot was shot out
     of hand."
     
                                                  [Page 331]
                                                            
There is, in the district of Kerch, the stone quarry of
Adjimushkaisk. Red Army soldiers were exterminated and
poisoned by gas. N. N. Dashkova, a woman from the village of
Adjimushkaisk, testified:

     "I myself saw the Germans -- who had caught about 900
     Red Army soldiers in the quarry -- first ill-treat and
     then shoot them. The Fascists used gas."

I omit several sentences. On the same page, 115, you will
find the following quotation:

     "At the time of the occupation a camp for Soviet
     prisoners of war, housing over 1,000 captives, was set
     up in the `Engels' Club. The Germans ill-treated them,
     fed them only once a day, drove them off to heavy
     labour beyond their strength and shot out of hand all
     those who, exhausted, fell by the road."
     
I consider it essential to quote a few more testimonies:

N.J. Shumilova, a woman from the hamlet of Gorki, testified:

     "I myself saw a group of prisoners of war being led
     past my courtyard. Three of them were unable to move
     and were promptly shot by the German escort."
     
P.I. Gerassimenko, a woman living in the hamlet of
Samostroy, testified:

     "Many Red Army soldiers and officers were driven to our
     village. The area which they occupied was surrounded by
     barbed wire. Here, naked and barefoot, they perished
     from cold and hunger. They were kept in the most
     frightful and inhuman conditions. By the side of the
     living lay the bodies of the dead, and these bodies
     were not moved for days on end. Such conditions
     rendered life in the camp still more intolerable. The
     prisoners were beaten with rifle butts, flogged by the
     lash and fed on refuse. Any inhabitant who attempted to
     give food and bread to the prisoners was beaten up,
     while prisoners attempting to take these gifts were
     shot."
     
In a Kerch school, No. 24, the Germans set up a camp for
prisoners of war. A.N. Naumova, a school teacher, testified
as follows concerning the regime in the camp:

     "There were many wounded in the camp. These unhappy
     people, though bleeding profusely, were left without
     any help. I collected medicine and bandages for the
     wounded, and their wounds were dressed by a medical
     orderly from amongst the captives. The prisoners
     suffered from dysentery since they were fed hog-wash
     instead of bread. People dropped from exhaustion and
     disease; they died in agony. On 20th June, 1942, three
     prisoners of war were given the lash for attempting to
     escape from the camp. The wounded were shot. In June
     one of the escaped prisoners was caught and executed."
     
Koshenikove, a teacher in the "Stalin" School, in the area
of the factory-kitchen and Voikov works, witnessed the
execution of a group of Red Army men and officers.

In 1943 the German criminals drove Red Army prisoners all
the way from the Caucasus. The entire road from the ferry
to the town, a distance of some 18 to 20 kilometres, was
littered with the dead bodies of Red Army men. There were
many sick and wounded among the prisoners of war. Whoever
was unable to walk, either through exhaustion or sickness,
was shot on the way.

Among other facts there is one which deserves special
attention:

In 1942 the Fascists threw 100 Red Army prisoners of war,
alive, into the village well of Adjimushkay; their bodies
were subsequently extracted by the

                                                  [Page 332]
                                                            
inhabitants and buried in a communal grave in the sacred
brotherhood of death.

This information is contained in the same report, extracts
of which I have just quoted to you.

On 29th January, 1946, the witness, Paul Roser, was
interrogated here, before the Tribunal. He testified that in
the course of four months, out of 10,000 Russians, whom he
had seen as prisoners of war in the German camp at the city
of Ravva-Ruskaya, only 2,000 remained alive.

We possess evidence from yet another eye-witness of the
numerous atrocities and endless tortures inflicted on the
prisoners of war at Ravva-Ruskaya.

Witness V.S. Kotchan, who was duly interrogated according to
the procedure prescribed by our laws, testified before the
Captain of the Guard of Justice, Ryzhov, on 27th September,
1944 (the minutes of his interrogation are hereby submitted
to you as Exhibit USSR 6(b):

     "I worked under the Germans, as a navvy, at the Red
     Army prisoner of war camp from December, 1941 to April,
     1942."
     
I omit a few lines irrelevant to the matter, and I quote
further:

     "This camp was set up by the Germans in the barracks
     near the railway. The entire area of the camp was
     surrounded by barbed wire. According to personal
     statements by the prisoners of war, the Germans drove
     from 12,000 to 15,000 men into this camp. While we were
     working, we watched the Germans ill-treating the Red
     Army prisoners of war. They fed them once a day on
     unpeeled, frozen potatoes, baked in their skins and
     covered with dirt. They kept the prisoners of war in
     the cold barracks all through the winter.
     
     I know for a fact that when the Germans drove the
     prisoners of war into this camp, all clothes,
     overcoats, boots and shoes which were at all
     serviceable were taken from them, leaving them barefoot
     and in rags. They were taken to work daily under escort
     from 4 to 5 in the morning and kept working until 10
     o'clock at night. Then, worn out, cold and hungry, the
     prisoners were marched back to their barracks where
     doors and windows had purposely been left open all day,
     so that the frost might enter these barracks and freeze
     them to death. In the morning, under the supervision of
     German soldiers, hundreds of corpses would be taken
     away in a tractor by the prisoners of war, where they
     were buried in previously prepared pits in the forest
     of Volkovitch. When the prisoners were marched off to
     work in the morning, under escort, the Germans would
     place a detachment of soldiers armed with rifles and
     stakes by the gates leaving from the camp; they
     poleaxed them with stakes, stabbed them with bayonets
     and chased the hungry and exhausted prisoners who were
     unable to move properly."
     
     The German camp administration brought out completely
     naked prisoners of war, bound them with ropes to a wall
     surrounded by barbed wire and kept them there, in the
     cold of the December winter, until they froze to death.
     The air of the camp resounded continually with the
     groans and cries of people maimed by rifle butts. Some
     were poleaxed with rifle butts on the spot.
     
     When, starving and exhausted, the prisoners were
     brought to the camp, they would hurl themselves on a
     heap of rotten and frozen potatoes. This, in turn,
     would be followed by a shot from the German escort."

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