The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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From the first day of launching their attack on Soviet
territory the Nazi conspirators, in accordance with their
detailed plans, began to carry out the destruction of
cities, towns and villages, the demolition of factories,
collective farms, electric stations and railroads, the
robbery and barbaric devastation of the natural cultural
institutions of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., the devastation
of museums, churches, historic monuments, and mass
deportation of the Soviet citizens for slave labour to
Germany, as well as the annihilation of old people, women
and children, especially Byelo-Russians and Ukrainians. The
exter-

                                                   [Page 10]

mination of Jews was committed throughout the territory of
the Soviet Union.

The above-mentioned criminal offences were perpetrated by
the German troops in accordance with the orders of the Nazi
Government and the General Staff and High Command of the
German Armed Forces.

7. Collaboration with Italy and Japan and aggressive war
against the United States : November, 1936, to December,
1941

After the initiation of the Nazi wars of aggression the Nazi
conspirators brought about a German-Italian-Japanese ten-
year military-economic alliance signed at Berlin on 27th
September, 1940. This agreement, representing a
strengthening of the bonds among those nations, established
by the earlier but more limited pact of 25th November, 1936,
stated: " The Governments of Germany, Italy and Japan,
considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace
that all nations of the world be given each its own proper
place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one
another in regard of their efforts in Greater East Asia and
regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime
purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things
calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of
the peoples concerned." The Nazi conspirators conceived that
Japanese aggression would weaken and handicap those nations
with which they were at war, and those with whom they
contemplated war. Accordingly, the Nazi conspirators
exhorted Japan to seek "a new order of things." Taking
advantage of the wars of aggression then being waged by the
Nazi conspirators, Japan commenced an attack on 7th
December, 1941, against the United States of America at
Pearl Harbour and the Philippines, and against the British
Commonwealth of Nations, French Indo-China and the
Netherlands in the South-west Pacific. Germany declared war
against the United States on 11th December, 1941.

(G) WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY COMMITTED IN THE
COURSE OF EXECUTING THE CONSPIRACY FOR WHICH THE
CONSPIRATORS ARE RESPONSIBLE:

1.Beginning with the initiation of the aggressive war on 1st
September, 1939, and throughout its extension into wars
involving almost the entire world, the Nazi conspirators
carried out their Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage war in
ruthless and complete disregard and violation of the laws
and customs of war. In the course of executing the Common
Plan or Conspiracy, there were committed the War Crimes
detailed hereinafter in Count Three of this Indictment.

2. Beginning with the initiation of their plan to seize and
retain total control of the German State, and thereafter
throughout their utilisation of that control for foreign
aggression, the Nazi conspirators carried out their Common
Plan or Conspiracy in ruthless and complete disregard and
violation of the laws of Humanity.  In the course of
executing the Common Plan or Conspiracy there were committed
the Crimes against Humanity  detailed hereinafter in Count
Four of this Indictment.

3. By reason of all the foregoing, the defendants with
divers other persons are guilty of a Common Plan or
Conspiracy for the accomplishment of Crimes against Peace;
of a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity in the
course of preparation for war and in the course of
prosecution of war; and of a conspiracy to commit War Crimes
not only against the armed forces of their enemies but also
against non-belligerent civilian populations.

(H) INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND ORGANISATION RESPONSIBILITY FOR
THE
OFFENCE STATED IN COUNT ONE:

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment
for a statement of the responsibility of the individual
defendants for the offence set forth in this Count One of
the Indictment.  Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of
this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the
groups and organisation named herein as criminal groups and
organisations for the offences set forth in this Count One
of the Indictment.

                                                   [Page 11]

MR. SIDNEY ALDERMAN: If the Tribunal please, that ends Count
One, which is America's responsibility. Great Britain will
present Count Two.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: If your Lordship pleases.

COUNT TWO-CRIMES AGAINST PEACE
(Charter, Article 6 (a))

V. Statement of the Offence

All the defendants with divers other persons, during a
period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, participated in the
planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of
aggression, which were also wars in violation of
international treaties, agreements and assurances.

VI.  Particulars of the wars planned, prepared, initiated
and waged

(A) The wars referred to in the Statement of Offence in this
Count Two of the Indictment and the dates of their
initiation were the following: against Poland, 1st
September, I939; against the United Kingdom and France, 3rd
September, 1939; against Denmark and Norway, 9th April,
1940; against Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 10th
May, 1940; against Yugoslavia and Greece, 6th April, 1941;
against the U.S.S.R., 22nd June, 1941; and against the
United States of America, 11th December, 1941.

(B) Reference is hereby made to Count One of the Indictment
for the allegations charging that these wars were wars of
aggression on the part of the defendants.

(C) Reference is hereby made to Appendix C annexed to this
Indictment for a statement of particulars of the charges of
violations of international treaties, agreements and
assurances caused by the defendants in the course of
planning, preparing and initiating these wars.

VII. Individual, group and Organisation responsibility for
the offence stated in Count Two

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment
for a statement of the responsibility of the individual
defendants for the offence set forth in this Count Two of
the Indictment.  Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of
this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the
groups and organisations named herein as criminal groups and
organisations for the offence set forth in this Count Two of
the Indictment.

That finishes, Mr. President, Count Two of the Indictment.

THE PRESIDENT: Sir David.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: If your Lordship pleases.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for 15 minutes.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE : If your Lordship pleases. The
reading will be resumed by a representative of the French
Republic.

(A recess was taken.)

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal understands that the defendant
Ernst Kaltenbrunner is temporarily ill. The trial will
continue in his absence. I call upon the Chief Prosecutor
for the Provisional Republic of France.

M. MOUNIER:

COUNT THREE-WAR CRIMES
(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (b))

VIII. Statement of the Offence

All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1st
September, 1939, and 8th May, 1945, in Germany and in all
those countries and territories occupied by the German armed
forces since 1st September, 1939, and in Austria,
Czechoslovakia and Italy, and on the
High Seas.

                                                   [Page 12]

All the defendants, acting in concert with others,
formulated and executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to
commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the
Charter.  This plan involved, among other things, the
practice of "total war" including methods of combat and of
military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and
customs of war, and the perpetration of crimes committed on
the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies,
against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories
against the civilian population of such territories.

The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by
other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible
(under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when
committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in
execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit the said
War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan
and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders,
organisers, instigators and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of
international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the
general principles of criminal law as derived from  the
criminal law of all civilised nations, and were involved in
and part of a systematic course of conduct.

(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR
IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH SEAS

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

The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers
means, such as shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross
overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic
imposition of labour 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 finger nails 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 population 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," that is to say 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 crimes and ill-treatment are 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 civilised 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.

I. In France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg,
Italy and the

                                                   [Page 13]

Channel Islands (hereinafter called the "Western Countries")
and in that part of Germany which lies West of a line draw
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,
Ravensbrueck, 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 either individual or 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, which had been evacuated to
Clermont-Ferrand, on 25th November, 1943); at Lyons, at
Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January, 1943); at
Cluny (round-up on 24th December, 1944); at Figeac (round-
tip in May, 1944); at Saint-Pol-de-Leon (round-up in July,
1944); at Locmine (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 250 French women deported from
Compeigne to Auschwitz in
January, 1943, 180 had died of exhaustion at the end of four
months.

2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23rd March and
6th May 1943, in Block
8 at Dachau.

1.   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, I944,
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 the infirm) between 1st January
and 15th April, I945.

7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.

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
(sterilisation of women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbrueck,
study of the evolution of cancer of the womb at Auschwitz,
of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at Natzweiler,
heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular
excisions at Ravensbrueck, 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

                                                   [Page 14]

1st April, 1944, at Colpe 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 June, 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, Anlnat, Caen, Port-Louis, Charleval,
Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Cabaudet, L'hermitage-Lorges,
Morlas, 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 other-wise, in
German prisons and concentration camps.


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