The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Now, I pass over to the next section of my presentation:-

"Concentration Camps for the Peaceful Population."

As this subject has already been extensively treated by the
members of the prosecution who presented their cases before
mine, I shall try to be as brief as possible; I shall limit
myself either to absolutely new information or to the text
of the documents which serve as an explanation to the films
which will be shown to-day before the Tribunal.

I beg to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that
at the end of 1941 and in 1942 the scale of German fascist
crimes committed in concentration camps reached vast
proportions. In particular, I refer to the report of the
Polish Government in confirmation of this statement. On Page
138 of the document book the members of the Tribunal will
find testimony to the effect that in 1942 one of the most
terrifying extermination camps, the Treblinka Camp No. 2 was
in rapid process of erection. The Germans called this
"Treblinka-B". Further, I refer to the Report of the
Extraordinary State Commission on Auschwitz. The members of
the Tribunal will find the extract, which I am going to
quote, on Page 353 in the document book, volume 2, paragraph
2. I quote a short excerpt from Page 257:-

   "In 1941 a crematorium for burning the corpses of
   murdered people was built in the Auschwitz Camp. This
   crematorium had three ovens. Attached to the crematorium
   was a so-called 'special purpose bath-house'. That was a
   gas chamber for asphyxiating people".

I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the following
sentence:-

   "In the summer of 1942 the Reichsfuehrer S.S. Himmler
   inspected
   
                                                  [Page 119]
   
   Auschwitz Camp and ordered it to be greatly enlarged and
   technically perfected."
   
I end my quotation here, and I call the attention of the
Tribunal to Page 136 on the reverse side of the document
book; this is from a report of the Polish Government, which
shows that the Camp Sobibor was set up during the first and
second liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto. But the
extermination on a large scale in this camp really started
at the beginning of 1943. In this same report, in the last
paragraph on Page 136 of the document book, we may read that
Camp Belsen was founded in 1940; but it was in 1942 that the
special electrical appliances were built in for mass
extermination of people. Under the pretext that the people
were being led to the bath-house, the doomed were undressed
and then driven to the building, where the floor was
electrified in a special way; there they were killed.

Usually the concentration camps of German fascism are
divided into two groups: the labour concentration camps and
the extermination camps. It seems to me that such a
differentiation is not quite correct, because the labour
camps also served the purpose of extermination.

I omit two pages of the text and I pass on to Page 260. In
confirmation of what I said just now, I refer to the report
of the Extraordinary State Commission relative to Yanov Camp
in the city of Lvov. The Tribunal will find this on Page 159
in the document book, paragraph 5. But at the same time, I
ask the members of the Tribunal to refer to Page 6 of the
album of documents relative to the Lvov Camp. One of them is
a picture of "a trench in the valley of death". The ground
is soaked with human blood to the depth of one and a half
metres. On the next pages are shown the belongings taken
from the executed persons. This picture was taken by the
experts of forensic medicine about two months after the mass
shootings.

From the Reports of the Extraordinary State Commission on
Crimes in the Yanov Camp it can be seen that here, according
to the findings of the legal experts, in what was officially
an ordinary labour camp, over 200,000 Soviet citizens were
exterminated. I now quote only the first paragraph on Page
261 of the Russian text:-

   "In view of the total area of burial grounds as well as
   the area over which the ashes and bones were scattered,
   the expert commission concluded that in the Yanov Camp
   there were exterminated over 200,000 Soviet citizens."

I omit the next part of my presentation, which deals with
the regime of starvation in concentration camps. This was
very well presented by the representative of the British
prosecution, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.

This must now be quite clear to the Tribunal and I do not
think it will be necessary to give any additional proofs.
But I ask the Tribunal's permission to present evidence on
an altogether different type of camp, which was created by
the German fascists only during the last stage of the war. I
refer to Page 265 of my presentation.

Maidanek and Auschwitz camps served as a means of
extermination only of those who really were sent to this
camp. These two camps were not a direct menace to those
people who were outside the walls of the camp, but, in the
course of the war, having already suffered grave defeats,
German fascism began to practice new bestialities for
exterminating peaceful citizens. Thus there were set up in
Bielorussia camps of death, not only to exterminate the
inmates of the camp itself but, first and foremost, to
spread infectious diseases among the peaceful population and
the ranks of the Red Army. There were no crematoria and gas
chambers in these camps, but they should, in all justice, be
considered as among the most brutal concentration camps
which were created by Fascism for extermination of people.

I present to the Tribunal as Exhibit USSR 4 the Report of
the Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of
the murder of people by means of

                                                  [Page 120]

spreading typhus epidemics. Such evidence has not been
previously presented, and I shall therefore quote several
excerpts from this report. I begin the quotation on Page 454
of the document book, first paragraph. Last paragraph on
Page 266 of the Russian text:-

  "On 19th March, 1944, advancing Red Army units
  discovered, near the settlement of Osaritchi in the
  Region of Polesskoy in the Bielorussian S.S.R., within
  the limits of German defence lines, three concentration
  camps in which there were over 33,000 children, women and
  old men incapable of work".

I interrupt my quotation, and I omit one paragraph.

  "The camps were really open squares surrounded by barbed
  wire. The approaches were mined. There were no buildings
  whatever, even of the most insignificant type, in the
  camp grounds".

I call the Tribunal's attention to the fact that all this
happened in March, in Bielorussia, when it is really very
cold there.

  "The inmates were sitting on the ground. Many of them had
  lost their ability to move and were lying unconscious in
  the mud. It was forbidden to the inmates to build fires,
  to gather brush or branches for bedding. The Hitlerites
  shot Soviet people for the slightest attempt to violate
  this order.
  
  For concentration camps close to the front line, the
  Germans, in the first place, selected sites in places
  which they had little hope of holding. Secondly, they
  concentrated large masses of Soviet people in the camps,
  placing there primarily women, children and old men
  unable to work. Afterwards, they placed into these camps
  thousands of typhus patients who were especially brought
  from various, temporarily occupied, regions of the
  Bielorussian S.S.R., especially for this purpose. They
  were kept together with the starved, weak inmates who no
  longer could serve as labour.
  
  Among those liberated from these camps were 15,960
  children up to the age of thirteen; 13,072  women
  incapable of work, and 4,448 old men".

I omit the next page and read Page 269 of the Russian text.
I quote only one paragraph which reveals the methods used by
the criminals to drive into the camps peaceful citizens from
various regions of Bielorussia.

Witness Mrs. L. Pikarski, who was liberated from the camp,
testified before the Commission:-

  "On 12th March, 1944, late in the afternoon, we, the
  inhabitants of the city of Jlobin, were forced to
  assemble within half an hour at the station Jlobin-South;
  here the Germans selected all the young ones and took
  them away. Having herded us into railroad cars, the
  Germans closed the doors tightly. Where we were going we
  didn't know, but we all anticipated some evil. . . .
  
  As we found out later on, we were driven along the
  Rudobelkovsky railway and unloaded late in the afternoon
  on 15th March. During the night, knee deep in sticky mud,
  we were driven into a camp. From this camp we were driven
  into another one. On the way the Germans beat us, and
  those who lagged behind were shot. One woman is walking
  with three children. One of the children falls down, the
  Germans shoot at him. Horrified, the mother and the two
  other children look back; these monsters, the soldiers,
  shoot them down one by one. The mother cries out in
  agony, but her shriek is interrupted by a direct shot.
  Another mother and son, the Boddarews, walk side by side.
  The child can't stand the tiring journey and falls down.
  The mother bends over him, she wants to encourage him
  with a word, but neither the son nor the mother rose or
  saw the blue sky again: the Germans shot them".

I omit the next page of this document and I pass to the
presentation of some evidence, testifying to the fact that
the Germans on purpose concentrated in this camp the typhus-
stricken people.

                                                  [Page 121]

I quote three paragraphs from Page 271 of this text.

A. S. Mitrachovich, liberated from the camp, who was a
resident of the village of Novo-Belitza, testified:-

   "We who were sick with typhus were driven to the village
   of Mikul-Gorodok into a camp surrounded by barbed wire".

An inhabitant of the hamlet of Novogorudok, Gavrilchik,
Z.P., testified:-

   "During three days typhus-stricken patients were brought
   in motor-cars into the camp with the result that many
   who were healthy also fell ill".

I omit the next two pages of the document and I pass over to
what the members of the Tribunal will find on Page 254 on
the reverse side, paragraph 6:-

   "The German Army Command used to send their own agents
   to the camps near the front line to observe how the
   typhus was spreading among the inmates and also among
   the Red Army soldiers".

Next there is the testimony of one of such agents, the
traitor Rastorguev. I omit this quotation.

To conclude the presentation of evidence relative to this
matter, I shall quote a few excerpts from the findings of
the medico-forensic experts. The Tribunal will find them on
the back of Page 454. This is Page 274 of the Russian text:-

   "The German authorities placed together in concentration
   camps both the healthy and the typhus-stricken Soviet
   citizens. In order to expedite the dissemination of
   typhus in the camps, the Germans used to transfer the
   typhus patients from one camp to another.
   
   On many occasions when typhus patients refused to go
   into the camp, the German authorities used force.
   
   German aggressors used to move typhus patients from
   hospitals into the camps and mixed them with the healthy
   camp inmates".

And the last paragraph:

"The infecting of the Soviet population with typhus began in
the second half of February and was practised to the middle
of March".

The result of it was mass infection of the people interned
in the camp, and the members of the Tribunal will find proof
of this in the next paragraph where it is said that the Red
Army Command sent 4,052 Soviet citizens to the hospitals,
among them 2,370 children below thirteen years of age, all
liberated from the one hamlet of Ozarichi, in the Poless
region.

I omit those sections of my presentation where I wanted to
give concrete information as to the terrible conditions
under which the inmates of these concentration camps had to
live, and I pass to Page 277 of my statement where I deal
with concentration camps of the "usual type".

I quote short excerpts only from the report of the Yugoslav
Government dealing with Camp Banyitza, near Belgrade, from
which it is evident that the camps in Yugoslavia, so far as
bestial conditions are concerned, were quite identical with
the camps in other countries of Eastern Europe.

The members of the Tribunal will find this passage on Page
263 of the document book, paragraph 2. I quote the third
paragraph of this document:-

   "Camp Banyitza, near Belgrade: this camp was established
   by the German occupying authorities as far back as June,
   1941. From the captured documents of this camp it is
   evident that 23,673 inmates were registered there.
   However, from the testimony of the surviving witnesses,
   especially the employees of the Quisling authorities who
   worked in this camp, it was possible to establish that
   in reality a much greater number of victims passed
   through it".

I omit the next paragraph and continue my quotation:

                                                  [Page 122]

   "The witness Monchilo Dernyanovich at the end of 1943
   participated in burning corpses of the victims of Camp
   Banyitza".

I omit the remainder of the paragraph and continue my
quotation:-

   "At the interrogation on 7th February, 1945, he
   testified before the Yugoslav State Commission that
   during the period of his work there he counted 68,000
   corpses".

I omit further five pages of the report, as the information
contained therein is well known to the Tribunal. I pass to
Page 283 of the Russian text. I present to the Tribunal, as
Exhibit USSR 193,
an excerpt from an official register of the hospital at Camp
Saimyite, near Belgrade.

The Report of the Yugoslav Government states that this
hospital reminds one more of a camp chapel, where the bodies
of the dead were brought for the last rites.

On some days - I beg the Tribunal to refer to the entry
number 1070 - were delivered the bodies of tens and hundreds
of people who had died of starvation. For instance, under
the entry note 1070 are listed 87 corpses delivered to the
hospital. Under No. 1272, 122 bodies are noted, under No.
2041 112 bodies were delivered.

I do not consider that these figures need any comment to
illustrate the camp regime, especially as far as living
conditions of the inmates are concerned.

In the camps in the territory of the USSR temporarily
occupied by Germans, the living conditions of the inmates
were of extreme grimness.

I quote a short excerpt from the Report of the Extraordinary
State Commission on the Crimes in
the Lithuanian S.S.R.:-

   "In the territories of the Lithuanian S.S.R., the
   Hitlerites exterminated in great numbers not only
   the local population but also people who were driven
   here from the Orlov, Smolensk, Vitebsk and Leningrad
   regions. From the summer of 1943 to June, 1944, 200,000
   people passed through the camp established for the
   evacuated population near the town of Alitous - you will
   see this camp in the film, which will be presented to-
   day".

I omit the next part of the quotation and I read two
paragraphs further down:-

   "Due to the filthy living conditions, lack of water,
   starvation, disease and mass shootings, about 60,000
   Soviet citizens perished in this camp".

I omit the two next pages of the text and I quote from Page
288 of the report. It is mentioned here that for the
families of Red Army soldiers special concentration camps
were set up in the territories of the Lithuanian S.S.R. The
following order was posted in this camp:-

"For expressing dissatisfaction with German authorities and
for violation of the camp regime the Soviet people shall be
shot without trial, jailed or sent to forced labour for life
to Germany".

I omit one paragraph and continue:-

   "A German woman in command of four such camps, Elisabeth
   Zeeling, frequently announced to the inmates: 'You are
   my slaves; I shall punish you in whatever way I want '".


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