[Page 371]

We refer to Document 153I-PS. With reference to this document, I wish to submit a word of explanation. The original German text, the original German document, the captured document was here in the document room and was translated into English as our translation shows. Yesterday we were advised that it had either been lost or misplaced, the original German

[Page 372]

I now refer to the Document 1431-PS. It is Exhibit USA 248. This document is marked "Top Secret" and it is addressed to all State Police District Offices and to the Gestapo Office and for the information of the Inspectors of the Security Police and the S.D. It is an order relating to concentration camps, issued by the head of the Gestapo, and I read from the English text, beginning with the second paragraph, and quoting directly:-

"In order to achieve a further deterrent effect, the following must, in the future, be observed in each individual case.

3. The length of the period of custody must in no case be made known, even if the Reichsfuehrer S.S. and Chief of the German Police or the Chief of the Security Police and the S.D. has already fixed it.

The term of commitment to a concentration camp is to be openly announced as 'until further notice'.

In most serious cases there is no objection to the increasing of the deterrent effect by the spreading of cleverly carried out rumour propaganda, more or less to the effect that, according to hearsay, in view of the seriousness of his case, the arrested man will not be released for two or three years.

4. In certain cases the Reichsfuehrer S.S. and Chief of the German Police will order flogging in addition to detention in a concentration camp. Orders of this kind will, in the future, also be transmitted to the State Police District Office concerned. In this case, too, there is no objection to spreading the rumour of this increased punishment as laid down in Section 3, Paragraph 3, in so far as this appears suitable, to add to the deterrent effect.

5. Naturally, particularly suitable and reliable people are to be chosen for the spreading of such news."

MR. DODD: Very well, your Honour.

(A recess was taken until 1415 hours.)

MR. DODD: May it please the Tribunal, the deterrent effect of the concentration camps was based on the promise of brutal treatment. Once in the custody of the S.S. guards, the victim was beaten, tortured, starved, and often murdered through the so-called "extermination through work" programme which I described the other day, or through the mass execution gas chambers and furnaces of the camps, which were shown several days ago on the moving picture screen in this court room.

The reports of official government investigations furnish additional evidence of the conditions within the concentration camps.

[Page 373]

"The work at these camps mainly consisted of underground labour, the purpose being the construction of large underground factories, storage rooms, etc. This labour was performed completely underground and as a result of the brutal treatment, working and living conditions, a daily average of 100 prisoners died. To the one camp Oberstaubling 7,000 prisoners were transported in February, 1945, and on the 15th April, 1945, only 405 of these men were living. During the 12 months preceding the liberation, Flossenburg and the branch camps under its control accounted for the death of 14,739 male inmates and 1,300 women. These figures represent the number of deaths as obtained from the available records in the camp. However, they are in no way complete, as many secret mass executions and deaths took place. In 1941 an additional stockade was added to the Flossenburg Camp to hold 2,000 Russian prisoners. From these 2,000 prisoners only 102 survive.

Flossenburg Concentration Camp can best be described as a factory dealing in death. Although this camp had in view the primary object of putting to work the mass slave labour, another of its primary objectives was the elimination of human lives by the methods employed in handling the prisoners.

Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, herding, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, forced hand hanging, forced suicides, shooting, all played a major role in obtaining their objective. Prisoners were murdered at random, spite killings against Jews were common. Injections of poison and shooting in the neck were everyday occurrences. Epidemics of typhus and spotted fever were permitted to run rampant as a means of eliminating prisoners. Life in this camp counted for nothing. Killing became a common thing, so common that a quick death was welcomed by the unfortunate ones."

THE PRESIDENT: What are those exhibits that are referred to?

MR. DODD: They are in evidence with the affidavit. They are attached to it.

THE PRESIDENT: They are not, I suppose, mimeographed in our copy?

MR. DODD: No, we have not had an opportunity to mimeograph each one of them.

THE PRESIDENT: Are they documents or photographs or what?

MR. DODD: They are principally documents. There are some few plans and photographs, and so on.

THE PRESIDENT: Are they affidavits or what?

MR. DODD: Some of them are in the form of affidavits taken at the time of the liberation of the camp from prisoners who were there, and others are pictures of writings that were found there and of the plans and so on - that sort of thing.

[Page 374]

MR. DODD: Very well, your Honour.

Reading from the last sentence of this same paragraph on the same page and quoting:-

"On Christmas, 1944, a number of prisoners were hanged at one time. The other prisoners were forced to view this hanging. By the side of the gallows was a decorated Christmas tree, and, as expressed by one prisoner, 'It was a terrible sight, that combination of prisoners hanging in the air and the glistening Christmas tree'."

We will not burden the Tribunal with a recital of all of these reports. We wish, however, to make reference to the Concentration Camp Mauthausen, one of the most notorious extermination centres, and I refer particularly to Document 2176-PS, which I have already placed in evidence as Exhibit USA 249. This is also an official report of the office of the Judge Advocate General of the United States Third Army, dated 17th June, 1945. I wish to refer to the conclusions on Page 3 of the English text, at paragraph numbered Roman V, beginning with the second sentence as follows:-

"V. Conclusions:

There is no doubt that Mauthausen was the basis for long- term planning. It was constructed as a gigantic stone fortress on top of a mountain flanked by small barracks. Mauthausen, in addition to its permanency of construction, had facilities for a large garrison of officers and men, and had large dining rooms and toilet facilities for the staff. It was conducted with the sole purpose in mind of exterminating any so-called prisoner who entered within its walls. The so-called branches of Mauthausen were under direct command of the S.S. officials located there. All records, orders, and administrative facilities were handled for these branches through Mauthausen. The other camps, including Gusen and Ebensee, its two most notorious and largest branches, were not exclusively used for extermination but prisoners were used as tools in construction and production until they were beaten or starved into uselessness, whereupon they were customarily sent to Mauthausen for final disposal."

We have had turned over to us two exhibits which we are prepared to show to this Tribunal only because they illustrate the depths to which the administration of these camps had sunk, at least shortly before the time that they were liberated by the Allied Army. The Tribunal will recall that in the exhibit of the moving picture, with respect to one of the camps, there was a showing

[Page 375]

"Mobile Field Interrogation Unit No. 2.
P.W. Intelligence Bulletin.
13. Concentration Camp, Buchenwald.

Preamble. The author of this account is P.W. Andreas Pfaffenberger, 1 Coy, 9 Landesschuetzen Bn., 43 years old and of limited education. He is a butcher by trade. The substantial agreement of the details of his story with those found in P.W.I.S. (H) /LF/736 establishes the validity of his testimony. This P.W. has not been questioned on statements which, in the light of what is known, are apparently erroneous in certain details, nor has any effort been made to alter the subjective character of the P.W.'s account, which he wrote without being told anything of the intelligence already known. The results of interrogation on personalities at Buchenwald have already been published (P.W.I.B. No. 2/12, Item 31).

In 1939 all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary."

MR. DODD: Yes, sir.

"No one knew what the purpose was, but after the tattooed prisoners had been examined the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary and then killed by injections administered by Karl Beigs, a criminal prisoner. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated. The finished products were turned over to S.S. Standartenfuehrer Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lamp shades and other ornamental household articles. I myself saw such tattooed skins with various designs and legends on them, such as 'Haensel and Gretel', which one prisoner had on his knee, and ships from prisoners' chests. This work was done by a prisoner named Wernerbach."

"I, George C. Demas, Lieutenant, U.S.N.R., associated with the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, hereby certify that the attached exhibit, consisting of parchment, was delivered by the War Crimes Section, Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, to me in my above capacity, in the usual course of business, as an exhibit found in Buchenwald Camp and captured by military forces under the command of the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces."

"Based on the findings in Paragraph 2, all three specimens are tattooed human skin."

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The last paragraph of the official United States Army report from which I have just read deals with the manner in which this exhibit was acquired. It reads as follows:-

"There I also saw the shrunken heads of two young Poles who had been hanged for having relations with German girls. The heads were the size of a fist, and the hair and the marks of the rope were still there."

In these books were recorded the names of some of the inmates who died or were murdered in this camp, and the books cover the period from January, 1939 to April, 1945. They give the name, the place of birth, the assigned cause of death, and time of death of each individual recorded. In addition each corpse is assigned a serial number, and adding up the total serial numbers for the five-year period one arrives at the figure of 35,318.

An examination of the books is very revealing in so far as the camp's routine of death is concerned, and I invite the attention of the Tribunal to Volume 5 from Pages 568 to 582, a photostatic copy of which has been passed to the Tribunal. These pages cover death entries made for the 19th March, 1945, between 1.15 in the morning and 2 o'clock in the afternoon. In this space of 12 3/4 hours, on these records, 203 persons are reported as having died. They were assigned serial numbers running from 8390 to 8592. The names of the dead are listed. And interestingly enough the victims are all recorded as having died of the same ailment - heart trouble. They died at brief intervals. They died in alphabetical order. The first who died was a man named Ackermann, who died at 1.15 a.m., and the last was a man named Zynger, who died at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

At 2.20 of that same afternoon, according to these records, on 19th March, 1945, the fatal roll call began again and continued until 4.30. In a space of two hours, 75 more persons died, and once again they died all from heart failure and in alphabetical order. We find the entries recorded in the same volume, from Pages 582 to 586.

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