Fifty-Eighth Day: Wednesday, February 13, 1946
[Page 336]
THE PRESIDENT: Where are the pictures?
COLONEL POKROVSKY: If I am not mistaken, you have been given
the photostat of the statement, but not the photographs.
THE PRESIDENT: This is not a copy of the photographs; these
are the signatures of the 60 German prisoners.
COLONEL POKROVSKY: The photographs will be submitted
immediately. They have evidently, by an oversight, not been
included in the document book.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on.
COLONEL POKROVSKY: It is obvious from the first picture that
the food distributed is insufficient. Men are practically
fighting for the right of getting at it. The second
photograph shows hungry Soviet prisoners of war wandering
round an empty barn and eating the oil cakes stored for
cattle food which they had discovered. As to the third and
fourth photographs, I can submit to the Tribunal important
testimony by the witness, Bingel. Excerpts from his
testimony have a direct bearing on the question of the
treatment of Soviet prisoners of war.
I interrogated Bingel, and I now submit the minutes of his
interrogation to the Tribunal as Exhibit USSR 111, dated
27th December, 1945. Bingel, who formerly commanded a
company in the German Army, testified (I quote an excerpt
from Page 8 of the minutes of his interrogation) as follows:
This camp was calculated to hold, under normal
conditions, from 6,000 to 7,000 men; at that time,
however, it housed 74,000 men.'
Q. Were there barracks?
A. No. It was formerly a brickyard and consisted
exclusively of low sheds for drying bricks.
Q. Were the prisoners of war housed there?
A. It can scarcely be said that they were housed, since
each shed, at the utmost, could not contain more than
200 to 300 men; the rest had to sleep in the open.
Q. What was the regime like at that camp?
A. The regime in that camp was definitely peculiar. The
existing conditions gave one the impression that the
Camp Commander, Captain Bekker, was quite unable to
handle and feed so large a number of men. There were
two kitchens in the camp, although they could hardly be
called kitchens. Iron barrels had been placed on stone
and concrete floors, and the food for the prisoners was
prepared in these barrels. But the kitchens, even if
operating for 24 hours on end, could only prepare food
for approximately 2,000 people. The usual diet of the
prisoner, the daily ration for 6 men, consisted of one
loaf of bread which, again, could scarcely be described
as bread. Disturbances frequently arose during the
distribution of the hot food, for the prisoners -- and
there were 70,000 of them in the camp -- struggled to
get at the victuals. In cases like these the guards
resorted to clubs -- a usual procedure in the camp. I
obtained the general impression that in all the camps
the club was inevitably the foundation of all things." [Page 337]
A. 60 to 70 men died at the camp daily.
Q. From what causes?
A. Before the epidemics broke out one mostly spoke of
people being killed.
Q. Killed during the distribution of food?
A. Both during the distribution of food and during
working hours; generally speaking, people were being
killed all day long."
As a matter of fact, this is not the camp proper but a
clay pit belonging to the camp; here the prisoners were
housed as soon as they arrived from the front. Later on
they were assigned to various sections of the camp."
Q. What can you tell us about the second photograph?
A. The second one shows the camp photographed from
another angle, i.e., from the right side. The buildings
shown here were practically the only brick buildings in
the camp. These brick buildings, though quite empty and
undamaged, with excellent and spacious quarters, were
not used for housing the prisoners of war." [
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(Part 18 of 19)
[COLONEL POKROVSKY continues] "I have already made one statement concerning the
regime inside the prisoner of war camp at Uman. This
camp was guarded by a company of our sub-section of the
783rd Battalion, and I was therefore familiar with
everything which occurred in the camp. It was the task
of our battalion to guard the prisoners of war and to
control the highways and railroads.
"Q. Do you know anything about the death rate at the
camp?
Bingel was interrogated by us for the second time, and he
was shown the photographs of the camp at Uman. He was then
asked the following question:
"The camp shown here, is it the one you spoke about, or
some other camp?"
After this he was shown photographs from two negatives of
14th August, 1941. Bingel replied:
"Yes, this is the camp of which I spoke.