-85-

... BURN HUMAN BODIES USING HUMAN FAT FOR FUEL

8 Feb. 46

addressed to the Regional Commander of Gendarmerie in Kamen-Kashirsk, ordered him immediately to supply information concerning location and number of common graves of persons to whom special repressive measures had been applied in the district.

Among the documents discovered in the Gestapo building of the Rovno district has been found a report concerning the execution of the above-mentioned order, with the enumeration of about 200 localities, where such graves were registered. One can see from this list that the Germano-fascist henchmen primarily chose inaccessible and isolated spots for the interment of their victims. At the end of the list we read, "The list includes all the graves, including those of the commandos who worked here previously."

I will now quote an extract of the appeal to the public opinion of the world from the representatives of several thousand former internees at Auschwitz:

"The gassing of unbelievable numbers of people took place upon the arrival of transports from various countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, the U.S.S.R, Norway, and others. The new arrivals had to pass before an SS doctor or else before the SS commandant of the camp. The latter pointed his finger to the right or left. The left meant death by gas. Out of a transport of 1,500, an average of 1,200 to 1,300 were immediately to be gassed. Rarely the quota of people sent into the camp was a little higher. It often occurred that the SS doctors Mengele and Thilo performed this selection while whistling a lively tune. The people destined to be gassed were obliged to strip in front of the gas-chambers, after which they were driven with whips into the gas-chambers. Then the door of the underground gas-chamber was closed, and the people were gassed. Death occurred approximately 4 minutes later. After 8 minutes the gas chamber was opened, and workmen belonging to a special commando, the so-called Sonderkommando, transported the bodies to the cremation ovens which burned day and night.

"There was a shortage of ovens at the time of the arrival of transports from Hungary; consequently enormous ditches were dug for the purpose of cremating the bodies. Fires made of wood soaked in gasoline were laid in these ditches and the bodies were thrown into them. However, the SS men frequently hurled live children and adults into those ditches, where these unhappy victims died a terrible death. To save gasoline, the fats and oils necessary for cremations were partly derived

IMT VII


174





-86-

8 Feb 46.

from the bodies of gassed people. Fats and oils for technical purposes an d for the manuacture of soap were also obtained from the corpses."

The appeal ends with the following words:

"Together with 10,000 rescued inmates of all nationalities, we demand that the crimes and the inconceivable atrocities of the Hitlerites should not remain unpunished."

This just demand is supported by the entire civilized world and by all freedom-loving people. The organized mass annihilation of prisoners of war constitutes one of the vilest crimes of the Hitlerite conspirators.

Numerous facts of murders, tortures, and maltreatment to which prisoners of war were subjected have been definitely established .

. They were tortured with red-hot irons, their eyes were gouged out, their extremities severed, ee cetera. The systematic atrocities and short-shrift justice against captured officers and men of the Red Army were not chance episodes or the results of criminal activities uf individual officers of the German Army and of German officials. The Hitlerite Government and the High Command of the German Army ruthlessly exterminated prisoners of war. Numerous documents, orders, and decrees of the fascist Government and orders of the German Supreme Command testify to this fact. .

As early as March 1941 - as the German Lieutenant General Osterreich testified during his interrogation - a secret conference took place at the headquarters of the High Command in Berlin, where measures were planned for the organization of camps. for Russian prisoners of war and rules laid down for their treatment. According to Osterreich's evidence these rules and measures for Soviet prisoners of war were essentially a plan for their extermination.

Many Soviet prisoners of war were shot or hanged while others perished from G,unger and infectious diseases, from cold, and from torture systematically employed by the Germans according to a plan which was developed beforehand and had as its object the mass extermination of Soviet persons.

In Appendix 3 to Order Number 8 for the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated 17 July 1941, a list is given of prisoner-of-war camps set up in the area of the 1st Military District and of the so­called Government General. In the 1st Military District camps were aet up in particular in Prokuls, Heidekrug, Schierwind, Schützen­rode (Ebenrode) in Prostken, Suwalki, Fischbor-Gersen and Ostrolenko. In the so-called Government General, camps were set up at Ostrov-Mesovetsky, Sedlce, Byelopedlasko, Kholm, Jaroslav, et

IMT VII

175




-87-

... BURN HUMAN BODIES USING NO FUEL AT ALL AFTER REMOVING THEM FROM THE GAS CHAMBERS WITHOUT WEARING GAS MASKS

7 Aug. 46..

before we organize this future Jewish State, you must of course learn how to work. You must learn a, new trade. You will be taught that here. Our routine here is, first, every one must take off his clothes so that your clothing can be disinfected, and you can have a bath so that no epidemics will be brought into the camp."

After he had found such calming words for his victims, they started on the road to death. Men and women were separated. At the first place; one had to deliver the hat; at the next one, the coat, collar, shirt, down to the shoes and socks. These places were faked cloakrooms, and the person was given a check at each one so that the people believed that they would get their things back. The other Jews had to receive the things and hurry up the new arrivals so that they should not have time to think. The whole thing was like an assembly line. After the last stop they reached a big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room.

As soon as death had set in the ventilators were started. When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special procedure which Wirth had invented they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel.

HERR PELCKMANN: Was Wirth a member of the SS?

MORGEN: No, he was a Kriminalkommissar in Stuttgart.

HERR PELCKMANN: Did you ask Wirth how he arrived at this devilish system?

MORGEN: When Wirth took over the extermination of the Jews, he was already a specialist in mass-destruction of human beings. He had previously carried out the task of getting rid of the incurably insane. By order of the Führer himself, whose order was transmitted through the Chancellery of the Führer, he had, at the lteginning of the war, set up a detachment for this purpose, probably composed of a few officials of his, as I believe, the remainder being agents and spies of. the Criminal Police.

Wirth very vividly described how he went about carrying out this assignment. He received no aid, no instructions, but had to do it all by himself. He was only given an old empty building in Brandenburg. There he made his first experiments. After much consideration and many individual experiments, he evolved his later system, and then this system was used on a large scale to exterminate the insane.

A commission of doctors previously investigated the flIes, and those insane who were listed by the asylums as incurable were put on a separate list. Then the asylum concerned was told one day to send these patients to another institution. From this asylum

IMT XX

494




-88-

BURN 80,000 BODIES IN TWO OLD OVENS

19 Feb.46

"As there were a great many corpses, the Germans, in 1942, began building, and by autumn of 1943 had concluded, the building of powerful crematoria consisting of five ovens. These ovens burned unceasing ly. The temperature in these ovens could reach 1,500 degrees Celsius. In order to be able to put as many bodies as possible into the ovens, the corpses were dissected and the limbs hacked off."

I omit the next paragraphs and beg the Tribunal to pay attention to the passage which is three paragraphs further down.

The ovens in the crematories proved to be inadequate, so the Germans were compelled to resort to special primitive cremation installations which had been made in the following way - I begin the quotation by Paragraph I, Page 334 of the text:

"On rails or on automobile frames which served as grates planks were placed. Corpses were laid on the planks, then more planks, and again corpses. Five hundred to 1,000 corpses were piled on one pyre. All that was covered with gasoline and ignited."

I quote a short excerpt which ascertains the scale of criminal aetions taken to conceal the trace of these crimes, Page 336, first paragraph::

"The commission has ascertained that in the ovens of the crematoria alone more than 600,000 corpses were burned. More than 300,000 corpses were burned on the gigantic pyres in the Krempetz Woods; more than 80,000 corpses were burned in the two old ovens; not less than 40,000 corpses were burned on pyres in the camp itself, near the crematoria."

As a proof of these same circumstances, that is to say, of the scale of the criminal activity of the Hitlerites in concealing the traces of their crimes, I refer now to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union for the town of Minks. Members of the Tribunal will find this quotation on the back of Page 215, second column of the text, Paragraph 4. I quote a short excerpt:

. "In the Blaovtschchina Woods 34 ditch graves were discovered, camouflaged with evergreen branches, some of the graves reached a length of 50 meters. During a partial excavation of five of these graves, corpses and a layer of ashes 50 centimeters or 1 meter thick was discovered at a depth of 3 meters. Near the graves the commission discovered a great number of small human bones, hair, false teeth, and numerous small personal articles. The investigation has ascertained that the fascists exterminated here up to 150,000 persons.

IMT VII

591