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BASH PEOPLE'S BRAINS IN WITH A PEDAL-DRIVEN BRAIN·BASHING MACHINE WHILE LISTENING TO THE RADIO, THEN BURN THE BODIES IN 4 PORTABLE OVENS

13 Feb. 46

It is further said that a particularly terrible regime existed for those included in the category of. recalcitrants. They were put into a special building, named the death block. The inmates in this block were shot on schedule, five to six persons being taken to execution every Tuesday and Friday. The German physician Kuper was one of those present at the shootings. Academician Burdenko established that in the so-called hospital people when exterminated in the same manner as in the rest of the camp.

In the penultimate paragraph, on Page 3, we read-members of the Tribunal will find this passage on Page 73 of the document book: "The scenes which I had to witness defy all imagination. My joy at the sight of the liberated people was marred by the fact that their faces bore an expression of utter stupor. This made me think, 'What is the matter here?' Evidently the sufferings they had undergone erased from. their minds all distinction between life and death.

"I observed these people for 3 days and bandaged their wounds while moving them from the camp, but the mental stupor remained. Something similar could also be seen on the faces of the doctors during the first few days.

"People perished in the camp from disease, starvation, and floggings. In the so-called 'hospital' prison they died of wound­infection, sepsis, and starvation."

On the 2nd day of May 1945, there was captured in Berlin a member of the SS, Paul Ludwig Gottlief Waldmann, the son of a shopkeeper, Ludwig Waldmann, he was born in Berlin on 17 October 1914. From information received, his mother, up to the time of his capture, was living in the city of Brunswick, Donnerburweg 60.

He testified personally to facts known to him regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war. He witnessed these exterminations while working as a driver in different camps and himself participated in the mass killings. His testimony is on Page 9 of Exhibit Number USSR-52 Document Number USSR-52, entitled "Camp Auschwitz." He provides more detailed information on the murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen .

Towards the end of summer 1941, the Sonderkommando of the Security Police in this camp exterminated Russian prisoners of war daily for a whole month. Paul Ludwig Gottlieb Waldmann testified - you will find the excerpt I am quoting on Page 82 - that:

"The Russian prisoners of war had to walk about one kilometer from the station to the camp. In the camp they stayed one night without food. The next night they were led away for execution. The prisoners were constantly being transferred from the inner camp on three trucks, one of which was

IMT VII

376


13 Feb. 46

driven by me. The inner camp was approximately one and three quarters of a kilometer from the execution grounds. The execution itself took place in the barracks which had been recently been constructed for this purpose.

“One room was reserved for undressing and another for waiting: in one of them a radio played rather loudly. It was done purposely so that the prisoners could not guess that death awaited them. From the second room they went, one by one, through a passage into a small fenced-off room with an iron grid let into the floor. Under the grid was a drain. As soon as a prisoner of war was killed, the corpse was carried out by two German prisoners while the blood was washed off the grid.

“In this small room there was a slot in the wall, approximately 50 centimeters in length. The prisoner of war stood with the back of his head against the slot and a sniper shot at him from behind the slot. In practice this arrangement did not prove satisfactory, since the sniper often missed the prisoner. After 8 days a new arrangement was made. The prisoner, as before, was placed against the wall: an iron plate was then slowly lowered onto his head. The prisoner was under the impression that the was being measured for height. The iron plate contained a ramrod which shot out suddenly and poleaxed the prisoner with a blow on the back of the head. He dropped dead. The iron plate was operated by a foot lever in a corner of the room. The personnel working in the room belonged to the above-mentioned Sonderkommando.

“By request of this execution squad, I was also forced to work this apparatus. I shall refer to the subject later. The bodies of prisoners thus murdered were burned in four mobile crematories transported in trailers and attached to motor cars. I had to ride constantly from the inner camp to the execution yard. I had to make 10 trips a night with 10 minutes interval between trips. It was during these intervals that I witnessed the executions…”

It is a long way from these individual murders to the death factories of Treblinka, Dachau, an Auschwitz, but the tendency, the line of action are identical. Methods and extent of the killings varied. The Hitlerites endeavored to discover ways and means for the rapid mass execution of human beings. They spent much time on the solution of this problem. To realize their ambition they began to work on the solution even prior to their attack on the Soviet Union by inventing different implements and instruments of murder, while peaceful inhabitants and prisoners of war alike ended up as victims of Hitler’s executioners.

IMT VII 377