THE PRESIDENT: It may be convenient for counsel and others to know that
the Tribunal will not sit in open session tomorrow, as it has many
administrative matters to consider. We will adjourn now until 2 o’clock.
[_The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours._]
_Afternoon Session_
MARSHAL: If Your Honors please, the Defendants Kaltenbrunner and
Streicher will continue to be absent this afternoon.
M. DUBOST: We left off this morning at the enumeration of the tortures
that had been practiced habitually by the Gestapo in the various cities
in France where inquiries had been conducted; and I was proving to you,
by reading numerous documents, that everywhere accused persons and
frequently witnesses themselves—as seen in the last letter—were
questioned with brutality and subjected to tortures that were usually
identical. This systematic repetition of the same methods of torture
proves, we believe, that a common plan existed, conceived by the German
Government itself.
We still have a great many testimonies, all extracts from the report of
the American services, concerning the prisons at Dreux, at Morlaix, and
at Metz. These testimonies are given in Documents F-689, 690, and 691,
which we now submit as Exhibits RF-311, 312, and 313.
With your permission, Your Honor, I will now refrain from further citing
these documents. The same acts were systematically repeated. This is
also true of the tortures inflicted in Metz, Cahors, Marseilles, and
Quimperlé, dealt with in Documents F-692, 693, 565, and 694, which we
are presenting to you as Exhibits RF-314, 314 (bis), 309, and 315.
We now come to one of the most odious crimes committed by the Gestapo,
and it is not possible for us to keep silent about it in spite of our
desire to shorten this statement. This is the murder of a French officer
by the Gestapo at Clermont-Ferrand, a murder which was committed under
extremely shameful conditions, in contempt of all the rules of
international law; for it was perpetrated in a region where, according
to the terms of the Armistice, the Gestapo had nothing to do and had no
right to be.
The name of this French officer was Major Henri Madeline. His case is
given in Document F-575, which we submit as Exhibit Number RF-316. He
was arrested on 1 October 1943 at Vichy. His interrogation began in
January 1944; and he was struck in such a savage manner, in the course
of the first interrogation, that when he was brought back to his cell
his hand was already broken.
On 27 January this officer was questioned again on two occasions, during
which he was struck so violently that when he returned to his cell his
hands were so swollen that it was impossible to see the handcuffs he had
on. The following day the German police came back to fetch him from his
cell, where he had passed the whole night in agony. He was still alive;
they threw him down on a road a kilometer away from a small village in
the Massif Central, Perignant-Les-Sarlièves, to make it look as if he
had been the victim of a road accident. His body was found later. A post
mortem showed that the thorax was completely crushed, with multiple
fractures of the ribs and perforation of the lungs. There was also
dislocation of the spine, fracture of the lower jaw, and most of the
tissues of the head were loose.
Alas, we all know that a few French traitors did assist in the arrests
and in the misdeeds of the Gestapo in France under the orders of German
officers. One of these traitors, who was arrested when our country was
liberated, has described the ill-treatment that had been inflicted on
Major Madeline. The name of this traitor is Verière and we are going to
read a passage from his statement:
“He was beaten with a whip and a bludgeon; blows on his
fingernails crushed his fingers. He was forced to walk
barefooted on tacks. He was burned with cigarettes. Finally, he
was beaten unmercifully and taken back to his cell in a dying
condition.”
Major Madeline was not the only victim of such evil treatment which
several German officers of the Gestapo helped to inflict. This inquiry
has shown:
“. . . that 12 known persons succumbed to the tortures inflicted
by the Gestapo of Clermont-Ferrand, that some women were
stripped naked and beaten before they were raped.”
I am anxious not to lengthen these proceedings by useless citations. I
believe the Tribunal will consider as confirmed the facts that I have
presented. They are contained in the document that we are placing before
you, and in it the Tribunal will find, in extenso, the written
testimonies taken on the day which followed the liberation. This
systematic repetition of the same criminal proceedings in order to
achieve the same purpose—to bring about a reign of terror—was not the
isolated act of a subordinate having authority in our country only and
remaining outside the control of his government or of the Army General
Staff. An examination of the methods of the German police in all
countries of the West shows that the same horrors, the same atrocities,
were repeated systematically everywhere. Whether in Denmark, Belgium,
Holland, or Norway, the interrogations were everywhere and at all times
conducted by the Gestapo with the same savagery, the same contempt of
the rights of self defense, the same contempt of human dignity.
In the case of Denmark, we cite a few lines from a document already
submitted to the Tribunal. It is Document F-666 (Exhibit Number RF-317),
which should be the sixth in your document book. It contains an official
Danish report of October 1945, concerning the German major war criminals
appearing before the International Military Tribunal. On Page 5, under
the title, “Torture”, we read in a brief résumé everything that concerns
the question with regard to Denmark:
“In numerous cases the German police and their assistants used
torture in order to force the prisoners to confess or to give
information. This fact is supported by irrefutable evidence. In
most cases the torture consisted of beating with a rod or with a
rubber bludgeon. But also far more flagrant forms of torture
were used including some which will leave lasting injuries.
Bovensiepen has stated that the order to use torture in certain
cases emanated from higher authorities, possibly even from
Göring as Chief of the Geheime Staatspolizei but, at any rate,
from Heydrich. The instructions were to the effect that torture
might be used to compel persons to give information that might
serve to disclose subversive organizations directed against the
German Reich, but not for the purpose of making the delinquent
admit his own deeds.”
A little further on:
“The means were prescribed, namely, a limited number of strokes
with a rod. Bovensiepen does not remember whether the maximum
limit was 10 or 20 strokes. An officer from the criminal police
(Kriminal Kommissar, Kriminalrat) was there and also, when
circumstances so required, there was a medical officer present.”
The above-mentioned instructions were modified several times for minor
details, and all members of the criminal police were notified.
The Danish Government points out, in conclusion, two particularly
repugnant cases of torture inflicted on Danish patriots. They are the
cases of Professor Mogens Fog and the ill-treatment inflicted on Colonel
Ejnar Thiemroth. Finally, the Tribunal can read that Doctor
Hoffmann-Best states that his official prerogatives did not authorize
him to prevent the use of torture.
In the case of Belgium we should recall first of all the tortures that
were inflicted in the tragically famous camp of Breendonck, where
hundreds, even thousands of Belgian patriots, were shut up. We shall
revert to Breendonck when we deal with the question of concentration
camps. We shall merely quote from the report of the Belgian War Crimes
Commission a few definite facts in support of our original affirmation,
that all acts of ill-treatment imputed to the Gestapo in France were
reproduced in identical manner in all the occupied western countries.
The documents which we shall submit to you are to be found in the small
document book under Numbers F-942(a), 942(b), Exhibits RF-318, 319.
This report comprises minutes which I will not read, inasmuch as it
contains testimonies which are analogous to, if not identical with,
those that were read concerning France. However, on Pages 1 and 2 you
will find the statement made by M. Auguste Ramasl and a statement made
by M. Paul Desomer, which show that the most extreme cruelties were
inflicted on these men and that, when they emerged from the offices of
the Gestapo, they were completely disfigured and unable to stand.
And now I submit to you with regard to Belgium, Documents F-641(a) and
F-641(b), which now become Exhibits RF-320 and 321. I shall not read
them. They, too, contain reports describing tortures similar to those I
have already mentioned. If the Court will accept the cruelty of the
methods of torture employed by the Gestapo as having been established, I
will abstain from reading all the testimonies which have been collected.
In the case of Norway our information is taken from a document submitted
by the Norwegian Government for the punishment of the major war
criminals. In the French translation of this document—Number UK-79,
which we present as Exhibit Number RF-323—on Page 2, the Tribunal will
find the statement of the Norwegian Government according to which
numerous Norwegian citizens died from the cruel treatment inflicted on
them during their interrogations. The number of known cases for the
district of Oslo, only, is 52; but the number in the various regions of
Norway is undoubtedly much higher. The total number of Norwegian
citizens who died during the occupation in consequence of torture or
ill-treatment, execution, or suicide in political prisons or
concentration camps is approximately 2,100.
In Paragraph B, Page 2 of the document, there is a description of the
methods employed in the services of the Gestapo in Norway which were
identical with those I have already described.
In the case of Holland, we shall submit Document Number F-224, which
becomes Exhibit Number RF-324 and which, is an extract from the
statement of the Dutch Government for the prosecution and punishment of
the major German war criminals. This document bears the date of 11
January 1946. It has been distributed and should now be in your hands.
The Tribunal will find in this document a great number of testimonies
which were collected by the Criminal Investigation Department, all of
which describe the same ill-treatment and tortures as those already
known to you and which were committed by the services of the Gestapo in
Holland.
In Holland, as elsewhere, the accused were struck with sticks. When
their backs were completely raw from beating they were sent back to
their cells. Sometimes icy water was sprayed on them and sometimes they
were exposed to electrical current. At Amersfoort a witness saw with his
own eyes a prisoner, who was a priest, beaten to death with a rubber
truncheon. The systematic character of such tortures seems to me
definitely established.
The document of the Danish Government is a first proof in support of my
contention that these systematic tortures were deliberately willed by
the higher authorities of the Reich and that the members of the German
Government are responsible for them. In any case these systematic
tortures were certainly known, because there were protests from all
European countries against such methods, which plunged us again into the
darkness of the Middle Ages; and at no time was an order given to forbid
such methods, at no time were those who executed them repudiated by
their superiors. The methods followed were devised to reinforce the
policy of terrorism pursued by Germany in the western occupied
countries—a policy of terrorism which I already described to you when I
dealt with the question of hostages.
It is now incumbent on me to designate to you by name those among the
accused whom France, as well as other countries in the West, considers
to be especially guilty in having prepared and developed this criminal
policy carried out by the Gestapo. We maintain that they are Bormann and
Kaltenbrunner who, because of their functions, must have known more than
any others, about those deeds. Although we are not in possession of any
document signed by them in respect to the western countries, the
uniformity of the acts we have described to you and the fact that they
were analogous and even identical, in spite of the diversity of places,
enables us to assert that all these orders were dictated by a single
will; and among the accused, Bormann and Kaltenbrunner were the direct
instruments of that single will.
Everything I described to you here concerned the procedure prior to
judgment. We know with what ferocity this procedure was applied. We know
that this ferocity was intentional. It was known to the populations of
the invaded countries, and its purpose was to create an atmosphere of
real terror around the Gestapo and all the German police services.
After the examination came the judicial proceedings. These proceedings
were, as we see them, only a parody of justice. The prosecution was
based on a legal concept which we dismiss as being absolutely inhuman.
That part will be dealt with by my colleague, M. Edgar Faure, in the
second part of the statement on the German atrocities in the western
countries: crimes against the spirit.
It is sufficient for us to know that the German courts which dealt with
crimes committed by the citizens of the occupied western countries,
which did not accept defeat, never applied but one penalty, the death
penalty, and that in execution of an inhuman order by one of these men,
Keitel; an order which appears in Document Number L-90, already
submitted to you by my United States colleagues, under Document Number
USA-503. It is the penultimate in your large document book, Line 5:
“If these offenses are punished with imprisonment or even with
hard labor for life, it will be interpreted as a sign of
weakness. Effective and lasting intimidation can only be
achieved either by capital punishment or by measures which leave
the relatives and the population in the dark about the fate of
the culprit. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose.”
Is it necessary to make any comment? Can we be surprised at this war
leader giving orders to justice? What we heard about him yesterday makes
us doubt that he is merely a military leader. We have quoted you his own
words, “Effective and lasting intimidation can only be achieved by
capital punishment.” Are such orders, given to courts of justice,
compatible with military honor? “If in effect”—Keitel goes on to say in
this Document—“the courts are unable to pronounce the death penalty,
then the man must be deported.” I think you will share my opinion that,
when such orders are given to courts, one can no longer speak of
justice. In execution of this order, those of our compatriots who were
not condemned to death and immediately executed were deported to
Germany.
We now come to the third part of my statement: the question of
deportation.
It remains for me to explain to you in what circumstances the
deportations were carried out. If prior to that the Tribunal could
suspend the sitting for a few minutes, I should be very grateful.
THE PRESIDENT: How long would you like us to suspend, M. Dubost?