THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire.
[_The witness left the stand._]
M. DUBOST: These two days of testimony will obviate my reading the
documents any further, since it seems established in the eyes of the
Tribunal, that the excesses, ill-treatment, and crimes which our
witnesses have described to you, occurred repeatedly and were identical
in all the camps; and therefore are evidence of a higher will
originating in the government itself, a systematic will of extermination
and terror under which all occupied Europe had to suffer.
Therefore I shall submit to you only, without reading them, the
documents we have collected, and confine myself to a brief analysis
whenever they might give you. . .
THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, you understand, of course, that the Tribunal
is satisfied with the evidence which it has heard up to date; but, of
course, it is expecting to hear evidence, or possibly may hear evidence,
from the defendants; and it naturally will suspend its judgment until it
has heard that evidence and, as I pointed out to you yesterday, I think,
under Article 24e of the Charter, you will have the opportunity of
applying to the Tribunal, if you think it right to call rebuttal
evidence in answer to any evidence which the defendants may call. All I
mean to indicate to you now is that the Tribunal is not making up its
mind at the present moment. It will wait until it has heard the evidence
for the Defense.
M. DUBOST: I understand you, Mr. President, but I think that the
evidence we submitted in the form of testimony during these 2 days
constitutes an essential part of our accusation. It will allow us to
shorten the presentation of our documents, of which we shall simply
submit an analysis or very brief extracts.
We had stopped at the description of the transports and under what
conditions they were made, when we started calling our witnesses.
In order to establish who, among the defendants, are those particularly
responsible for these transports, I present Document UK-56, signed by
Jodl and ordering the deportation of Jews from Denmark. It appears in
the first book of documents as Exhibit Number RF-335.
I will now continue presenting a question which was interrupted on
Friday, when the session was suspended at 1700 hours. This Document
Number UK-56 is a telegram transmitted en clair marked “Top Secret.” It
is the 8th in the first book. Its second paragraph reads as follows:
“The deportation of Jews is to be carried out by the
Reichsführer SS, who is to detail two police battalions to
Denmark for this purpose.
“Signed: Jodl.”
Here we have the carrying out of a political act by a military
organization or at least by a leader belonging to a military
organization—the German General Staff. This charge therefore affects
both Jodl and the German General Staff.
We submitted under Exhibit Number RF-324 (Document Number F-224), during
the Friday afternoon session, an extract from the report of the Dutch
Government. The Tribunal will find in this report a passage concerning
the transport of Dutch Jews detained in Westerbork—which I quote,
Paragraph 2:
“All Jewish Netherlanders, whom the Germans could lay their
hands on . . . were brought together here. . . . “—Paragraph
3—“Gradually all those interned in Westerbork were deported to
Poland.”
Is it necessary to recall the consequences of these transports, carried
out in the conditions described to you, when witnesses have come to tell
you that each time the cars were opened numerous corpses had first to be
taken out before a few survivors could be found?
The French Document Number F-115 (Exhibit Number RF-336), is the report
of Professor Richet. In it Professor Richet repeats what our witnesses
have said, that there were 75 to 120 deportees in each car. In every
transport men died. The fact is known that on arriving in Buchenwald
from Compiègne, after an average journey of 60 hours, at least 25
percent of the men had succumbed. This testimony corroborates those of
Blaha, Madame Vaillant-Couturier and Professor Dupont.
Blaha’s testimony appears in your document book under the Number
3249-PS. It is the second statement of Blaha. We have heard Blaha. I do
not think it necessary to read what he has already stated to us.
Especially infamous is the transport to Dachau, during the months of
August and September 1944, when numerous trains which had left France,
generally from the camps in Brittany, arrived at this camp with four to
five hundred dead out of about two thousand men in a train. The first
page of Document Number F-140 states—and I quote so as not to have to
return to it again—in the fourth paragraph which deals with Auschwitz:
“About seven million persons died in this camp.” It repeats the
conditions under which the transports were made and which Madame
Vaillant-Couturier has described to you. On the train of 2 July 1944,
which left from Compiègne, men went mad and fought with each other and
more than six hundred of them died between Compiègne and Dachau. It is
with this convoy that Document Number F-83 deals, which we submit as
Exhibit Number RF-337, and which indicates in the minutes of Dr.
Bouvier, Rheims, 20 February 1945—that these prisoners by the time they
reached Rheims were already half-dead of thirst: “Eight dying men were
taken out already at Rheims; one of them was a priest.” This convoy was
to go to Dachau. A few kilometers past Compiègne there were already
numerous dead in every car.
Document F-32, Exhibit Number RF-331, Page 21, contains many other
examples of the atrocious conditions under which our compatriots were
transported from France to Germany:
“At the station at Bremen water was refused us by the German Red
Cross.
“We were dying of thirst. At Breslau the prisoners again begged
German Red Cross nurses to give us a little water. They took no
notice of our appeals. . . .”
To prevent escape, in disregard of the most natural and elementary
feelings of modesty, the deportees were forced in many convoys to strip
themselves of all their clothes, and they travelled like that for many
hours, entirely naked, from France to Germany. A testimony to this
effect is given by our official document already submitted under
Document Number RF-301:
“One of the means used to prevent escapes, or as reprisal for
them, was to unclothe the prisoners completely.”—And the author
of the report adds—“This reprisal was also aimed at the moral
degradation of the individual.”
The most restrained testimonies report that this crowding together of
naked men barely having room to breathe, was a horrible sight. When
escapes occurred in spite of the precautions, hostages were taken from
the cars and shot. Testimony to this effect is provided by the same
document—five deportees were executed:
“That was how, near Montmorency, five deportees from the train
of 15 August 1944 were buried, and five others of the same train
were killed by pistol shots by German police and officers of the
Wehrmacht at Domprémy (Marne).”
Added to this quotation is that of another official document, which we
have already submitted under F-321, Exhibit Number 331:
“Several young men were rapidly chosen. The moment they reached
the trench the policemen each seized a prisoner, pushed him
against the side of the trench, and fired a pistol into the nape
of his neck.”
The same thing prevailed in deportations from Denmark. The Danish Jews
were particularly affected. A certain number, warned in time, had been
able to escape to Sweden with the help of Danish patriots.
Unfortunately, eight to nine thousand persons were arrested by the
Germans and deported. It is estimated that 475 of them were transported
by boat and truck under inhuman conditions to Bohemia and Moravia to
Theresienstadt. This is stated in the Danish document submitted under
Document Number F-666, Exhibit Number RF-338.
In connection with this country it is necessary to inform the Tribunal
of the deportation of the frontier guards:
“At most places, however, the policemen were dismissed as soon
as they had been disarmed. Only in Copenhagen and in the large
provincial towns were they retained, and partly by ship and
partly by goods vans, taken southwards to Germany.
“The policemen were taken via Neuengamme to the concentration
camp at Buchenwald. They were quartered there under
indescribably insanitary conditions; a very large proportion of
them were taken ill; about one hundred policemen and frontier
guardsmen died and several still bear traces of the sojourn.”
When these deportations had been carried out, all the citizens of the
subjugated countries of the west of Europe found themselves in the
company of their comrades of misfortune of the east, in the
concentration camps of Germany. These camps were merely a means of
realizing the policy of extermination which Germany had pursued ever
since the National Socialists seized power. This policy of extermination
would lead, according to Hitler, to installing 250 million Germans in
Europe in the territories adjoining Germany, which constituted her vital
space.
The police, the German Army, no longer dared to shoot their hostages,
but neither of the two had any mercy on them. More and more, were
transported in ever increasing numbers from 1943 to German concentration
camps, where all means were used to annihilate them—from exhausting
labor to the gas chambers.
Censuses taken at various times in France enable us to ascertain that
there were more than 250,000 French deportees, of which only 35,000
returned. Document Number F-497, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-339,
indicates that out of 600,000 arrests which the Germans made in France,
350,000 were carried out with a view to internment in France or in
Germany:
“Total number deported, 250,000; number of deportees returned,
35,000.”
On the following page are a few names of deported French personages.
“Prefects: M. Bussières, M. Bonnefoy, disappeared in the _Cap
Arcona_, Generals: de Lestraing, executed at Dachau; Job,
executed at Auschwitz; Frère, died at Struthof; Bardi de Fourtou
died at Neuengamme; Colonel Roger Masse died at Auschwitz.
“High officials: Marquis of Moustier, died at Neuengamme;
Bouloche, Inspector General of Roads and Bridges died at
Buchenwald; his wife died at Ravensbrück, one of his sons died
during deportation, his other son alone returned from
Flossenbürg; Jean Devèze, engineer of roads and bridges,
disappeared at Nordhausen; Pierre Block, engineer of roads and
bridges, died at Auschwitz; Mme. Getting, founder of the social
service in France, disappeared at Auschwitz.
“Among university professors, names well-known in France, such
as: Henri Maspéro, Professor at the College de France, died at
Buchenwald; Georges Bruhat, Director of the École Normale
Supérieure, died at Oranienburg; Professor Vieille died at
Buchenwald. . . .”
It is impossible to name each of the intellectuals exterminated by
German fury. Among the doctors we must, however, mention the
disappearance of the Director of the Rothschild Hospital and of
Professor Florence, both murdered, one at Auschwitz, the other at
Neuengamme.
As to Holland: 110,000 Dutch citizens of the Jewish faith were arrested,
only 5,000 returned; 16,000 patriots were arrested, only 6,000 returned.
Out of a total of 126,000 deportees, 11,000 were repatriated after the
liberation.
In Belgium, there were 197,150 deportees, not including prisoners of
war; including prisoners of war, 250,000.
In Luxembourg, 7,000 deportees—more than 700 were Jews. There were
4,000 Luxembourgers; out of these, 500 died.
In Denmark (Exhibit Number RF-338, Document Number F-666 already
submitted) 6,104 Danes were interned; 583 died.
There were camps within and outside Germany. Most of the latter were
used only for the sorting of prisoners, and I have already spoken about
them. However, some of them functioned like those in Germany and among
them, that of Westerbork in Holland must be mentioned. This camp is
dealt with in Document Number F-224, already submitted under Exhibit
Number RF-324, which, is the official report of the Dutch Government.
The camp of Amersfoort, also in Holland, is the subject of Document
Number F-677, which will be submitted as Exhibit Number RF-344.
What we already know through direct testimony of the regime of the Nazi
internment camps makes it unnecessary for me to read the whole report,
which is rather voluminous, and which does not bring any noticeably new
facts on the regime of these camps.
There is also the camp of Vught in Holland. Then in Norway the camps of
Grini, of Falstad, of Vlven; that of Espeland, and that of Sydspissen,
which are described in a document provided by the Norwegian
Government—Document Number F-240, Exhibit Number RF-292, which we have
already submitted. The Tribunal will excuse me for not reading this
document, which does not give us any information that we have not heard
before from the witnesses.
The camps inside Germany, like all those outside Germany which were not
transit camps only, should be divided into three categories—which is in
accordance with German instructions themselves which fell into our
hands. You will find these instructions in your second document book,
Page 11. The pages follow in regular order. It is Document Number
1063-PS, USA-492. We read:
“The Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police has given
his approval for the classification of the concentration camps
into various categories which take into account the prisoner’s
character and the degree of danger which he represents to the
State. Accordingly, the concentration camps will be classified
in the following categories:
“Category 1: For all prisoners accused of minor
delinquencies. . . .
“Category 1a: For aged prisoners and those able to work under
only certain conditions.
“Category 2: For prisoners with more serious charges, but still
capable of re-education and improvement.
“Category 3: For major offenders charged with particularly
serious crimes. . . .”
On 2 January 1941, the date of this document, the German administration,
in dividing the camps into three categories, made an enumeration of the
principal German camps throughout Germany in each category. It seems
unnecessary to me to revert to the geographical location of these camps
within Germany, since my American colleagues, with the help of
geographical maps, have already dealt fully with this question.
The organization and functioning of these camps had a double purpose:
The first, according to Document Number F-285, was to make good the
labor shortage, and obtain a maximum output at a minimum cost. This
document is submitted as Exhibit Number RF-346. I shall not read it _in
extenso_, but from Page 14 of your second document book, I shall read
the first paragraph:
“For important military reasons . . .”—this is dated 17
December 1942 and coincides with the difficulties encountered in
the course of the Russian campaign—“. . . because of great
difficulties of a military nature, which cannot be stated, the
Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police ordered on 14
December 1942 that, by end of January 1943 at the latest, at
least 35,000 internees, fit for work, shall be sent to
concentration camps.
“To obtain this number the following is ordered:
“As from this date and to 1 February 1943, all Eastern or
foreign workers who escaped or broke their contracts, and who do
not belong to allied, friendly or neutral states, shall be sent
back to concentration camps, by the quickest means possible.”
Arbitrary internments with a view to procuring, at the least possible
cost, the maximum output from labor which had already been deported to
Germany but which had to be paid since it was under labor contracts.
The organization of these camps was further intended to exterminate all
unproductive forces which could no longer be exploited by German
industry, and which in general might hinder Nazi expansion. Evidence for
this is furnished by Document Number R-91, Pages 20 and 21 of the second
document book, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-347, which is a telegram
from the Chief of Staff of the Reichsführer SS, received at 2:10 o’clock
on 16 December 1942 from Berlin.
“In connection with the increased allocation of labor to
concentration camps, ordered to be completed by 30 January 1943,
the following procedure may be applied regarding the Jews:
“1) Total number: 45,000 Jews.
“2) Start of transportation: 11 January 1943. End of
transportation: 31 January 1943. . . .
“3)“—The most important part of the document—“The figure of
45,000 Jews is to consist of 30,000 Jews from the district of
Bialystok; 10,000 Jews from the ghetto of Theresienstadt, 5,000
of which are capable of work and until now have been used for
light tasks in the ghetto; and 5,000 Jews generally unfit for
work, including those over 60 years of age. In order to use this
opportunity for reducing the number of inmates now amounting to
48,000 which is too high for the ghetto, I ask that special
powers be given to me. . . .”
At the very end of this paragraph:
“The number of 45,000 includes _those unfit for
work_”—underlined (italics)—“(old Jews and children included).
By applying suitable methods, the screening of newly-arrived
Jews in Auschwitz should yield at least _10,000 to 15,000 people
fit for work_.”
This is underlined in the text.
And here is an official document which corroborates the testimony of
Mme. Vaillant-Couturier, among various other testimonies on the same
question, as to how the systematic selections were made from each convoy
arriving at Auschwitz, not by the will of the chief of the camp of
Auschwitz, but the result of higher orders coming from the German
Government itself.
If it please the Tribunal, my report will cease here this evening, and
will be continued tomorrow, dealing with the utilization of this
manpower, which I shall endeavor to treat as quickly as possible in the
light of the testimonies we have already had.
[_The Tribunal adjourned until 30 January 1946 at 1000 hours._]
FORTY-SIXTH DAY
Wednesday, 30 January 1946
_Morning Session_
MARSHAL: May it please the Court, I desire to announce that Defendants
Kaltenbrunner and Seyss-Inquart will be absent from this morning’s
session on account of illness.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Babel, I understand that you do not wish to
cross-examine that French witness.
HERR BABEL: That is correct.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the French witness can go home.