(_Charter, Article 6, especially 6_ (_b_))
VIII. Statement of the Offense
All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1 September 1939 and 8
May 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied
by the German Armed Forces since 1 September 1939, and in Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Italy, and on the High Seas.
All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and
executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in
Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things,
the practice of “total war” including methods of combat and of military
occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the
commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during
encounters with enemy armies, and against prisoners of war, and in
occupied territories against the civilian population of such
territories.
The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other
persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6
of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War
Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy
to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which
plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders,
organizers, instigators, and accomplices.
These methods and crimes constituted violations of international
conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of
criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations,
and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct.
(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS
OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH
SEAS
Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by
their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically
terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and
ill-treated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.
The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means,
including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding,
systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond
the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of
surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture
of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of
fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations
and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the
defendants interfered in religious matters, persecuted members of the
clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They
conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of
racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain
occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of
people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews,
Poles, and Gypsies and others.
Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with
the object of obtaining information.
Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to
“protective arrests” whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without
any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were
imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.
In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified
“Nacht und Nebel”. These were entirely cut off from the world and were
allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without
trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German
authorities.
Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to international
conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907,
the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as
derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal
penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to
Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in
this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive
of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right
of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and
ill-treatment of civilians.
1. _In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy, and
the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the “Western Countries”) and in
that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due north and south
through the center of Berlin (hereinafter called “Western Germany”)._
Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and
similar establishments set up by the defendants, and particularly in the
concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck,
Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbrück, Vught, and Amersfoort, and in numerous
cities, towns, and villages, including Oradour-sur-Glane, Trondheim, and
Oslo.
Crimes committed in France or Against French citizens took the following
forms:
Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial
pretexts: they were both individual and collective; notably in
Paris (round-up of the 18th Arrondissement by the Field
Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th
Arrondissement in August 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals
in December 1941, round-up in July 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand
(round-up of professors and students of the University of
Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermont-Ferrand on 25 November
1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in
January 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24 December 1943); at
Cluny (round-up on 24 December 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May
1944); at Saint Pol de Léon (round-up in July 1944); at Locminé
(round-up on 3 July 1944); at Eysieux (round-up in May 1944) and
at Moussey (round-up in September 1944). These arrests were
followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the
most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water,
asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments
of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and
practiced in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons,
Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice,
Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Béthune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes,
Nancy, Troyes, and Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up
at the Gestapo centers.
In the concentration camps, the health regime and the labor regime were
such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes)
attained enormous proportions, for instance:
1. Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from Compiègne to
Auschwitz in January 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the end of four
months.
2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23 March and 6 May 1943,
in Block 8 at Dachau.
3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21 November 1943, and 15
March 1945, in the Block at Dora.
4. 465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November 1944, at Dora.
5. 22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1 January
1943, and 15 April 1945.
6. 11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of them in
Block 30 reserved for the sick and the infirm) between 1 January and
15 April 1945.
7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.
8. Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg Camp, 1,600 died
from supposedly natural causes.
Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps were:
Bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of women at
Auschwitz and at Ravensbrück, study of the evolution of cancer of the
womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at
Natzweiler, heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular
excisions at Ravensbrück, etc.), gas chambers, gas wagons, and crematory
ovens. Of 228,000 French political and racial deportees in concentration
camps, only 28,000 survived.
In France systematic extermination was practiced also, notably at Asq on
1 April 1944, at Colpo on 22 July 1944, at Buzet-sur-Tarn on 6 July 1944
and on 17 August 1944, at Pluvignier on 8 July 1944, at Rennes on 8 June
1944, at Grenoble on 8 July 1944, at Saint Flour on 10 June 1944, at
Ruisnes on 10 July 1944, at Nimes, at Tulle, and at Nice, where, in July
1944, the victims of torture were exposed to the population, and at
Oradour-sur-Glane where the entire village population was shot or burned
alive in the church.
The many charnel pits give proof of anonymous massacres. Most notable of
these are the charnel pits of Paris (Cascade du Bois de Boulogne),
Lyons, Saint-Genis-Laval, Besançon, Petit-Saint-Bernard, Aulnat, Caen,
Port-Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, L’hermitage
Lorges, Morlaas, Bordelongue, Signe.
In the course of a premeditated campaign of terrorism, initiated in
Denmark by the Germans in the latter part of 1943, 600 Danish subjects
were murdered and, in addition, throughout the German occupation of
Denmark, large numbers of Danish subjects were subjected to torture and
ill-treatment of all sorts. In addition, approximately 500 Danish
subjects were murdered, by torture and otherwise, in German prisons and
concentration camps.
In Belgium between 1940 and 1944 tortures by various means, but
identical in each place, were carried out at Brussels, Liége, Mons,
Ghent, Namur, Antwerp, Tournai, Arlon, Charleroi, and Dinant.
At Vught, in Holland, when the camp was evacuated about 400 persons were
murdered by shooting.
In Luxembourg, during the German occupation, 500 persons were murdered
and, in addition, another 521 were illegally executed, by order of such
special tribunals as the so-called “Sondergericht”. Many more persons in
Luxembourg were subjected to torture and mistreatment by the Gestapo.
Not less than 4,000 Luxembourg nationals were imprisoned during the
period of German occupation, and of these at least 400 were murdered.
Between March 1944 and April 1945, in Italy, at least 7,500 men, women,
and children, ranging in years from infancy to extreme old age were
murdered by the German soldiery at Civitella, in the Ardeatine Caves in
Rome, and at other places.
2. _In the U.S.S.R., i. e., in the Bielorussian, Ukrainian, Estonian,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republics, in 19 regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic, and in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the
Balkans (hereinafter called “the Eastern Countries”) and in that part of
Germany which lies east of a line drawn north and south through the
center of Berlin (hereinafter called “Eastern Germany”)._
From 1 September 1939, when the German Armed Forces invaded Poland, and
from 22 June 1941, when they invaded the U.S.S.R., the German Government
and the German High Command adopted a systematic policy of murder and
ill-treatment of the civilian populations of and in the Eastern
Countries as they were successively occupied by the German Armed Forces.
These murders and ill-treatments were carried on continuously until the
German Armed Forces were driven out of the said countries.
Such murders and ill-treatments included:
(_a_) Murders and ill-treatments at concentration camps and similar
establishments set up by the Germans in the Eastern Countries and in
Eastern Germany including those set up at Maidanek and Auschwitz.
The said murders and ill-treatments were carried out by divers means
including all those set out above, as follows:
About 1,500,000 persons were exterminated in Maidanek and about
4,000,000 persons were exterminated in Auschwitz, among whom were
citizens of Poland, the U.S.S.R., the United States of America, Great
Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, and other countries.
In the Lwow region and in the city of Lwow the Germans exterminated
about 700,000 Soviet people, including 70 persons in the field of the
arts, science, and technology, and also citizens of the United States of
America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Holland, brought
to this region from other concentration camps.
In the Jewish ghetto from 7 September 1941 to 6 July 1943, over 133,000
persons were tortured and shot.
Mass shooting of the population occurred in the suburbs of the city and
in the Livenitz forest.
In the Ganov camp 200,000 peaceful citizens were exterminated. The most
refined methods of cruelty were employed in this extermination, such as
disembowelling and the freezing of human beings in tubs of water. Mass
shootings took place to the accompaniment of the music of an orchestra
recruited from the persons interned.
Beginning with June 1943, the Germans carried out measures to hide the
evidence of their crimes. They exhumed and burned corpses, and they
crushed the bones with machines and used them for fertilizer.
At the beginning of 1944 in the Ozarichi region of the Bielorussian
S.S.R., before liberation by the Red Army, the Germans established three
concentration camps without shelters, to which they committed tens of
thousands of persons from the neighboring territories. They brought many
people to these camps from typhus hospitals intentionally, for the
purpose of infecting the other persons interned and for spreading the
disease in territories from which the Germans were being driven by the
Red Army. In these camps there were many murders and crimes.
In the Estonian S.S.R. they shot tens of thousands of persons and in one
day alone, 19 September 1944, in Camp Kloga, the Germans shot 2,000
peaceful citizens. They burned the bodies on bonfires.
In the Lithuanian S.S.R. there were mass killings of Soviet citizens,
namely: in Panerai at least 100,000; in Kaunas more than 70,000; in
Alitus about 60,000; at Prenai more than 3,000; in Villiampol about
8,000; in Mariampol about 7,000; in Trakai and neighboring towns 37,640.
In the Latvian S.S.R. 577,000 persons were murdered.
As a result of the whole system of internal order maintained in all
camps, the interned persons were doomed to die.
In a secret instruction entitled “the internal regime in concentration
camps”, signed personally by Himmler in 1941 severe measures of
punishment were set forth for the internees. Masses of prisoners of war
were shot, or died from the cold and torture.
(_b_) Murders and ill-treatments at places in the Eastern Countries and
in the Soviet Union, other than in the camps referred to in (_a_) above,
included, on various dates during the occupation by the German Armed
Forces:
The destruction in the Smolensk region of over 135,000 Soviet citizens.
Among these, near the village of Kholmetz of the Sychev region, when the
military authorities were required to remove the mines from an area, on
the order of the Commander of the 101st German Infantry Division,
Major-General Fisler, the German soldiers gathered the inhabitants of
the village of Kholmetz and forced them to remove mines from the road.
All of these people lost their lives as a result of exploding mines.
In the Leningrad region there were shot and tortured over 172,000
persons, including over 20,000 persons who were killed in the city of
Leningrad by the barbarous artillery barrage and the bombings.
In the Stavropol region in an anti-tank trench close to the station of
Mineralny Vody, and in other cities, tens of thousands of persons were
exterminated.
In Pyatigorsk many were subjected to torture and criminal treatment,
including suspension from the ceiling and other methods. Many of the
victims of these tortures were then shot.
In Krasnodar some 6,700 civilians were murdered by poison gas in gas
vans, or were tortured and shot.
In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were tortured and
killed. After the Germans were expelled from Stalingrad, more than a
thousand mutilated bodies of local inhabitants were found with marks of
torture. One hundred and thirty-nine women had their arms painfully bent
backward and held by wires. From some their breasts had been cut off and
their ears, fingers, and toes had been amputated. The bodies bore the
marks of burns. On the bodies of the men the five pointed star was
burned with an iron or cut with a knife. Some were disembowelled.
In Orel over 5,000 persons were murdered.
In Novgorod and in the Novgorod region many thousands of Soviet citizens
were killed by shooting, starvation, and torture. In Minsk tens of
thousands of citizens were similarly killed.
In the Crimea peaceful citizens were gathered on barges, taken out to
sea and drowned, over 144,000 persons being exterminated in this manner.
In the Soviet Ukraine there were monstrous criminal acts of the Nazi
conspirators. In Babi Yar, near Kiev, they shot over 100,000 men, women,
children, and old people. In this city in January 1942, after the
explosion in German Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street the Germans
arrested as hostages 1,250 persons—old men, minors, women with nursing
infants. In Kiev they killed over 195,000 persons.
In Rovno and the Rovno region they killed and tortured over 100,000
peaceful citizens.
In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot or threw
alive into a great ravine 11,000 women, old men, and children.
In Kamenetz-Podolsk Region 31,000 Jews were shot and exterminated,
including 13,000 persons brought there from Hungary.
In the Odessa Region at least 200,000 Soviet citizens were killed.
In Kharkov about 195,000 persons were either tortured to death, shot, or
gassed in gas vans.
In Gomel the Germans rounded up the population in prison, and tortured
and tormented them, and then took them to the center of the city and
shot them in public.
In the city of Lyda in the Grodnen region on 8 May 1942, 5,670 persons
were completely undressed, driven into pens in groups of 100, and then
shot by machine guns. Many were thrown in the graves while they were
still alive.
Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly destroyed even
children. They killed them with their parents, in groups, and alone.
They killed them in children’s homes and hospitals, burying the living
in the graves, throwing them into flames, stabbing them with bayonets,
poisoning them, conducting experiments upon them, extracting their blood
for the use of the German Army, throwing them into prison and Gestapo
torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children died from
hunger, torture, and epidemic diseases.
From 6 September to 24 November 1942, in the region of Brest, Pinsk,
Kobren, Dyvina, Malority, and Berezy-Kartuzsky about 400 children were
shot by German punitive units.
In the Yanov camp in the city of Lwow the Germans killed 8,000 children
in two months.
In the resort of Tiberda the Germans annihilated 500 children suffering
from tuberculosis of the bone, who were in the sanatorium for the cure.
On the territory of the Latvian S.S.R. the German usurpers killed
thousands of children, whom they had brought there with their parents
from the Bielorussian S.S.R., and from the Kalinin, Kaluga, and other
regions of the R.S.F.S.R.
In Czechoslovakia as a result of torture, beating, hanging, and
shootings, there were annihilated in Gestapo prisons in Brno, Seim, and
other places over 20,000 persons. Moreover, many thousands of internees
were subjected to criminal treatment, beatings, and torture.
Both before the war, as well as during the war, thousands of Czech
patriots, in particular Catholics and Protestants, lawyers, doctors,
teachers, etc., were arrested as hostages and imprisoned. A large number
of these hostages were killed by the Germans.
In Greece in October 1941, the male populations between 16 and 60 years
of age of the Greek villages Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia Mesovunos,
Selli, Ano-Kerzilion and Kato-Kerzilion were shot—in all 416 persons.
In Yugoslavia many thousands of civilians were murdered. Other examples
are given under paragraph (D), “Killing of Hostages”, below.
(B) DEPORTATION FOR SLAVE LABOR AND FOR OTHER
PURPOSES OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF AND IN
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
During the whole period of the occupation by Germany of both the Western
and the Eastern Countries it was the policy of the German Government and
of the German High Command to deport able-bodied citizens from such
occupied countries to Germany and to other occupied countries for the
purpose of slave labor upon defense works, in factories, and in other
tasks connected with the German war effort.
In pursuance of such policy there were mass deportations from all the
Western and Eastern Countries for such purposes during the whole period
of the occupation.
Such deportations were contrary to international conventions, in
particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and
customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from
the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of
the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b)
of the Charter.
Particulars of deportations, by way of example only and without
prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows: