The criminal activities of the Gestapo in the preparation and realization of plans far aggression both within the Reich itself and in the Western States have already been dealt with by my respected colleagues. For that reason I shall proceed to the subject of the Gestapo crimes in the territories of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, temporarily occupied by the Hitlerites.

(C) CRIMES OF THE GESTAPO IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA, YUGOSLAVIA AND POLAND

The crimes which the Hitlerites had committed with the help of the executive police organisations in the temporarily occupied territories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland have many features in common.

The various Gestapo organisations represented the executive machinery which served to realize the majority of these crimes.

The very first mass “action” for the annihilating of the Polish intelligentsia, the so-called “Operation AB,” was conceived by Frank, approved by Hitler, and directly perpetrated by the Gestapo. It was the agents of the Gestapo who, with the aid of several SS units and under the direction of the SS and Police Chief for Poland, Obergruppenfuehrer Kruger, as well as Brigadefuehrer Strechenbach, exterminated several thousand Polish intellectuals in the execution of this savage mass operation.

In accordance with Frank’s decree of 9th October, 1943, “Standgerichte” (Summary Courts) of evil fame, created “to suppress attacks on German construction in the Government General,” also included agents of the Secret Police, i.e., the Gestapo.

Again it was the Gestapo in Poland which put into effect as far back as January, 1941, the terrible reprisal against the clergy which resulted in the murder of some 700 and the imprisonment of 3,000.

As is thoroughly proved by the documents submitted by the Soviet prosecution, the Gestapo established on Polish territory special mass extermination centres for the Jewish population.

In contrast to extermination camps such as Maidanek and Auschwitz, which were under the jurisdiction of the Administrative and Supply Command of the SS, the secret extermination camp in Chelmno, where over 340,000 Jews were done away with in the death vans, was both founded by and directly subordinate to the Gestapo and was known as “Sonderkommando Kulmhof.”

This Gestapo Sonderkommando was under the supervision of Braunfisch, Gestapo Chief of the city of Lodz.

It was also the Gestapo which founded Treblinka, prototype of all subsequent extermination camps.

Eichmann’s “Essay” for the extermination of the Jews in Europe by special extermination camps created for the purpose by Section “D” of the SS originated in the Gestapo where Eichmann worked as a direct subordinate of the Gestapo Chief Muller.

It was the Gestapo that was responsible for the annihilation of 3,200,000 Jews in Poland, 112,000 in Czechoslovakia and 65,000 in Yugoslavia.

It was the Gestapo that introduced and practised, in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, the criminal system of hostages and the principle of collective responsibility, thus arbitrarily and constantly widening the circle of persons liable to reprisals. For instance, it was the Gestapo that, together with defendant Frank, issued the notorious decree of mass reprisals with regard to the “families of saboteurs,” the decree which stated that “not only should the saboteurs seized be executed on the spot but also that all male relatives of the offenders should be shot immediately and all female relatives over 16 years of age be confined in concentration camps.”

What went on in Poland does not typify the Gestapo behaviour in Poland alone, but applies in the same degree to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

200,000 persons passed through the Gestapo prison in Brno, Czechoslovakia, during the period of occupation alone. Only 50,000 of these were freed, and the others were killed or sent to a lingering death in the concentration camp.

The order of 9th March, 1942, gave the Gestapo the right to apply both “preventive confinement” and “protective custody.”

Thousands of Czech patriots, particularly doctors, teachers, lawyers and clergy et alia, were arrested even prior to the war. In addition, lists were compiled in each region of persons liable to be arrested as hostages at the first sign “of disturbance of the social order or security.” Karl Hans Frank, addressing “leaders of the movement for national unity,” announced in 1940 that 2,000 Czech hostages - then in concentration camps - would be shot unless the Czech leaders signed a declaration of fealty.

After the attempt on Heydrich’s life many of these hostages were executed.

In 1939 the Gestapo called together factory directors and warehouse supervisors of the various Czech industrial concerns. They were made to sign the following statement: “I am cognizant of the fact that I shall be shot immediately if the plant stops work without a justifiable cause.”

Schoolteachers in Czechoslovakia similarly had to sign declarations rendering themselves responsible for the loyalty of their pupils.

It was the Gestapo which was responsible for that crime unparalleled in its cruelty - of the annihilation of the village of Lidice and of its population.

The Gestapo terror in Yugoslavia assumed a particularly vicious character.

A confirmation of this fact can be found in the following brief quotation from the Report No. 6 of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes:

“A group of hostages was hanged in Celje (Zilli) on hooks used by butchers for suspending meat. In Maribor the condemned victims, working in groups of five, placed the bodies of the hostages shot into cases and then loaded them on to trucks. As each team of five finished its task, it was shot, and the next group of five replaced it in the loading job. This went on continuously. The Sodna Street in Maribor was soaked with blood from these lorries. The number given, of 50,000 victims, appears too small, as several hundred were shot each time; in Granz even as many as 500 being murdered at once.”

Numerous documents have been submitted to the Tribunal dealing with the mass shooting of hostages and signed by the corresponding regional chiefs of the Gestapo in Yugoslavia. I shall not dwell upon the details of these documents, since I suppose that the Tribunal still bears them clearly in mind.

(d) CRIMES OF THE GESTAPO IN THE TEMPORARILY OCCUPIED TERRITORIES OF THE USSR

The legal proceedings have thoroughly revealed those monstrous crimes which the Gestapo had committed in the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR. There the Gestapo personnel functioned either in the operational units, i.e., the Einsatzgruppen, the Einsatzkommandos, and the Sonderkommandos of the SD and of the Security Police, or else it comprised the staff of the Secret Field Police (GFP), which was usually complemented by employees both of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police.

As a rule, it was the Gestapo official who on all these occasions directly carried out the inhuman “executions” and “mass actions,” acting under the general political leadership of members of the SD staff and with the assistance of officials of other police organisations, as well as units of the Waffen SS, widely used for these purposes.

Numerous cases of mass murder and torture of peaceful Soviet citizens by the Gestapo have been established at the Tribunal. As an example I shall content myself with the description of individual characteristic acts only. In the small town of Vyasma alone, by order of the chief of the Gestapo, several thousands of peaceful citizens were killed or tortured to death. The Fascist monsters not only killed their victims but made them dig their own graves.

In the village of Zaitchiki, in the Smolensk district, the men of the Gestapo drove into one house 23 old men, women and children, set the house on fire and burned alive all those inside.

In the psychiatric hospitals of Riga the Gestapo men exterminated all the inmates of these asylums.

As stated in the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German Fascist usurpers in the town of Rovno, and in the Rovno district, men of the Gestapo resorted to mass murder as a retaliation for each act of resistance.

When a German judge was killed by an unknown person in November, 1943, in Rovno, the Gestapo shot over 350 prisoners detained in the town prison.

It is known, from the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes of the German Fascist usurpers, that the Gestapo men used death vans for the extermination of Soviet citizens. In the town of Krasnodar, and in the Krasnodar region, the Gestapo people who formed part of operational groups exterminated by carbon monoxide poisoning over 6,700 Soviet citizens, including women, old men and children who were under treatment in Krasnodar hospital, as well as persons held in the Gestapo prison.

In the outskirts of the town of Krasnodar, in a big anti- tank trench, were buried several thousand bodies of Soviet citizens who had been poisoned by gas and thrown there by the Gestapo.

In the Stavropol region 54 children, who were seriously ill and were being treated at the health resort of Tiberda, were poisoned by gas in the death vans, as were 660 patients of the Stavropol psychiatric hospital.

The evidence given by Kovaltchouk, who lived in the Stavropol region, gives us an idea of the tortures practised by the Gestapo. They interrogated only at night. These interrogations were made in a special room, where special torture devices had been set up, including chains with metal bars fixed in the concrete floor, to which the prisoner’s arms and legs were fastened. The arrested person was first of all stripped naked, then laid on the floor, his hands and legs shackled, after which he was beaten with rubber sticks. Sometimes a wooden board was placed on the victim’s back and sharp blows were then inflicted with heavy weights on the board.

The torture chamber was so arranged that when an arrested person was tortured, the other arrested people in an adjoining ward awaiting torture were able to follow the scene. After the tortures the unconscious prisoner was temporarily thrown aside by the “modern inquisitors” and the next victim, in most cases already in a half-unconscious condition, was dragged into the room.

These unheard-of tortures were used by the Gestapo even on women.

I shall mention one example only. Such tortures during interrogation were most extensively used throughout the occupied territories of the USSR.

Recourse to medieval tortures during interrogation followed special orders emanating from the RSHA and Muller, chief of the Gestapo. In one of those top secret orders the authorities issued the following instructions: “Third degree can include the following treatment: a very simple diet (bread and water); a hard berth, a dark cell, deprival of sleep, exhausting drill and beating with birch rods.”

The intelligentsia, including distinguished men of science and art who were in the Soviet territories temporarily occupied by the Germans, were likewise subjected by the Gestapo to unheard of ill-treatment and persecution.

Persecution by the Gestapo of representatives of the intelligentsia was carried out according to a plan which had been elaborated beforehand. For instance, before the German troops had occupied Lwow, detachments of the Gestapo had in their possession lists of the principal representatives of the Lwow intelligentsia who were to be exterminated. The occupation of Lwow by the Germans immediately marked the beginning of mass arrests and shootings of professors, physicians, lawyers, writers and artists. Paying no heed to the human dignity of their victims, the Gestapo subjected the arrested scientists to the mast refined tortures, after which they shot them.

An investigation carried out by units of the Red Army, after Lwow had been freed from the German occupants, showed that over 70 prominent scientists, technicians and artists had been killed by the Germans, their bodies being subsequently burned by the Gestapo.

Fearing to be held responsible for these acts, the Fascist jackals painstakingly endeavoured to conceal the fact of the extermination of the Lwow intelligentsia.

The Gestapo also took part in the torturing and killing of prisoners of war.

During the court proceedings we heard a directive of Department IV of the Reich Security Main Office, dated 17th June, 1941; it concerned the activities of detachments of the Security Police and SD in the camps of the prisoners of war.

Your Honours also know of the Muller directive dated 9th November, 1941, addressed to all the departments of the Gestapo, which dealt with the disposal of the bodies of such people as had died on their way to the execution ground.

The written testimony of Kurt Lindorf, a former employee of the Gestapo, is at the disposal of the Tribunal. This document concerns the execution of Soviet political commissars and military employees of Jewish origin, and also deals with an order of the chief of the Security Police and SD, transmitted to the local organs of the Gestapo, concerning the transfer of certain categories of escaped officers from prisoner-of-war camps to the Mauthausen concentration camp for the carrying out of the “Kugel” (bullet) action.

The Tribunal is acquainted with the order of the commander of the 6th Military District, dated 27th July, 1944, stating that recaptured escaped prisoners of war lose their rights and are to be turned over to the Gestapo, and also with Keitel’s order to the armed forces, dated 4th August, 1942, which stated that the adoption of action against individual paratroopers and groups of paratroopers falls under the jurisdiction of the SD and the Gestapo.

The Gestapo actively co-operated in the deportation to German slave labour of thousands of peaceful citizens from the territories temporarily occupied by Germany and inflicted cruel repressive measures upon these persons on their arrival in Germany. In a like manner Muller, the chief of the Gestapo, in his telegram of 16th December, 1942, stated that the Gestapo could arrest some 45,000 Jews to serve as workers in the concentration camps.

In a directive of 17th December, 1942, Muller writes about this in connection with 35,000 Jews.

In the secret order of 18th July, 1941, Muller instructed the Gestapo about the necessary measures to be taken in order to prevent agitation among foreign workers.

The criminal activity of the Gestapo is of particular importance in the extermination of the Jews.

The affidavit of Wilhelm Hoettl dated 7th November, 1945, establishes the fact that the Gestapo exterminated some 6,000,000 Jews.

In the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission set up for the investigation of German Fascist atrocities in the territory of the USSR, and in other documents as well, innumerable facts of torture, of various outrages and mass murder of Jews by the Gestapo are brought forward.

The proceedings of the Court have fully confirmed the charge submitted against the criminal activities of the Gestapo.

As an organisation for bloody mass terror, the Gestapo must be recognised as a criminal organisation.

THE SECURITY SERVICE - “SD”

The Security: Service or “Sicherheitsdienst” was usually referred to in official Hitlerite police documents under the conventional abbreviation “SD.” It originated as a profoundly conspiratorial espionage organisation of German Fascism within the Party and the SS. The SD, as well as the SS, was organised by Himmler.

The SD was that secret organisation within the SS system which, after the seizure of power by the Hitlerites, had been the first to merge with the police agencies, and had promptly been appointed to leading positions in the secret police, created in the system of the SD and security detachments, playing both before and after the organisation of the RSHA - the Reich Security Main Office - the decisive role in the political intelligence system and “preventive annihilation” of elements displeasing to the Hitlerites.

The SD stood in the closest possible proximity to the Central Headquarters at the criminal Nazi conspirators, i.e., the Hitlerite Party Leadership. And that is precisely why the SD participated most actively in planning those police activities which invariably accompanied all the Hitlerite plans of aggression.

As will be shown below, it was the SD which created the first Einsatzgruppen, stood at the head of these predatory organisations of German Fascism, and organised the preparation of those atrocities which were later committed in the occupied territories of Poland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and other countries.

In an attempt to exonerate this criminal organisation from the responsibilities with which it is charged, the defence started an argument about the meaning of the very term SD.

We understand the reason why the defence started this terminological discussion. The defence needs it in its endeavour to support Kaltenbrunner’s version of SD as an organisation with functions strictly limited to the “inter-Reich information services,” and entirely alien to all police activities.

The defence, having admitted nothing but the more apparent part of the criminal activities of the SD, began this argument in order to conceal by the term “General information concerning trends and tendencies in individual circles” the remaining political and police functions practised by the SD as the peak organisation of the police SS machinery.

In reality, however, the SD was a widely spread espionage organisation of German Fascism which actively contributed to the realisation of the criminal plans of aggression and operated inside Germany, as well as in the occupied regions and abroad.

Along with the Gestapo, it was the SD cadres who formed the backbone of the Einsatzgruppen, where the SD personnel always occupied the principal posts.

The functions of the SD can be subdivided as follows:

(1) “General Information,” which literally covered everything, as shown by the SD official documents - the “Lebensgebiete” or spheres vital to the Fascist “Reich,” all government offices, and social circles in Fascist Germany.

(2) The “Special Functions” referring to the elaboration of special files and lists of persons (primarily in countries which were to be invaded). The filing cards and lists contained names of people who were to be subjected to the “special treatment,” i.e., either to be physically destroyed or confined in concentration camps.

(3) The function of supplying personnel for the special criminal organisations directly concerned with the realization of the Hitlerite plans for the annihilation of the politically undesirable elements and of the intellectuals in the occupied territories, and for conducting savage “executions” and “actions.”

The entire staff of the SD consisted of SS men. This is understandable, seeing that the SD was an offspring of the SS and was referred to, up to the very last, as the SD of the Reichsfuehrer SS.