"As to purely executive matters, approximately 80,000 persons were liquidated until now by the Kommandos of the Einsatzgruppe * * *

"Several retaliatory measures were carried out as large- scale actions. The largest of these actions took place immediately after the occupation of Kiev; it was carried out exclusively against Jews with their entire families.

"The difficulties resulting from such a large-scale action - in particular concerning the seizure - were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall-posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5-6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed

in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization.

"Even though approximately 75,000 Jews have been liquidated in this manner, it is already at this time evident that this cannot be a possible solution of the Jewish problem. Although we succeeded, in particular in smaller towns and also in villages, in accomplishing a complete liquidation of the Jewish problem, again and again, it is however observed in larger cities that after such an execution all Jews have indeed disappeared. But when after a certain period of time a Kommando returns again, the number of Jews still found in the city always considerably surpasses the number of the executed Jews."

The killing of 33,000 Jewish inhabitants of Kiev in only 2 days stands out even among the ghastly records of the Einsatzgruppen. It was the defendant Blobel, who with his unit under the command of the defendant Rasch, accomplished this massacre which nearly defies human imagination. Einsatzgruppe C received high praise for its activities from the Commanding General of the 6th Army, Field Marshal von Reichenau. This ruthless, mass killing shamed some of the German witnesses, and the Einsatzgruppe had to report that "Unfortunately it often occurred that the Einsatzkommandos had to suffer more or less hidden reproaches for their consequent stand on the Jewish problem."

But the Jews were by no means the only part of the population which was marked for extermination. They were only the most helpless victims. Therefore, Einsatzgruppe C stressed the point of the political sources of danger by reporting -

"Even if an immediate hundred percent exclusion of Jewry were possible, this would not remove the political source of danger. The Bolshevistic work depends on Jews, Russians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Ukrainians; the Bolshevistic machine is by no means identical with the Jewish population. In this situation, the goal of a political police security would be missed, if the main task of the destruction of the communistic machine were put back into second or third place in favor of the practically easier task of the exclusion of the Jews."

Einsatzkommando 5 was commanded by the defendant Schulz. Only half a year after this Einsatzkommando had begun its activities, it was able to report a total of 16,000 executions. It was reported that the liquidation of insane Jews represented a particularly heavy mental burden for the members of Schulz' Einsatzkommando, who were in charge of this operation. Nor were the non-Jewish inmates of insane asylums spared. Einsatz-

kommando 6 killed 800 of them in one asylum alone. The commander of this unit, at a later time, was the defendant Biberstein. Before he became leader of Einsatzkommando 6, he was a Protestant minister, and under his aegis two to three thousand helpless people were murdered, and he himself supervised executions which were carried out by his unit by means of a gas van.