Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 512
		13 Dec. 45 Afternoon Session MR. DODD: May it please the Tribunal, the deterrent effect of the concentration camps was based on the promise of brutal treatment. Once in the custody of the SS guards, the victim was beaten, tortured, starved, and often murdered through the so-called "extermination through work" program which I described the other day or through the mass execution gas chambers and furnaces of the camps, which were shown several days ago on the moving picture screen in this courtroom. The reports of official government investigations furnish additional evidence of the conditions within the concentration camps. Document 2309-PS, which has already been referred to and of which the Tribunal has taken judicial notice, I now refer to again, particularly to the second page of the English text, beginning with the second sentence of the second paragraph: "The work at these camps mainly consisted of underground labor, the purpose being the construction of large underground factories, storage rooms, et cetera. This labor was performed completely underground and as a result of the brutal treatment, working and living conditions, a daily average of 100 prisoners died. To the one camp Oberstaubling 700 prisoners were transported in February 1945, and on the 15th of April 1945 only 405 of these men were living. During the 12 months preceding the liberation, Flossenbürg and the branch camps under its control accounted for the death of 14,739 male inmates and 1,300 women. These figures represent the deaths as obtained from the available records in the camp. However, they are in no way complete, as many secret mass executions and deaths took place. In 1941 an additional stockade was added at the Flossenbürg camp to hold 2,000 Russian prisoners. From these 2,000 prisoners only 102 survived. "Flossenbürg Concentration Camp can best be described as a factory dealing in death. Although this camp had in view the primary object of putting to work the mass slave labor, another of its primary objectives was the elimination of human lives by the methods employed in handling the prisoners. "Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, housing facilities, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, forced hand hanging, forced suicides, shooting, all played a major role in obtaining their objective. Prisoners were murdered at random; spite killings against Jews were common. Injections of poison and shooting in 512
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 512     Last modified: October 10, 1998 Copyright © 1998 The Mazal Library and The Holocaust History Project. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Find a typo? Let us know.