another of its primary objects was the
elimination of human lives by the methods employed in handling the
prisoners. Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, inadequate
clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing,
forced suicides, shooting, etc. all played a major role in obtaining
their object. Prisoners were murdered at random; spite killings
against Jews were common, injections of poison and shooting in the
neck were everyday occurrences; epidemics of typhus and spotted fever
were permitted to run rampant as a means of eliminating prisoners;
life in this camp meant nothing. Killing became a common thing, so
common that a quick death was welcomed by the unfortunate
ones."
A certain number of the concentration camps were
equipped with gas chambers for the wholesale destruction of the
inmates, and with furnaces for the burning of the bodies. Some of
them were in fact used for the extermination of Jews as part of the
"final solution" of the Jewish problem. Most of the
non-Jewish inmates were used for labor, although the conditions under
which they worked made labor and death almost synonymous terms. Those
inmates who became ill and were unable to work were either destroyed
in the gas chambers or sent to special infirmaries, where they were
given entirely inadequate medical treatment, worse food if possible
than the working inmates, and left to die.
The murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations reached its
height in the treatment of the citizens of the Soviet Union and
Poland. Some four weeks before the invasion of Russia began, special
task forces of the SIPO and SD, called Einsatz Groups, were formed on
the orders of Himmler for the purpose of following the German Armies
into Russia, combating partisans and members of Resistance Groups,
and exterminating the Jews and communist leaders and other sections
of the population. In the beginning. four such Einsatz Groups were
formed, one operating in the Baltic States, one towards Moscow, one
towards Kiev, and one operating in the south of Russia. Ohlendorf,
former Chief of Amt III of the RSHA, who led the fourth group, stated
in his affidavit:
"When the German army invaded
Russia, I was leader of Einsatzgruppe D, in the southern sector, and
in the course of the year during which I was leader of the
Einsatzgruppe D it liquidated approximately 90,000 men, women, and
children. The majority of those liquidated were Jews, but there were
also among them some communist functionaries."
In an order issued by the Defendant Keitel on 23 July
1941, and drafted by the Defendant Jodl, it was stated that:
"In view of the vast size of the
occupied areas in the East, the forces available for establishing
security in these areas