13 Dec.
45
which I have already placed in evidence as Exhibit
Number USA-249. This is also an official report of the office of the
Judge Advocate General of the United States 3rd Army, dated 17 June
1945. 1 wish to refer to the conclusions on Page 3 of the English text,
at paragraph numbered Roman V, beginning with the second sentence as
follows:
"V. Conclusions. There is no doubt
that Mauthausen was the basis for long-term planning. It was
constructed as a gigantic stone fortress on top of a mountain flanked
by small barracks. Mauthausen, in addition to its permanency of
construction, had facilities for a large garrison of officers and men
and had large dining rooms and toilet facilities for the staff. It was
conducted with the sole purpose in mind of exterminating any so-called
prisoner who entered within its walls. The so-called branches of
Mauthausen were under direct command of the SS officials located
there. All records, orders, and administrative facilities were handled
for these branches through Mauthausen. The other camps, including
Gusen and Ebensee, its two most notorious and largest branches, were
not exclusively used for extermination; but prisoners were used as
tools in construction and production until they were beaten or starved
into uselessness, whereupon they were customarily sent to Mauthausen
for final disposal."
Both
from the showing of the moving picture and from these careful reports,
which were made by the 3rd Army of the United States on their arrival at
those centers, we say it is clear that the conditions in those
concentration camps over Germany — and in a few instances outside
of the actual borders of the Old Reich — followed the same general
pattern. The wide-spread incidence of these conditions makes it clear
that they were not the result of sporadic excesses on the part of
individual jailers, but were the result of policies deliberately imposed
from above. The crimes committed in these camps were on so vast a scale
that individual atrocities pale into insignificance.
We have had turned over to us two exhibits which we are prepared to
show to this Tribunal only because they illustrate the depths to which
the administration of these camps had sunk shortly before, at least, the
time that they were liberated by the Allied Army. The Tribunal will
recall that in the showing of the moving picture, with respect to one of
the camps, there was a showing of sections of human skin taken from
human bodies in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and preserved as
ornaments. They were selected, these particular hapless victims, because
of the tattooing which appeared on the skin. This exhibit, which we have
here, is Exhibit Number USA-252. Attached to the exhibit is an extract