13 Dec.
45
found in Buchenwald Camp and captured by
military forces under the command of the Supreme Commander, Allied
Expeditionary Forces."
And
the last paragraph of Document 3423-PS (Exhibit USA-252) is a conclusion
reached in a United States Army report, and I quote it:
"Based on the findings in Paragraph
2, all three specimens are tattooed human skin."
This document is also attached to this exhibit on the board, We do not
wish to dwell on this pathological phase of the Nazi culture; but we do
feel compelled to offer one additional exhibit, which we offer as
Exhibit Number USA-254. This exhibit, which is on the table, is a human
head with the skull bone removed, shrunken, stuffed, and preserved. The
Nazis had one of their many victims decapitated, after having had him
hanged, apparently for fraternizing with a German woman, and fashioned
this terrible ornament from his head.
The last paragraph of the official United States Army report from which
I have just read deals with the manner in which this exhibit was
acquired. It reads as follows:
"There I also saw the shrunken heads
of two young Poles who had been hanged for having relations with
German girls. The heads were the size of a fist, and the hair and the
marks of the rope were still there."
Another certificate by Lieutenant Demas is set forth in Document 3422-PS
(Exhibit USA-254) and is similar to the one which I have read a few
minutes ago with relation to the human skin, excepting that it applies
to this second exhibit. We have no accurate estimate of how many persons
died in these concentration camps and perhaps none will ever be made;
but as the evidence already introduced before this Tribunal indicates,
the Nazi conspirators were generally meticulous record keepers. But the
records which they kept about concentration camps appear to have been
quite incomplete. Perhaps the character of the records resulted from the
indifference which the Nazis felt for the lives of their victims. But
occasionally we find a death book or a set of index cards. For the most
part, nevertheless, the victims apparently faded into an unrecorded
death. Reference to a set of death books suggests at once the scale of
the concentration camp operations, and we refer now and offer Document
Number 493-PS as Exhibit Number USA-251. This exhibit is a set of seven
books, the death ledger of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Each book
has on its cover the word "Totenbuch" (or Death Book) —
Mauthausen.
In these books were recorded the names of some of the inmates who died
or were murdered in this camp, and the books cover the