14 Dec.
45
THE PRESIDENT: Will you tell the Tribunal where the
document was found?
MAJOR WALSH: It is a captured document, Sir. I do not have the history,
but I shall be very pleased to submit the background and history to the
Court at the beginning of the afternoon session.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal, I think, would like to know where it was
found and to whom it was submitted.
MAJOR WALSH: I have that. I believe that is contained in the document.
The teletype messages, Sir, that are contained in this exhibit were all
addressed to the Higher SS and Police Führer I SS Obergruppenführer
and General of the Police Krüger or his deputy.
It was not always necessary, or perhaps desirable, first to place the
Jews within the ghettos to effect the elimination. In the Baltic States
a more direct course of action was followed. I refer to Document L-180,
now in evidence, which is Exhibit USA-276. This is a report by SS
Brigade Führer Stahlecker to Himmler, dated 15 October 1941,
entitled "Action Group A," found in Himmler's private files.
He reported that 135,567 persons, nearly all Jews, were murdered in
accordance with basic orders directing the complete annihilation of the
Jews. This voluminous document provides me with the following statement
by the same SS Brigade Führer and from the translation at the
bottom of Page 6, the second sentence of the last paragraph, I read:
"To our surprise it was not easy, at
first, to set in motion an extensive pogrom against the Jews.
Klimatis, the leader of the partisan unit mentioned above, who was
used for this purpose primarily, succeeded in starting a pogrom on the
basis of advice given to him by a small advanced detachment acting in
Kovno and in such a way that no German order or German instigation was
noticed from the outside. During the first pogrom in the night from 25
to 26 June the Lithuanian partisans did away with more than 1,500
Jews, setting fire to several synagogues or destroying them by other
means and burning down a Jewish dwelling district consisting of about
60 houses. During the following nights 2,300 Jews were eliminated in a
similar way."
From the last
part of Paragraph 3, Page 7, I read:
"It was possible, though, through
similar influences on the Latvian auxiliary to set in motion a pogrom
against the Jews also in Riga. During this pogrom all synagogues were
destroyed and about 400 Jews were killed."
Nazi ingenuity reached a new high mark with the construction and
operation of the gas van as a means of mass annihilation of