2 Jan. 46
excluded from transports to concentration camps for
execution, because 5 to 10 percent of those destined for execution were
arriving in the camps dead or half dead.
I now offer Document 2542-PS, Exhibit Number USA-489, which is in the
second volume. This is an affidavit of Kurt Lindow, a former Gestapo
official, which was taken on the 30th of September 1945, at Oberursel,
Germany, in the course of an official military investigation by the
United States Army; and I quote from that document from the beginning:
"I was criminal director in Section
IV of the RSHA" — I call Your Honors' attention to the chart
on the board that he was criminal director in Section IV and head of
the Subsection IV A 1 — "from the middle of 1942 until the
middle of 1944. I had the rank of SS Sturmbannführer
"From 1941 until the middle of 1943, there was attached to
Subsection IV A 1" — which is not shown on this chart, but
has previously been described in the beginning — "a special
department that was headed by the Regierungsoberinspektor, later
Regierungsamtmann, and SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Königshaus
In this department were handled matters concerning prisoners of war. I
learned from this department that instructions and orders by Reichsführer
Himmler dating from 1941 to 1942 existed, according to which captured
Soviet political commissars and Jewish soldiers were to be executed.
As far as I know, proposals for execution of such prisoners of war
were received from the various prisoner-of-war camps. Königshaus
had to prepare the orders for execution and submitted them to the
chief of Section IV, Müller, for signature" — Müller
being the head of the Gestapo. — "These orders were made out
so that one was to be sent to the agency making the request, and a
second one to the concentration camp designated to carry out the
execution. The prisoners of war in question were at first formally
released from prisoner-of-war status, then transferred to a
concentration camp for execution.
"The Chief of the section Königshaus was under me in
disciplinary questions from the middle of 1942 until about the
beginning of 1943 and worked, in matters of his department, directly
with the chief of Subsection IV A, Regierungsdirector Panzinger. Early
in 1943 the department was dissolved and absorbed into the departments
in Subsection IV B. The work concerning Russian prisoners of war must
then have been done by IV B 2a. Head of Department IV B 2a was
Regierungsrat and Sturmbannführer Hans Helmuth Wolf.
"There existed in the prisoner-of-war camps on the Eastern Front
small screening teams (Einsatzkommandos), headed by