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Volume IV · Page 444
[mem...] bers of those squads, which at that moment did not take part in the executions." (NO-3824) |
| In some instances, the slain persons did not fall into the graves, and the executioners were then compelled to exert themselves to complete the job of interment. A method, however, was found to avoid this additional exertion by simply having the victims enter the ditch or grave while still alive. An SS eyewitness explained this procedure. |
"The people were executed by a shot in the neck. The corpses were buried in a large tank ditch. The candidates for execution were already standing or kneeling in the ditch. One group had scarcely been shot before the next came and laid themselves on the corpses there." |
| The defendant Biberstein also verified this with his statement — |
"The shootings took place in a sand pit, in which the bodies afterwards were buried." |
| The defendant Ott, who stated his Kommando
conducted 80 to 100 executions, told of one winter execution where the corpses
were temporarily buried in the snow. The business of executions was apparently a very efficient business-like procedure, illustrated by Report No. 24, dated 16 July 1941, which succinctly stated — |
"The arrested Jewish men are shot without ceremony and interred in already prepared graves, the EK lb having shot 1,150 Jews at Daugavpils up to now." (NO-2938.) |
| Some of the Kommando leaders, however, were
a little more ceremonious. These executioners called off the names of the
victims before they were loaded on to the truck which was to take them to their
death. This was their whole judicial trial — the indictment, the evidence,
and the sentence — a roll call of death. There were different techniques in execution. There were Einsatz commanders who lined up their victims kneeling or standing on the edge of the grave, facing the grave, others who had the executees stand with their backs to the grave, and still others, as indicated, who had their victims stand in the grave itself. One defendant described how the victims lined up at the edge of the ditch and, as they fell, another row stepped into position so that, file after file, the bodies dropped into the pit on to the bleeding corpses beneath. Hardly ever was a doctor present at the executions. The responsibility of the squad leader to make certain the victims were dead before burying them was simply discharged by a glance to determine whether the bullet-ridden bodies moved or not. Since in most cases the huddled and contorted bodies were strewn and piled in a trench at least six feet deep, only one more horror is added in con- [...templating] |
