The Mazal Library

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NMT04-T0491

NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume IV · Page 491

graves, ever attempted to break away before the shots were fired. He replied that there was no resistance and this surprised him greatly. The following interrogation then occurred:

"Q. You mean that they resigned themselves easily to what was awaiting them?

"A. Yes, that was the case. That was the case with these people. Human life was not as valuable as it was with us. They did not care so much. They did not know their own human value.

"Q. In other words, they went to their death quite happily?

"A. I would not say that they were happy. They knew what was going to happen to them. Of course, they were told what was going to happen to them, and they were resigned to their fate, and that is the strange thing about these people in the East.

"Q. And did that make the job easier for you, the fact that they did not resist?

"A. In any case the guards never met any resistance, or, at least, not in Sokal. Everything went very quietly. It took time, of course, and I must say that our men who took part in these executions suffered more from nervous exhaustion than those who had to be shot.

"Q. In other words, your pity was more for the men who had to shoot than for the victims?

"A. Our men had to be cared for.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Q. And you felt very sorry for them?

"A. Yes. These people experienced a lot, psychologically."

Thus, to murder was added criminal impertinence. The victim is shown to be inhuman while the executioner is to be pitied. The condemned is put in the wrong and the slayer in the right. A person is robbed of his all — his very life — but it is the assassin who is the sufferer. To these people "human life was not as valuable as it was to us". Thus we behold the moral supremacy of the murderer over the depravity of the massacred. "Our men who took part in the executions suffered more from nervous exhaustion than those who had to be shot."

Here in cogent language is symbolized the whole story of the simple "administrative duties" of one of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen in land not his own.

Partisans

Many of the defendants admitting that they had conducted executions, explained that they had not killed any innocent persons but had merely shot partisans, to be sure, not in combat, but puni- [...tively]

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