. ©MAZAL LIBRARY

NMT04-T0495


. NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume IV · Page 495
Previous Page Home PageArchive
 
it has been stated completely and definitively by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal and therefore needs no amplification here. The International Military Tribunal declared the SS, SD and the Gestapo to be criminal organizations within the purview of the London Charter. The pertinent provisions of that judgment declaring these organizations criminal and defining the categories of membership therein follow: 
 
SS 
 
"The SS was utilized for purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities, and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave-labor program and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. * * * In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen SS, members of the SS Totenkopf Verbaende, and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS. * * *

"The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the state in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such crimes. The basis of this finding is the participation of the organization in war crimes and crimes against humanity connected with the war; this group declared criminal cannot include, therefore, persons who had ceased to belong to the organizations enumerated in the preceding paragraph prior to 1 September 1939. " 
Gestapo and SD 
 
"The Gestapo and SD were used for purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities, and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave-labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. * * * In dealing with
 
 
   
878486 — 50 — 34
 
 
 
495
Next Page NMT Home Page