. NMT04-T0524
Volume IV · Page 524
| [Com…] munist functionaries
who had themselves become candidates for liquidation. In support of its position, the prosecution introduced Report No. 73 dated 4 September 1941, which carries on its final page the heading "Statistics of the Liquidation", and then enumerates various units of Einsatzgruppe B with the executions performed by each. |
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| "The total figures of persons liquidated by the Einsatzgruppe as per 20 August 1941 were — | ||
| 1. Stab and Vorkommando ‘Moskau’ | 144 | |
| 2. Vorkommando 7a | 996 | |
| 3. Vorkommando 7b | 886 | |
| 4. Einsatzkommando 8 | 6,842 | |
| 5. Einsatzkommando 9 | 8,096 | |
| Total | 16,964" | |
| The same report carries the item — | ||
"The Vorkommando ‘Moskau’ was forced to execute another 46 persons, among them 38 intellectual Jews who had tried to create unrest and discontent in the newly established Ghetto of Smolensk." |
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| Defense counsel argues that the date of this report shows that Vorkommando Moscow could not have performed the executions mentioned therein. His argument is as follows: Assuming that the executions occurred 20 August, two days must have elapsed before the report left Smolensk. Allowing then two or three days more for evaluation of the events, the report, according to Dr. Ulmer, could only have left Smolensk on 25 or 26 August. A few days were added for the transmission to Berlin and there, on 4 September 1941, it appeared as Operation Report No. 73, Dr. Ulmer then says — | ||
"The report can therefore — and that is essential — only have been drawn up on 25 August 1941 at the earliest, i.e., on the sixth day after the defendant had left Smolensk." |
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| But his argument is in direct conflict with the logic of chronology. No one questioned the correctness of the date of 4 September when the report was published in Berlin. Therefore, the longer the time required for the submission of the report to Berlin, the further back must be the happening of the events narrated therein, and thus the further back into the period when Six was incontrovertibly in Smolensk. The usual argument presented in matters of this kind has been that the delay between the event and the eventual publishing of the report was a longer one rather than a shorter one. In this case the date in the document itself indicates a delay of only 14 days. If Dr. Ulmer argues that the lapse of time | ||
