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Volume IV · Page 527
| proportions, except in the annals of the
Einsatzgruppen. Defense counsel maintains that the reports which chronicled the 60,000 killings are subject to error. He points out first that the reports are not under oath. This overlooks the fundamental fact that the reports are strictly military documents and that every soldier who collects, transmits, and receives reports is under oath. He then states that the reports were compiled and issued by an office unfamiliar with the subject covered in the reports. But this is to say that a military headquarters is stranger to its own organization. But the crowning objection to the reliability of the reports is the conjecture that possibly headquarters did not have a map with which to check the locations! Then, if the reports are assumed to be correct, it is argued that the defendant was under the jurisdiction of the army, coming directly under the orders of Field Marshal von Reichenau of AOK 6 [Sixth Army]. The Tribunal has already spoken on the defense of superior orders. But Blobel asserts that the persons executed by his Kommando were investigated and tried, and that Field Marshal von Reichenau had reviewed every case. There is nothing in Blobel's record which would suggest that his bare statement would be sufficient to authenticate a proposition which, on its face, is unbelievable. It is enough to refer to the massacre at Kiev where 33,771 Jews were executed in two days immediately after an alleged incendiary fire, to disprove Blobel's utterance in this regard. Incidentally Blobel, whose Kommando took an active part in this mass killing, said that the number reported was too high. "In my opinion", he states, "not more than half of the mentioned figure was shot." The defendant stated further that all his shootings were done in accordance with international law. He testified — |
"Executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German army were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention." [Emphasis supplied.] |
| It is to be noted that Blobel's ideas
of international law are somewhat primitive if he is of the opinion that he may
execute people merely because he thinks they are suspicious.
Sixteen separate reports directly implicate Blobel's Kommando in mass murder, many of them referring to him by name. Report No. 143 declares that, as of 9 November 1941, Sonderkommando 4a had executed 37,243 persons. Report No. 132, dated 12 November 1941, tells of the execution of Jews and prisoners of war by Blobel's Sonderkommando. That report closes on the note, "The number of executions carried out by Sonderkommando 4a mean- […while] |
872486 — 50 — 36
