manders ran with whips from one room to another, they beat everybody they met, they put pistols on the breast of the victims raging and rioting. In front of the college there were some buses. He who happened to reach a seat quickly was saved from many blows which the pack of SS men were regardlessly distributing." During this action the greater part of the college equipment was destroyed, valuable objects such as watches, fountain pens, and money were stolen and carried away. In some rooms the beds. walls, and floor were spilt with blood. The broken windows and the fallen plaster were the best proof of the way the students were treated.

[Ad 2]

In the village of Hostalkove, district Vsetin, there was stationed from December, 1944, to May 3, 1945, a small SS unit which undertook penal actions against the civilian inhabitants who were suspected of being in touch with the partisans. On December 12, 1944, the members of this unit arrested Mrs. Stankova together with her son and daughter because they were suspected of hiding the partisans. At the same time the SS men set the house on fire. On January 28, 1945, the commander of the unit proclaimed a state of emergency and the SS men opened fire at the inhabitants. Even children who were skiing were threatened by the shots. One person was seriously wounded.

In February 1945 Mr. and Mrs. Cesek and Mr. J. Rataj were arrested because they were suspected of maintaining contact with the partisans. Their house was burned down by the SS men. The arrested persons were tortured by the SS and after their departure from the place of their station a buried man was found whose body showed several wounds caused by shots and stabbing, fractures, and traces of burning. According to the medical diagnosis the unknown man was buried while still alive (which was proved by the red liquid blood in the clay all around the nose). On April 19, 1945, a group of the Gestapo and the SS of Zlin were searching for partisans in the area of the clearings Ryliska and Plostiny, district Zlin. The search proved to be negative. The enraged Gestapo and SS men ordered the questioned persons to go into the houses which in the meantime have been plundered and then put on fire. If somebody did not want to obey the order he was thrown into the burning building or under the threats of shots was forced to obey. In the ruins of the houses 23 burnt corpses were found, 4 persons were shot during this bestial action.

On May 5, 1945, after having plundered the village of Javorisko, in the district of Litovel, the SS burned it down. During this execution the SS troops shot in the nape or killed in the burning

houses all the male inhabitants of the village from the age of 15 to 70 years. Women with children after having been illtreated were driven away.

The execution, at which 38 men lost their lives, took place because the inhabitants of the village were suspected of hiding partisans.

[Ad. 3]

The crimes committed by the members of the SS in concentration camps are known well enough and therefore it is not necessary to mention them in details. As far as the identity of the individual SS men could be stated, the concerned evidence was handed over to the United Nations War Crimes Commission in London and the perpetrators were put on the list of war criminals. It is to be mentioned that the prevailing part of the persons so far put on the Czechoslovak war criminal list are members of the SS.

The same cruelties as those in the concentration camps were committed by the members of the SS groups during the transports of prisoners. During the marches the prisoners were beaten and tortured, they died of hunger, cold, and exhaustion and were shot or beaten to death by the SS men as soon as they could not march any more.

Towards the end of January 1945 there passed through the village of Hnevosice, district Opava, a transport of political prisoners at the number of about 10,000 persons, accompanied by the Waffen SS. The prisoners were falling of hunger and exhaustion and they were shot in the nape by the SS men. In the village of Hnevosice there were murdered in this way 18 and in the village of Sluzovice 5 persons.

On February 18, 1945, there arrived to the village of Chroustnikovo Hradiste a transport of some thousands of political prisoners accompanied by SS men. The prisoners were so hungry and exhausted that 10 of them died in the local brewery, where they had so little space that they had to sleep standing.

Another 90 men who could not continue their way were shot down or beaten to death by clubs during the next course of the march. On April 4, 1945, there arrived to the village of Litrbach a transport of 150 to 200 women accompanied by SS men. The women had to spend the night in the open air although the commander of the transport was offered an empty school building. The commander of the transport handed over to the German mayor 12 corpses of young women to be buried. At the exhumation which took place on April 8, 1946, there was discovered on the skull of a woman a 9.5 cm long wound, caused by a blunt ob

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ject. In the neighborhood of Sangerberg there was found another dead woman belonging to the same transport who according to the medical diagnosis was killed by a blunt object and the blow was so violent that she lost her teeth.

On April 22 the same transport arrived to Rejstejn. About 20 persons spent the night in a barn, where they had to remain until the next day afternoon without any protection against the bad weather and the bitter cold. Eleven women died and they were buried at the local carrion place.

During the next march 12 women died who were buried at Hartmanice and another 5 whose corpses were found in the wood through which the transport had passed.

On April 12, 1945, a transport consisting of about 5,000 prisoners guarded by SS men passed through the village of Pisarove Vestce. During the march the prisoners were beaten and two days later one of the accompanying SS men, the Untersturmfuehrer Hauer, returned to Pisarove Vestce and brought with him on a lorry 20 prisoners. These had to dig graves for 45 shot prisoners who were in the meantime brought from Schoenwald.

In the time from 15th to 24th April there passed through the railway station of Hohosudova several transports carrying prisoners from the concentration camps in Germany. One of the goods trains in which there were about 5,500 prisoners stayed at the station several days. The prisoners who were allowed to go out to the nearby meadow gluttonously ate grass, willow leaves, and the bark. Those, who went a little distance from where the bulk of the prisoners were, were mercilessly shot down or beaten. to death by the SS guards. Altogether 312 persons were beaten to death, shot, or died and their bodies were buried in a coal pit. [Ad 4.]

On June 1, 1942, the German authorities ordered the expropriation of the property and the evacuation of the inhabitants from the village of Hradistko with the villages Hradistko, Brunsov, and Pikovice in the s.c. zone I.A. of the SS military exercise ground with headquarters at Benesov. According to the notice the above named villages had to be evacuated by September 15, 1942, and in the area an SS pioneer school had to be placed. In the notice it was pointed out that the inhabitants had to evacuate their property.

The local commander of the SS pioneer school at Hradistko which moved in immediately decided however in contradiction to the formal wording of the notice that the evacuation had to take place within less than a fortnight and in some even within 2 hours. Further the local commander ordered that the property

could be taken away only when the owners produced a permit issued by the commander of the SS pioneer school. In this way they forced the bulk of the inhabitants to leave behind an important part of their property without having been given any receipts of the property left behind. The amount which was paid by the SS commander at Benesov for the ceded property represents only a small part of the real value.

Immediately after the occupation by the SS formations there was erected at Hradistko a so-called "Arbeiterziehungslager". Labour education center-which was later changed into a concentration camp where many Serbs, Russians, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and citizens of other nations were kept. The conditions there were horrible. The climax was reached a few weeks before the end of the war when large scale murdering of prisoners took place. [Ad 5]

In the days following May 5, 1945, the members of the SS troops in Prague committed incredible cruelties against the civilian inhabitants. The SS men drove them from their flats and shelters into streets and forced them under threat by automatic weapons to protect the German guards with their bodies. In the streets there lay many killed Czechs. The wounded could not be taken into care although they cried for help. He who dared to extinguish the fires was shot down by the SS men. The inhabitants forming with their bodies the protecting walls were led from one place to another and beaten with guns, clubs, and everything that was on hand. The SS men knocked at the doors and when somebody came to open he was shot on the spot. They drove the inhabitants away to the shelters into which afterward they threw hand grenades and killed the wounded. Eye witnesses described the event in the house No. 264 at Horni Kre where the SS men penetrated into the cellar and shouted in the German language: “Everything out!" Twenty-two persons left the cellar and in the small garden belonging to the house 16 were shot down (6 children, the youngest was 3 years old, 5 women, and 5 men). Three persons were seriously wounded.

They also employed dum-dum loads. The 10 years old Milan Prochazka who was only lightly wounded kneeled down and asked the SS men not to kill him. Nevertheless they killed him with their gauntlets.

Apart from the above named cases the SS men herded into communal houses about 6,000 persons of whom they chose men as hostages and protectors during the fighting. While retreating the SS men drove 300 men with arms held up in front of their tanks

and infantry as far as the town Zbraslav (over 16 miles from Prague).

In the Jeleni Prikop in Prague IV captured Czech civilians were tortured and then murdered in a bestial way. The found corpses bore traces of shot wounds in the nape, their abdomens carved open, deformed mouths, pierced eyes, wounds on the neck and in the back. The victims were brought from the s.c. Kadetka occupied by the SS men.

The members of the SS who were stationed in Prague I near the Faculty of Law made under the support of tanks an assault on Parizska trida (Paris Boulevard), drove the inhabitants out of the shelters, and kept them during the fighting in the street. Here, too, they illtreated and murdered a greater number of persons. The corpses have traces of violence, cut ears and noses as well as blue taints caused probably by gauntlets.

The SS men raged also in other parts of Prague. After the occupation of the Masaryk railway station all the civilians had to leave the shelters. These SS separated the men from the women, ordered them to line up, and mowed down some of them on the spot in the presence of the women. Of the remaining the SS men chose their victims at random, ordering them to run across the street and shooting 29 of them from a distance of 20 steps. Another 24 were executed in the same way in the railway station hall. Among the executed there were besides the railway employees also a considerable number of students, who on May 5 waited there for their train. From Liben to Karlin a tank division of SS drove in front of itself about 300 Czech civilians and forced them to remove the barricades in Karlin. Also here the SS men penetrated into the shelters of the neighboring houses, drove the unarmed civilians into the streets, where they shot them. Many men and women were shot in their flats, in the houses, and in front of the houses, mostly by a shot from behind. Several dozens of people were driven to the Trojsky bridge to remove the barricades in the middle of this bridge. Nearly all of them were killed on the bridge by the SS men.

But also outside Prague many bestial murders and other crimes were committed by the members of the SS troops during the May Revolution. On May 6, 1945, in the village of Krizov, district Pribram, a certain number of inhabitants were arrested by the SS men and driven in front of the tanks. On the same day SS men executed at Milin 5 persons. In the village of Zivokost the members of the Waffen SS executed 7 Czech patriots from the village of Zaborna Lhota. Before the execution these men were bestially illtreated. Not far from this place on the other bank of the