Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

and of killing, hostages from the civilian population. These acts were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Article 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:

1. In the Western Countries:

In France hostages were executed either individually or collectively; these executions took place in all the big cities of France, among others in Paris, Bordeaux and Nantes, as well as at Chateabriant.

In Holland many hundreds of hostages were shot at the following among other places-Rotterdam, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Benschop and Haarlem.

In Belgium many hundreds of hostages were shot during the period 1940 to 1944.

2. In the Eastern Countries:

At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in October, 1941.

At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.

(E) PLUNDER OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

The defendants ruthlessly exploited the people and the material resources of the countries they occupied, in order to strengthen the Nazi war machine, to depopulate and impoverish the rest of Europe, to enrich themselves and their adherents, and to promote German economic supremacy over Europe.

The Defendants engaged in the following acts and practices, among others:

1. They degraded the standard of life of the people of occupied countries and caused starvation, by stripping occupied countries of foodstuffs for removal to Germany.

2. They seized raw materials and industrial machinery in all of the occupied countries, removed them to Germany and used them in the interest of the German war effort and the German economy.

3. In all the occupied countries, in varying degrees, they confiscated businesses, plants and other property.

4. In an attempt to give color of legality to illegal acquisitions

of property, they forced owners of property to go through the forms of "voluntary" and "legal" transfers.

[ocr errors]

5. They established comprehensive controls over the economies of all of the occupied countries and directed their resources, their production and their labor in the interests of the German war economy, depriving the local populations of the products of essential industries.

6. By a variety of financial mechanisms, they despoiled all of the occupied countries of essential commodities and accumulated wealth, debased the local currency systems and disrupted the local economies. They financed extensive purchases in occupied countries through clearing arrangements by which they exacted loans from the occupied countries. They imposed occupation levies, exacted financial contributions, and issued occupation currency, far in excess of occupation costs. They used these excess funds to finance the purchase of business properties and supplies in the occupied countries.

7. They abrogated the rights of the local populations in the occupied portions of the USSR and in Poland and in other countries to develop or manage agricultural and industrial properties, and reserved this area for exclusive settlement, development, and ownership by Germans and their so-called racial brethren.

8. In further development of their plan of criminal exploitation, they destroyed industrial cities, cultural monuments, scientific institutions, and property of all types in the occupied territories to eliminate the possibility of competition with Germany.

9. From their program of terror, slavery, spoliation and organized outrage, the Nazi conspirators created an instrument for the personal profit and aggrandizement of themselves and their adherents. They secured for themselves and their adherents

(a) Positions in administration of business involving power, influence and lucrative perquisites.

(b) The use of cheap forced labor.

(c) The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign properties, business interests, and raw materials.

(d) The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany. These acts were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 46 to 56 inclusive of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars (by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are as follows:

1. Western Countries:

There was plundered from the Western Countries from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, textiles, antique pieces and similar articles of enormous value to the number of 21,903.

In France statistics show the following:

[blocks in formation]

and various other products to a total value of 79,961,423,000 francs.

Removal of Industrial Equipment

Total: 9,759,861,000 Francs, of which 2,626,479,000 Francs of Machine Tools.

Removal of Agricultural Produce

Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i.e., for the principal

[blocks in formation]

Removal of Manufactured Products

to a total of 184,640,000 francs.

Plundering

Francs: 257,020,024,000 from private enterprise

Francs:

55,000,100,000 from the State.

Financial Exploitation

From June 1940 to September 1944 the French Treasury was compelled to pay to Germany 631,866,000,000 francs.

Looting and Destruction of Works of Art

In this way

The museums of Nantes, Nancy, Old-Marseilles were looted. Private collections of great value were stolen. Raphaels, Vermeers, Van Dycks and works of Rubens, Holbein, Rembrandt, Watteau, Boucher disappeared. Germany compelled France to deliver up "The Mystic Lamb" by Van Eyck, which Belgium had entrusted to her.

In Norway and other occupied countries decrees were made by which the property of many civilians, 'societies, etc., was confiscated. An immense amount of property of every kind was plundered from France, Belgium, Norway, Holland and Luxemburg.

As a result of the economic plundering of Belgium between 1940 and 1944 the damage suffered amounted to 175 billions of Belgian francs.

2. Eastern Countries:

During the occupation of the Eastern Countries the German Government and the German High Command carried out, as a systematic policy, a continuous course of plunder and destruction including:

On the territory of the Soviet Union the Nazi conspirators destroyed or severely damaged 1,710 cities and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, more than 6,000,000 buildings and made homeless about 25,000,000 persons.

Among the cities which suffered most destruction are Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Stalino and Leningrad.

As is evident from an official memorandum of the German command, the Nazi conspirators planned the complete annihilation of entire Soviet cities. In completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No. 1601/41, dated 29, IX, 1941), addressed only to Staff officers, it was said:

"The Fuehrer has decided to erase from the face of the earth St. Petersburgh. The existence of this large city will have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed. Finland has

also said that the existence of this city on her new border is not desirable from her point of view. The original request of the Navy that docks, harbor, etc. necessary for the fleet be preserved -is known to the Supreme Commander of the Military Forces, but the basic principles of carrying out operations against St. Petersburgh do not make it possible to satisfy this request.

It is proposed to approach near to the city and to destroy it with the aid of an artillery barrage from weapons of different calibres and with long air attacks.

The problem of the life of the population and the provisioning of them is a problem which cannot and must not be decided by us. In this war we are not interested in preserving even

a part of the population of this large city."

The Germans destroyed 427 museums, among them the wealthy museums of Leningrad, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Novgorod, Poltava and others.

In Pyatigorsk the art objects brought there from the Rostov museum were seized.

The losses suffered by the coal mining industry alone in the Stalin Region amount to 2,000,000,000 rubles. There was colossal destruction of industrial establishments in Makerevka, Carlovka, Yenakievo, Konstantinovka, Mariupol, from which most of the machinery and factories were removed.

Stealing of huge dimensions and the destruction of industrial, cultural and other property was typified in Kiev. More than 4,000,000 books, magazines and manuscripts (many of which were very valuable and even unique) and a large number of artistic productions and valuables of different kinds were stolen and carried away.

Many valuable art productions were taken away from Riga.

The extent of the plunder of cultural valuables is evidenced by the fact that 100,000 valuable volumes and 70 cases of ancient periodicals and precious monographs were carried away by Rosenberg's staff alone.

Among further examples of these crimes are:

Wanton devastation of the city of Novgorod and of many historical and artistic monuments there. Wanton devastation and plunder of the city of Rovno and of its province. The destruction of the industrial, cultural and other property in Odessa. The destruction of cities and villages in Soviet Karelia. The destruction in Estonia of cultural, industrial and other buildings.

The destruction of medical and prophylactic institutes, the destruction of agriculture and industry in Lithuania, the destruction of cities in Latvia.

685964-46-5

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »