Toutes les références de Katyn durant le procès de Nuremberg
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm
Le nom de Katyn n'apparaît pas dans le jugement final
Le juge soviétique, le major général I. T. Nilitchenko, avait été impliqué dans les procès de Moscou.
Le TMI, juge sans possibilité d'appel, de manière rétroactive et avec responsabilité collective.
Au Tribunal militaire international, dit Tribunal de Nuremberg, l'URSS avec la complicité des 3 autres co-accusateurs, les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, la Grande-Bretagne et la France, tenta d'atribuer la culpabilité du massacre de Katyn à l'Allemagne nazie, l'Allemagne fasciste dans la propagande soviétique.
Grâce au projet Avalon de l'Université de Yale, une bonne partie des procès-verbaux et documents produits lors du procès de Nuremberg sont accessibles sur internet.
14 février 1946: Colonel Prokrovsky, procureur soviétique affirme: «that one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war, shot in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders.» Le plus important acte criminel pour lequel les principaux criminels de guerre dont sont responsables, est l'exécution en masse de prisonniers de guerre polonais, tués dans la forêt de Katyn, proche de Smolensk par les envahisseurs allemands fascistes. De plus, selon une Commission extraordinaire d'état de l'Union soviétique, «According to the estimates of medico-legal experts, the total number of bodies amounts to over 11'000», qui aurait trouvé 11'000 corps. Ce serait en automne 1941, que «Mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest were carried out by German military organizations disguised under the specific name, "Staff 537, Engineer Construction Battalion", commanded by Oberleutnant Arnes and his colleagues, Oberleutnant Rex and Leutnant Hott».
Selon Prokrovsky et l'URSS, «By shooting the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest, the German fascist invaders consistently realized their policy for the physical extermination of the Slav peoples»
19 mars 1946, 62e jour, Volume 7. session du matin
C'est Smirnov qui reprend l'accusation
8 mars 1946, 77e jour, Volume 9. session du matin
Le Dr Otto Stahmer, avocat de Goering, demande que le professeur Naville soit entendu comme témoin «Professor Naville, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Geneva, carried out, with an international commission at Smolensk, investigations of the bodies at that time.» Le président répond que le Tribunal appréciera la réponse. Naville n'a jamais été appelé à témoigner.
5 juin 1946, 147e jour, Volume 15
L'avocat de Jodl, le Dr Laternser, qui interroge son client sur Katyn. Il parle du Livre Blanc. Laternser mentionne un film montré par l'URSS sur des atrocités en Yougoslavie.
29 juin 1946, 167e jour, Volume 17
Il est juste mentionné le nom de Goering en lien avec Katyn.
A aucun moment, ces massacres (Katyn, Slavuta, Lvov, etc) ne sont mis en relation avec les accusés!
14 février 1946, 59e jour, Volume 7
Colonel Prokrovsky
Sur le "Lager" de Slavuta […] "During the 2 years of Slavuta's occupation, the Hitlerites, with the connivance of the German doctors Borbe, Sturm, and other medical personnel in the 'Gross-Lazarett,' exterminated about 150'000 Red Army officers and men."
[…] Fin de la session du matin
I should now like to turn to the brutalities committed by the Hitlerites towards members of the Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Yugoslavian Armies. We find, in the Indictment, that one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war, shot in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders.
I submit to the Tribunal, as a proof of this crone, official documents of the special commission for the establishment and the investigation of the circumstances which attended the executions. The commission acted in accordance with a directive of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union. In addition to
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members of the Extraordinary State Commission-namely Academicians Burdenko, Alexis Tolstoy, and the Metropolitan Nicolas- this commission was composed of the President of the Pan-Slavonia Committee, Lieutenant General Gundorov; the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Kolesnikov; of the People's Commissar for Education in the R.S.S.F.R., Academician Potemkin; the Supreme Chief of the Medical Department of the Red Army, General Smirnov; and the Chairman of the District Executive Committee of Smolensk, Melnikov. The commission also included several of the best known medicolegal experts.
It would take too long to read into the record that precise and detailed document which I now submit to you as Exhibit Number USSR-54 (Document Number USSR-54), which is a result of the investigation. I shall read into the record only a few comparatively short excerpts. On Page 2 of the document, which is Page 223 in your document book, we read-this passage is marked in your file:
"According to the estimates of medico-legal experts, the total number of bodies amounts to over 11'000. The medico-legal experts carried out a thorough examination of the bodies exhumed, and of the documents and material evidence found on the bodies and in the graves. During the exhumation and examination of the corpses, the commission questioned many witnesses among the local inhabitants. Their testimony permitted the determination of the exact time and circumstances of the crimes committed by the German invaders."
I believe that I need not quote everything that the Extraordinary Commission ascertained during its investigation about the crimes of the Germans. I only read into the record the general conclusions, which. summarize the work of the commission. You will find the lines read into the record on Page 43 of Exhibit Number USSR-54 if you turn to the original document, or on Page. 264 of your document book:
"General conclusions:
"On perusal of all the material at the disposal of the special communion, that is, the depositions of over 100 witnesses questioned, the data of the medico-legal experts, the documents and the material evidence and belongings taken from the graves in Katyn Forest, we can arrive at the following definite conclusions:
"1. The Polish prisoners of war imprisoned in the three camps west of Smolensk and engaged in railway construction before the war, remained there after the occupation of Smolensk by the Germans, right up to September 1941.
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"2. In the autumn of 1941, in Katyn Forest, the German occupational authorities carried out mass shootings of the Polish prisoners of war from the above-mentioned camps.
"3. Mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest were carried out by German military organizations disguised under the specific name, 'Staff 537, Engineer Construction Battalion,' commanded by Oberleutnant Arnes and his colleagues, Oberleutnant Rex and Leutnant Hott.
"4. In connection with the deterioration, for Germany, of the general military and political machinery at the beginning of 1943, the German occupational authorities, with a view to provoking incidents, undertook a whole series of measures to ascribe their own misdeeds to organizations of the Soviet authorities, in order to make mischief between the Russians and the Poles.
"5. For these purposes:
"a. The German fascist invaders, by persuasion, attempts at bribery, threats, and by barbarous tortures, endeavored to find 'witnesses' among the Soviet citizens from whom they obtained false testimony, alleging that the Polish prisoners of war had been shot by organizations of the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940.
"b. The German occupational authorities, in the spring of 1943, brought from other places the bodies of Polish prisoners of war whom they had shot, and laid them in the turned up graves of Katyn Forest with the dual purpose of covering up the traces of their Own atrocities and of increasing the numbers of 'victims of Bolshevist atrocities' in Katyn Forest. "c. While preparing their provocative measures, the German occupational authorities employed up to 500 Russian prisoners of war for the task of digging up the graves in Katyn Forest. Once the graves had been dug, the Russian prisoners of war were shot by the Germans in order to destroy thus all proof and material evidence on the matter.
"6. The date of the legal and medical examination determined, without any shadow of doubt:
"a. That the time of shooting was autumn 1941.
"b. The application by the German executioners, when shooting Polish prisoners of war, of the identical method-a pistol shot in the nape of the neck-as used by them in the mass murders of the Soviet citizens in other towns, especially in Orel, Voronetz, Krasnodar and in Smolensk itself."
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now recess.
[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 Hours.]
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Afternoon Session
COL.POKROVSKY: Point 7 of the general conclusions of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, on which I reported in the preceding session, states:
"The conclusions reached, after studying the affidavits and medico-legal examinations concerning the shooting of Polish military prisoners of war by Germans in the autumn of 1941, fully confirmed the material evidence and documents discovered in the Katyn graves.
"8. By shooting the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest, the German fascist invaders consistently realized their policy for the physical extermination of the Slav peoples."
Here follow the signatures of all the members of the Commission.
The Katyn massacres did not exhaust the Hitler crimes against the soldiers of the Polish Army. In the report of the Polish Government, submitted by me to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-93 (Document Number USSR-93), we find a series of proofs confirming the breach by the Hitlerite conspirators of the elementary rules of international law governing the customs and laws of war; on Page 36 of this report by the Polish Government-it is on Page 285 of your document book-we find, as an outstanding part of the material collected, the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and their extermination. It is said in the report-and I quote:
"As and when the Polish officers and other ranks returned from German prisoner-of-war camps, we learn further details concerning conditions prevailing in the German camps. All these details undeniably prove the existence of a line of policy, instructions, and orders concerning the Polish prisoners of war. Ill-treatment, hardship, and inhuman conditions were of common occurrence. Murders and grievous bodily injuries were frequently encountered. A few examples confirmed by witnesses under oath are submitted later on."
I take the liberty of reading into the record some of the examples quoted in the Polish report. As a first example, I shall quote the description of an incident which occurred in a temporary prisoner-of-war camp in the city of Belsk. This material figures on Page 285 of your document book:
"On 10 October 1939 the camp commandant assembled all the prisoners and ordered those who had joined the Polish Army as volunteers to raise their hands. Three prisoners obeyed his order. They were immediately led out of the rank and placed at a distance of 25 meters from a detachment of German soldiers armed with machine guns. The commandant gave the
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order to open fire" He then spoke to the remaining prisoners and told them that the three volunteers had been shot as an example to the others."
In this case we are not faced with the simple murder of three unarmed soldiers of the Polish Army. . .
19 mars 1946, 62e jour, Volume 7. session du matin
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV
I will now proceed with my statement.
The legal-medical expert's report, drawn up in the city of Smolensk, has already been submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-48 (Document Number USSR-48). It was signed by a member of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Soviet Union, President of the Medical Academy and eminent Soviet physician, Academician Burdenko, by the principal legal-medical expert of the Ministry for Health, Dr. Prozorovsky, and other experts. In addition to the final conclusions which have already been presented by my colleague, Colonel Pokrovsky, I now submit to the Tribunal the actual record of these experts' investigation. From this the Tribunal will be able to judge, not only the final conclusion but also the methods used for this investigation. The Tribunal can see for themselves the detailed description of each burial ground investigated by experts, as well as the detailed examination of the corpses exhumed from the ditches. I will not repeat those parts of the account which have already been partially quoted by Colonel Pokrovsky. Therefore I omit four pages of my statement and pass on to Page 213. The part which I wish to quote now Your Honors win find on Page 377 of the document book, Volume II, Paragraph 2 of the page. The experts describe a typical scene of a burial site of the German victims in 1941 and the beginning of 1942. I quote:
"The ditches from which the corpses were exhumed were not common burial grounds. The corpses were not laid out in a row, one next to the other, but layer upon layer, a solid mass of women's and men's bodies heaped together in confusion. In this mass of corpses some were bent or half bent, some were lying on their faces, on their sides, or on their backs, some were on their knees, with faces down or up, with legs and arms interlinked. It was impossible to separate the, corpses before they were exhumed from the ditch."
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However, this chaotic manner of burial of the corpses appears to characterize only the mass burials of victims of the first mass shootings which were carried out toward the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. During subsequent exhumations the legal-medical experts discovered very many burial grounds where the corpses were laid down in orderly fashion, layer on layer.
A typical scene of such a burial ground the Tribunal can find in the album regarding the Lvov Camp. On Page 15 of this album there is a picture of a burial ground of the later period. The bodies are lying in regular layers, and this can be explained by...
THE PRESIDENT: Which album is this?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: It is the album which concerns the Lvov Camp, Your Honor. It was submitted to the Tribunal yesterday. The picture I am talking about is on Page 15 of the album. It is a photograph which was discovered in the Gestapo headquarters at Lvov.
The reason that impelled this regular disposition of bodies will become clear to the Tribunal from an excerpt of the Extraordinary State Commission's report on atrocities.
THE PRESIDENT: Is this a photograph of the bodies as they lay in the trench or after they had been moved?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: No, it is a photograph taken by some Gestapo official, Your Honor, and was discovered in the archives of the Lvov Gestapo. If you will look at this picture, you will see that the corpses are lying almost in regular rows on the spot of this mass-shooting.
What was the reason for this regular laying out of the corpses? The Tribunal will find the answer to this on Page 290 of the document book, second column of the text, Paragraph 8. This is a report of the Extraordinary State Commission on atrocities committed by the German fascist invaders in the city and region of Rovno. I quote:
"The witness Karpuk, a worker on a German farm near Belaya Street, testified:
" 'Several times I saw how the Hitlerites exterminated Soviet citizens, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and Jews. This took place usually in the following manner: The German butchers brought the doomed people to the place of execution, forced them to dig a ditch, ordered them to undress, and to lie down in the ditch, face downward. The Hitlerites fired at the back of the necks of the victims with automatic pistols. Then another group of people lay down on top of the bodies of those shot and were finished off in the same manner, and then a third row, and so on, until the ditch was filled. Then
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they poured quicklime over the corpses and covered them with earth"'
One can judge how widespread was this infamous and cruel method of mass execution from an excerpt concerning the executions in Maidanek. I quote from a Soviet-Polish communiqué already presented to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-29 (Document Number USSR-29). The Tribunal will find this on Page 65 of the document book, first column of the text, Paragraph 14. I begin the quotation:
"On 3 November 1943, 18,400 people were shot in the camp; 8,400 came from the camp itself, and 10,000 were herded there from the city and other camps."
I omit the next sentence.
"The shootings started early in the morning and ceased late in the evening. The SS brought the people, stripped naked, to the ditches in groups of 50 or 100 men. They were packed into the bottom of the ditch face down and shot with automatic rifles. Then a new group of people were piled on the corpses and shot in the same manner; and so on until the pits were full."
I especially concerned myself with determining the exact date when this method was used for the first time. "According to Soviet documents this started in the second half of 1942. But in general, it may be stated that similar methods of shooting were already adopted by the German police detachments in Poland in 1939.
Thanks to the kindness of our British colleagues, I submit to the Tribunal a document which was received by our delegation from the British Prosecution. It is a photostat of the document-the original is in the archives of the British Delegation and I think I am safe in saying that if the Tribunal requires the original copy, it can be presented. The authenticity of the information which is contained in this correspondence cannot be questioned. It is a German report taken from the archives of Hitler's aide-de-camp. I quote one place, which the Tribunal may find on Page 391 of the document book, second volume, Paragraph 2, (Document USSR-342). The German staff doctors considered it necessary to report to Hitler about these shootings because "since these shootings were done publicly, enemy propaganda may derive much material...."
Out of this correspondence I quote a short excerpt from the record of Corporal Paul Kluge's interrogation. Paul Kluge belonged to a medical detachment stationed in Shwetz. He heard that a shooting of Poles would take place on Sunday, 8 October 1939, in the Jewish cemetery. Out of curiosity he decided to visit the place of execution. I quote only that part of his interrogation which
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relates the manner of shooting. The Tribunal will find this quotation on Page 393 of the document book, second volume, second paragraph (Document Number USSR-42). I start the quotation:
"We were already of the opinion that we were the victims of silly rumors and had returned to our barracks, when suddenly a large bus full of women and children drove into the cemetery. We returned to the cemetery. Then we saw a party consisting of a woman with three children, aged from 3 to 8 years, led to an open grave about 2 meters wide and 8 meters long. The woman was forced to descend into this grave and took the youngest child with her in her arms. Two men, members of the punitive expedition, handed the other two children to her. The woman was forced to lie, face down, in the grave and beside her three children, in the same manner, on her left. After that, four men of the detachment also climbed down into the grave, aimed their guns so that the barrels were about 30 centimeters away from the napes of their necks. Thus they shot the woman and her three children.
"Then the chief of the detachment called on me to help fill in the grave. I obeyed this order and, being quite near, I could see the next party of women and children being shot in the same manner as were the first.
"In all, there were nine or ten groups of women and children, all shot in the same way, four at a time in the same grave."
We can therefore see that this method of mass shooting is of very early origin.
I omit the next page of the report as it contains the minutes of another interrogation with similar information, and submit to the Tribunal proof of other, even more cruel methods of mass shootings which the Hitlerite criminals invented, beginning with 1943 and continuing to the end of the war.
The Hitlerite criminals, beginning with 1943, began to adopt different methods to cover the traces of their crimes, in particular, to burn the bodies. It has been proved by documents that the Hitlerites compelled their victims, first to prepare the kindlings and logs, then to lie down on these wood piles. Then the first group was shot. The next party of condemned persons brought logs, laid them down on the layer of corpses) and then lay down themselves on these logs and were then executed.
I beg Your Honors to turn to the album concerning the Auschwitz Camp, where the pictures of another camp, Kloga, are also included. You will find there a typical example of this cruel manner of shooting. In order to prove this, I turn to a document which has
Après quelques paragraphes sur le siège de Léningrad, Smirnov parle de l'extermination par le monoxyde de carbone, ces "sondermaschinen" nommées aussi camions à gas ou camions de la mort, utilisées pour la première fois en URSS en 1942. Lieux: Kerch, Stavropol, Rovno (page
8 mars 1946, 77e jour, Volume 9. session du matin
DR. OTTO STAHMER (Counsel for Defendant Goering): Mr President and Gentlemen of the Tribunal, before I start with my presentation I beg to make two supplementary applications. I am aware of the fact that supplementary requests as such should be put in
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writing. But since it is a question of several requests, I should like to have your decision whether I should submit these applications now or whether the Tribunal desires a written request.
THE PRESIDENT: You may put your request now, verbally, but we would prefer to have it in writing afterwards as soon as possible.
DR. STAHMER: I name first Major Butz, who is in custody here in Nuremberg, as a witness for the following facts: Reich Marshal Goering repeatedly opposed in the summer of 1944 the measures which Hitler had ordered against aviators taking part in terror attacks. Furthermore, he knows that no order was issued either by the Luftwaffe or by the Wehrmacht corresponding to Hitler's orders regarding terror aviators. Finally, he can give evidence in regard to the following: An officer of the Luftwaffe in May 1944 in Munich protected an airman, who had bailed out, from the lynching which the crowd wanted to carry out. Hitler, who had knowledge of this incident, demanded of Goering the name of this officer, and that he be punished. In spite of repeated inquiries on Hitler's part, Goering did not give the name of this officer, although he knew it, and in this way protected him. This is the application regarding the witness Butz. Another supplementary request is concerned with the following: In the session of 14 February 1946 the Soviet Prosecution submitted that a German military formation, Staff 537, Pioneer Battalion, carried out mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war in the forests near Katyn. As the responsible leaders of this formation, Colonel Ahrens, First Lieutenant Rex, and Second Lieutenant Hodt were mentioned. As proof the Prosecution referred to Document USSR-64. It is an official report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union which was ordered to investigate the facts of the well-known Katyn case. The document I have not yet received. As a result of the publication of this speech by the Prosecution in the press, members of the staff of the Army Group Center, to which Staff 537 was directly subordinate and which was stationed 4 to 5 kilometers from Staff 537, came forward. These people stated that the evidence upon which the Prosecution have based the statement submitted was not correct.
The following witnesses are mentioned in this connection:
Colonel Ahrens, at that time commander of 537, later chief of army armament and commander of the auxiliary army; First Lieutenant Rex, probably taken as a prisoner of war at Stalingrad; Lieutenant Hodt, probably taken prisoner by the Russians in or near Konigsberg; Major General of intelligence troops, Eugen Oberhauser, probably taken prisoner of war by the Americans; First Lieutenant Graf Berg -- later ordnance officer with Field Marshal Von Kluge -- a prisoner of war in British hands in Canada. Other members of the units which are accused are still to be mentioned. I name these
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witnesses to prove that the conclusion as to the complicity of Goering drawn by the Prosecution in the above-mentioned statement is not justified according to the Indictment.
This morning I received another communication bearing on the same question, which calls for the following request: Professor Naville, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Geneva, carried out, with an international commission at Smolensk, investigations of the bodies at that time. He established from the state of preservation of these corpses, from the notes found in the pockets of their clothes, and other means of evidence, that the deed must have been committed in the year 1940.
Those are my requests.
THE PRESIDENT: If you will put in those requests in writing, the Tribunal will consider them.
5 juin 1946, 147e jour, Volume 15
Accusation contre Jodl
«DR. LATERNSER: What do you know about the case of Katyn?
JODL: Regarding the finding of these mass graves, I received the first report through my propaganda department, which was informed through its propaganda company attached to the army group. I heard-that the Reich Police Criminal Department had been given the task of investigating the whole affair, and I then sent an officer from my propaganda department to the exhumation to check the findings of the foreign experts. I received a report which, in general, tallies with the report which is contained in the White Book issued, I think, by the Foreign Office. I have never heard anyone raise any doubts as to the facts as they were presented.
DR. LATERNSER: You have also seen the film which the Russian Prosecution have shown in this courtroom, and which showed atrocities committed in the Yugoslav theater of war. Can you explain any of the pictures which you perhaps still recollect?
JODL: I believe that every picture shown in this courtroom is, and was, perfectly truthful as a picture. These were captured photographs. But it has never been said what the photographs represented. It was not clear from the film whether the dog that was mauling a human being was not photographed in an army dog training center.»
29 juin 1946, 167e jour, Volume 17
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, before the Tribunal goes on with the business of the day, I should like to inform the Tribunal of the results of my inquiries as to outstanding witnesses and perhaps these could be supplemented by any of the learned counsel who can.
My Lord, as far as I can see, there are the witnesses whom Your Lordship has just mentioned of the Defendant Goering, dealing with the question of Katyn.
My Lord the next witnesses that were outstanding were three that the Tribunal allowed to be called for cross-examination if desired in respect to the case of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner. I have just had a word with Dr. Kauffmann, and he says that he will
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not require the witnesses Tiefenbacher, Steinbauer, and Strupp for cross-examination.
As far as my information goes, the next is Admiral Bohm in the case of the Defendant Raeder.
1er juillet 1946, 155e jour, Volume 17
18 juillet 1946, 180e jour, Volume 18
Accusation contre Sauckel
«The Katyn case shows how difficult it is to determine the truth of such events when they are made use of as effective weapons of propaganda. As the witnesses from the Defendant Sauckel's office have confirmed, no other incidents involving such abuses have become known. The cases reported are to a certain extent obviously repetitions of the same happenings as communicated from various sources.»