Babi Yar au Tribunal Militaire International (Procès de Nuremberg). Le 18 février 1946, le procureur soviétique Smirnov déclara au TMI:. "Plus de 195.000 citoyens soviétiques ont été torturés à morts, fusillés et empoisonnés dans des camions à gaz à Kiev; ils se répartissent ainsi: 1) à Babi Yar, plus de cent mille hommes, femmes, enfants et vieillards."

Plus dans : Document USSR-9, Commission nationale extraordinaire pour les atrocités commises par les fascistes allemands à Kiev, paragraphe 5, col. 1, IMT, tome VII, p. 556.

SIXTY-FIRST DAY
Monday, 18 February 1946
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/02-18-46.htm


Afternoon Session

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Have I your permission to continue?

THE PRESIDENT: Please do.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Continuing the presentation of evidence on atrocities of German fascist criminals with regard to children, I refer to the testimony of the witness, Bespalov, included in the document previously presented to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-32 (Document Number USSR-32). The members of the Tribunal will find the place which I refer to on Page 33, fifth paragraph of the document, Column 1 in the document book. Bespalov testified:

"At the end of June last year I myself saw up to 300 girls and women brought on 10 to 12 trucks to the forest park. The unfortunate women were throwing themselves from side to side, weeping, tearing their hair, and rending their clothes. Many fainted, but the German fascists paid no attention to this. By kicks and beatings with rifle butts and sticks they forced them to get up; the executioners themselves stripped and threw into the pits, those who did not rise. Several girls- among them children-tried to run away, but were killed.

"I saw how, after a burst of machine gun fire, some of the women, swaying and helplessly flinging up their arms, staggered toward the standing Germans with heart-rending cries. At this time the Germans were shooting them with pistols. Maddened with terror and grief, mothers clutched their children to their breasts, running with terrible wails into the forest clearing, seeking help.

"The Gestapo members snatched the children from them, seized them by the arms or legs, and threw them alive into the pit; when the mothers ran after them to the pit, they were shot."

I quote one paragraph out of Exhibit Number USSR-9 (Document USSR-9), already presented to the TribunaL This is a report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union of the crimes of the German fascist invaders in the city of Kiev. The members of the Tribunal will find this document on Page 238, second column of the text, sixth paragraph:

"On 29 September. 1941 Hitler's bandits drove thousands of the peaceful Soviet citizens to the corner of Melnik and Doktorovskaya Streets and from there to Baybe-yar, where they shot them, after taking all their valuables from them.

540 18 Feb. 46

"Citizens N. F. Petrenko and N. T. Gorbacheva, who lived near Baybe-yar, stated that they had seen how the Germans threw babies at the breast into graves and buried them alive with their dead or wounded parents. One could see the surface of the ground moving over the buried people who were still alive."

These were not individual occurrences, but a systematic plan. This inhuman terror was practiced on children, since the chiefs of German fascism understood that this form of terrorism would be particularly frightful for the survivors. Compassion for the weak and the defenseless is an inalienable human trait. By applying their particularly barbarous methods' to children, the German fascist criminals showed the rest of the population that there was no crime, no cruelty at which they would stop for the purpose of pacifying the occupied territories. Children did not simply share the fate of their parents. The so-called "actions" were frequently directed against the children themselves. They were taken forcibly from their parents, concentrated in one place, then murdered.

page 554

I am now going over to the presentation of evidence of mass exterminations of the peaceful population in the territory of the U.S.S.R. by the Germans.

As to the circumstances of the mass executions, we may now judge them not only by the testimony of eyewitnesses or of the perpetrators of the atrocities; we may, in part, judge them on the basis of the material collected by the legal and medical commission. I say "in part" because, as from 1943, fearing retribution for the crimes committed, the Hitlerites began to destroy the traces of their crimes. They exhumed and burned corpses, ground bones, and strewed the ashes on the fields; they also used the slag formed by the corpses cremated, as well as the bone flour, for repairing the roads and fertilizing the fields. But notwithstanding the efforts of the criminals to conceal the traces of their crimes, it was impossible to destroy all the corpses of the people murdered.

The first mass "action" of the Germans, when tens of thousands of innocent and peaceful people were murdered at a time, was the "Kiev action." In order to realize the extent of these atrocities I refer Your Honors to a communication of the Extraordinary State Commission already submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-9. I quote from Page 238, on the reverse side of the

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document book, at the end of the third paragraph from the top. I quote:

"In Kiev, over 195,000 Soviet citizens were tortured to death, shot, and poisoned in the gas vans, as follows:

"(1) In Baybe-yar, over 100,000 men, women, children, and old people.

"(2) In Darnitza, over 68,000 Soviet prisoners of war and peaceful citizens.

"(3) In the antitank trench in the vicinity of Syretzk Camp and in the camp proper, over 25,000 peaceful Soviet citizens and prisoners of war.

"(4) In the grounds of the Hospital of St. Cyril, 800 insane patients.

"(5) In the grounds of the Kiev-Pechersk Abbey, about 500 peaceful citizens.

"(6) In the cemetery of Ljukjanousk, about 400 peaceful citizens."

I continue to quote from this document, Page 238, second column of the text, Paragraph 6, and I give two short excerpts from this page. I begin:

"In 1943, sensing the uncertainty of their position in Kiev, the occupying forces, in an attempt to conceal the traces of their crimes, opened up the tombs of their victims and began to burn the corpses. The Germans relegated the burning of the corpses in Baybe-yar to the internees of Syretzk Camp. SS officer Topheide was placed in charge of this work, together with members of the gendarmerie, Johann Merkel and Vogt, and the commander of the SS platoon, Rever.

"The witnesses, L. K. Ostrovski, C. B. Berlandt, W. Y. Davydov, Y.A. Steyuk, and J.M. Brodski, who had escaped the shootings at Baybe-yar on 29 September 1943, testified:

" 'As prisoners of war we were interned in the Syretzk Concentration Camp in the outskirts of Kiev. On 18 August 100 of us were sent to Baybe-yar. There we were shackled in chains and ordered to exhume and burn the corpses of Soviet citizens who had been murdered by the Germans. Here the Germans brought granite monuments and iron railings from the cemetery. From these monuments we made platforms on which we placed rails, and on top of these rails we laid the iron grills to act as fire bars. On the iron grills a layer of firewood was placed, and on top of the firewood we placed a layer of corpses. On the corpses we placed a further layer of firewood and poured petroleum over the whole. Following this order the corpses were piled up in several layers and

PAGE 556 18 Feb. 46

then ignited. About 2,500 to 3,000 corpses were placed in each of these "ovens." The Germans detailed special crews for the removal of earrings, rings, and also gold teeth from the jaws of the dead.

" 'When all the corpses were burned, new "ovens" were stacked, and so on. The bones were smashed into small particles by bulldozers and the ashes strewn over the Yar, so that no traces should be left. The men worked from 12 to 15 hours a day.

" 'The Germans used excavators in order to expedite the work. From 18 August until the day of our escape-29 September-approximately 70,000 corpses were burned.'"