NUREMBERG TRIALS

Grey River Argus, 30 January 1946, Page 5

NUREMBERG TRIALS

PHOTOGRAPHIC. EVIDENCE (Rec. 9.5) LONDON, Jan. 29. A “Times” correspondent at Nuremberg stated: Photographs taken at the infamous Nauthausen concentration camp were shown on a screen in the Nuremberg courtroom at the end of yesterday’s sitting as the evidence in the main that the accused Kaltenbrunner, chief of the S.S. Security Police, visited the place with Himmler. A young Spaniard, F’rancois Boix, a professional photographer, who was interned hausen, identified pictures one bv one. One- view showed a group of Viennese police officials visiting a great quarry from which prisoners were forced to carry heavy loads of stones up nearly two hundred steps. Other photographs an escaped Austrian prisoner being paraded around the camp on a barrow bearing the inscription: “All birds come home to roost!” This was before he was executed. Other exhibits showed bodies of people who were driven to suicide or who had been shot on the barbed wire. THE FRENCH CASE. The French Prosecutor (M. Dubost), before the International Military Tribunal, which is trying leading Nazis, said French youths imprisoned by the Germans returned to their cells after Gestapo interrogation with their feet blistered by burning wads of oil-soaked cloth. Other youths were burnt with lamps and bitten by police dogs in refinements of medieval tortures. The practices in many prisons were uniform and systematic, showing that it was part of the Nazi policy. This precluded any possible pleas such as misdeeds in "isolated cases for which high German officials could not be held responsible. M. Dubost presented an affidavit stating that a French major, who was

arrested in the southern zone of France in 1943, was beaten by the Gestapo so savagely that it was impossible to see the manacles on his hands. He was made to walk barefoot on tacks, plunged into water, and burned with cigarettes. When he died his body was thrown on to a roadway to make it appear that he had been killed by terrorists. M. Dubost alleged that Bormann and Kaltenbrunner, even more than the others, were responsible for the Gestapo record in Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Norway. Details of the execution of 47 British, American, and Dutch Air Force officers in Mauthausen, in August, 1944, were given by a witness, who was an inmate. He said the men were taken to the bottom of a quarry, where stone blocks weighing 60 or 70 lb. were placed on their shoulders. They were then forced to run up 186 steps, while guards beat them. At the top they unloaded the blocks again and ran down while the stones were rolled after them, crushing them. The performance was repeated with heavier blocks until the last person was unable to move. Men whose limbs were fractured just remained lying down and the stones landed on them. Forty-seven men died within two days. The witness said that in September 1944, Himmler visited the camp, where, as a special treat, 50 Russian officers were executed in his presence. FURTHER REVELATIONS

The beer cqllar explosion in 1939 which Goebbels claimed was a British Secret Service plot to assassinate Hitler, was, in fact, stage-managed by "Hangman” Heydrich, who was jellied in. Czechoslovakia three years later, according to a statement by the German Gem | al Georg Thomas.

Only obscure members of the Nazi Party lost their lives in the explosion, while Hitler was safely absent. Thomas stated that the explosion was designed to shatter an embryo peace movement among high Nazi officers, who were of the opinion that the Reich had insufficient resources for a long war. Himmler co-operated by trapping the British agents, Captains Best and Stephens, on the GermanDutch border, thus providing Goebbels with two perfect scapegoats. FRANKFURT, Jan. 26

Lieutenant General Truscott, United States Army, revealed that death sentences passed’ on thre.e of the Dachau concentration camp officials had been commuted to prison terms. One prison sentence was reduced from ten years to five years. Sentences await confirmation by dw United States Commander in Germany, General MacNarney. The United States Military Court sentenced to death thirty-six Dachau officials, and. sentenced others to imprisonment from five to ten years.