WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26027, 15 December 1945, Page 7

WAR CRIMES TRIAL

GRIM EXHIBITS PRODUCED RELICS OF NAZI CAMPS NUREMBERG, Dec. 13. A shrunken human head and a piece of human skin from the Buchenwald hell camp were taken into the courtroom before the opening of to-day’s session of the war crimes trial. Goering first spotted the exhibits and nudged Hess in an excited manner. The eyes of all the men in the dock were riveted on these grim products of the concentration camp system. The American prosecutors, however, quickly ordered them to be removed as they were not wanted yet. The exhibits were taken out before the members of the tribunal entered. During the afternoon session the grim exhibits were again produced as part of the prosecution’s case on concentration camps. The American assistant prosecutor, Mr T. J. Todd, said. “We place these exhibits before the court only because they show the depts to which the Nazi camps sank shortly before the Allied liberation.” Killed by Injection He read from a report by an American investigating unit at Buchenwald, describing how prisoners with artistic tattooings were killed by injection. Mr Dodd said the pieces of skin exhibited had been given, after treatment, to the wife of the Buchenwald commandant, who had similar pieces made into lampshades and other ornamental articles. The prosecution revealed that the German Supreme Army Command in March, 1944, ordered that prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured, except British and American personnel, were to be sent to the dreaded Austrian concentration camp at Nauthausen, and their fate kept secret from the International Red Cross. Recaptured prisoners wore placed in irons for transport to Nauthausen, where many thousands of persons were killed during the war. Mr Dodd submitted documents to prove that at one concentration camp of 2000 prisoners only 102 survived, and at the Flossenburg concentration “..factory dealing with death ” 29,000 inmates died. Obliteration of Jews The prosecutor said the word persecution did not convey the full meaning of the Nazis’ avowed purpose to obliterate the Jewish race. One S.S. report showed that 56,000 Jews were exterminated in the Warsaw ghetto at one time. . ~ , , Speer sat blinking in the dock as Mr Dodd accused him, first, of countenancing the use of brutality and terror as a means of getting maximum production from slave labour; secondly, of compelling Allied nations war prisoners to engage in the manufacture of armaments and direct military operations against Iheir own countries; thirdly, of being tesponsible for policies which directly conflicted with the laws of war.