GESTAPO INDICTED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26033, 22 December 1945, Page 8

GESTAPO INDICTED

TERROR INSTRUMENT NUREMBERG, Dec. 20. Opening the case against the Gestapo and Security Police, when the trial of the Nazi leaders was resumed to-day, the American prosecutor, Colonel Storey, said Goering formed the Gestapo in Prussia in 1934 to combat the Communists, but it soon became a terror instrument throughout Germany. Hitler instructed the Gestapo to “ watch over and eliminate all enemies of the Nazi Party.” The Gestapo membership was 40,000 to 50,000, while the S.S. (Security Police) numbered 300,000. “This unholy band carried out the mass murder of hundreds and thousands of civilians in occupied countries as part of the Nazi programme of exterminating political and racial undesirables,” said Colonel Storey. He submitted a report to Rosenberg from the German Commissioner-gen-eral of White Ruthenia, complaining about the Gestapo’s extermination of Jews in October, 1941. The report said: “ I must point out that this action bordered on sadism. To bury seriouslywounded people alive and then have them work their way from their graves is such a base and filthy act that the incident should be reported to the Fuhrer.” Juveniles Murdered The shooting of eight juveniles from a children’s home because they collected weapons and hid them in a wood was one of the crimes detailed by the assistant American prosecutor, Major Farr./ He was quoting from a report from White Ruthenia, which also gave the following details of S.S. activities in two Soviet areas:—“ White Ruthenia liquidations for the period covered by this report have been 37,180. In the Ukraine 3145 Jews had to be shot because, from experience, they have been regarded as carriers of Bolshevik propaganda and saboteurs.” Major Farr said the S.S. had a special department to carry out the German colonisation policy, which was in two stages: First, the destruction of the conquered peoples by extermination or deportation, and then the confiscation of their property; secondly, the settlement of racial Germans in the newly-acquired lands, where . they would live on the wealth of those they had eliminated. ’ Settlement Actions Major Farr quoted from an affidavit by S.S. Obergruppenfuhrer Otto Hofman, who was chief in the main office for settlement in the S.S. supreme command until November, 1943. This stated that executive powers for carrying out these so-called settlement actions were in the hands of Heinrich Heydrich, and later in the hands of the defendant Kaltenbrunner. The prosecutor said the ranks of the organisation included seven of the defendants as high-ranking officers—, namely, Ribbentrop, Hess, Kaltenbrunner, Sauckel, von Neurath, Seyss-In-quart, and Martin Bormann (the missing defendant). Captured documents read by Major Farr disclosed that on orders from Himmler women prisoners were supplied for S.S. concentration camp tests in re warming frozen men with the heat of their naked bodies. Major Farr told the court that Dr Sigmund Ascher eventually reported that in all cases “rewarming by animals’ bodies or women’s bodies was inferior to rapid rewarming of severely-chilled persons.” , The prosecutor’s evidence disclosed that Himmler notified the camp authorities that their supply of human beings for medical experiments should exclude bedridden prisoners, who should be drafted for suitable work which they could perform in bed. He also revealed that S.S. surgeons fired poisoned bullets into the legs of five prisoners and noted the symptoms accompanying the slow deaths of three of them.