Prisoner-of-war camp

“ Every camp commandant must be made responsible that every prisoner of war, guarded by him, will return to his home later on as a propagandist for Germany. Of course, on the other side, action must be taken with utmost severity against possible agitators. In any case, in the future a difference must be made between real prisoners of war and deserters. The deserters are to be provided with identification certificates, and in any case are to be treated better than the prisoners of war. ”

“ No doubt you will find in the German prison-camps one or two faint-hearted individuals with a pronounced yellow streak who voluntarily gave up the struggle and gave up their liberty rather than risk their lives or limbs. These sad cases, however, are, I am sure, extremely few. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the men fighting in the Allied lines would rather be in the front-line trenches, fighting every day, with all the horrors and all the risks, than be a prisoner [Pg 264] of war in Germany, for the men in France have a very keen realization of what that means. ”

“ Doubtless this paper, like some others, contrasted the (rumoured) abominable treatment of German prisoners by their enemies with the too great indulgence shown to prisoners in Germany. But Prof. Stange is not abashed. “No internment camp,” he writes, “can be compared with a ‘holiday resort.’ In spite of everything that may be done for the prisoners, internment is and remains always a very hard lot. In the Göttingen camp, too, many a prisoner needs not only the exertion of his whole strength, but help as well to make the endurance of his lot physically and spiritually possible.” ”

“ THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Justice Jackson, was this camp that you are referring to a concentration camp?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, it was, as I understand it, a prisoner-of-war camp and a labor camp. There were labor camps and prisoner-of-war camps at Essen. I had not understood that it was a concentration camp, but I admit the distinction is a little thin at times.
This document reads:
“I, the undersigned, Dr. ”

“ In Paragraph 4 of this document it is mentioned that:
“All male prisoners from 16 to 55 years of age captured in guerrilla fighting in the operational army area of the Eastern commissariats, the Government General, and the Balkans, will in the future be considered prisoners of war. The same applies to males in the newly conquered regions of the East. They are to be sent to prisoner-of-war camps and from there committed for labor in the Reich.” ”

“ The prisoners had to carry heavy burdens, were forced to shoulder the bodies of murdered Soviet citizens and carry them out of the camp. Exhausted prisoners who fell by the way were shot on the spot. The road to and from work, according to a report of the Roman Catholic priest at Slavuta, was marked, as by milestones, with small grave mounds.”
The fascist fanatics did not always have the patience to wait for the actual death of one or another prisoner of war, and they buried persons who were still alive. I quote from a document which I have previously submitted to the Tribunal. ”

“ In point of fact, instead of complaints at Güstrow, I heard rather praise of the camp from the British interned there, and praise of the British prisoners from the camp authorities. The men were all well fitted out with clothes of all sorts, and [54] seemed particularly cheerful. The authorities stated that it had never been necessary, in recent times at least, to place a British prisoner under arrest. On the whole, the camp struck me as being as nearly ideal as it is possible for a place of detention of this kind to be. ”

“ The Tribunal has already received evidence concerning the responsibility of the Gestapo for the administration of concentration camps and the authority of the Gestapo for taking persons into protective custody to be carried out in the State concentration camps. The Gestapo also issued orders establishing concentration camps, transforming prisoner-of-war camps into concentration camps as internment camps, changing labor camps into concentration camps, setting up special sections for female prisoners, and so forth. ”

“ Russian civilians and prisoners of war, German nationals, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, British, and American prisoners of war. No practical means was available to complete a list of victims of this camp; however, since the foundation of the camp in 1938 until the day of liberation, it is estimated that more than 29,000 inmates died.”
Escaped prisoners of war were sent to concentration camps by the conspirators, and these camps were specially set up as extermination centers; and we refer to Document Number 1650-PS, bearing Exhibit Number USA-246. ”

“ I should like to see the man who stays my arm because I can take care of anybody who does so. If the little plant leader does that he is put into a concentration camp and runs the risk of losing the prisoners of war. ”

“ Prisoners of war of the former Polish Army, captured as far back as 1939 and imprisoned in various German camps, were already concentrated, in 1940, in the Lublin camp on Lipovoja Street and were soon after transferred, in batches, to the extermination camp of Maidanek, where they suffered the same fate: systematic torture, murder, mass shooting, et cetera. ”

“ The last paragraph:
“So far, there are in Germany about 8,000 prisoners of war of the British and American Air Forces (without counting those in hospitals) . By evacuating the camps actually in existence, which might be used to house bombed-out people, we should immediately have at our disposal prisoners of war for a fairly large number of such camps.” ”

“ All such subjects, his host reminded him, “enjoy full, or nearly full liberty, whereas in Great Britain and France Austro-German subjects have either been clapped into prison, or at any rate confined in a camp or barracks.”
Civilian and Military Prisoners Compared.
“Confinement in a camp or barracks” sounds a small thing. It is really, wherever it occurs, a rather terrible thing. The universal experience is that civilians suffer under this restraint more than soldiers, and consequently are more “difficult” to deal with. ”

“ All prisoners fit for work, if it is practically and humanly possible, will be committed at once to the nearest concentration camp, according to the following instructions, even for example, those who are about to be brought to trial. ”

“ The prisoners in the camp were tortured, forced to do work beyond their strength, shot. About 150 to 200 people died every day of torture, by starvation, typhus and dysentery epidemics, freezing to death, exhausting work, and bloody terror. Over 60,000 peaceful citizens and prisoners of war were exterminated in the camp by the German fascist invaders. The facts of the extermination of the imprisoned officers and men of the Red Army and of the peaceful citizens were confirmed by the testimony of physicians imprisoned in the camp ”

“ It is hardly sporting on the part of those people who declare that we should deal harshly with Germans who break away from their camp in this country. Fortunately, by agreement with the German Government, all heavy punishments for attempted escapes have been removed, so "the" one great pastime of prisoners of war will not cost so dear in future. ”

“ Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge (M.D., D.P.H.) visited this camp on December 17, 1915. She reports: “The prisoners of war are housed in well-built, well-drained barracks having excellent ventilation. Each man has an iron bedstead with two blankets (or a thick quilt) , a straw mattress, good pillow and sheet....”
[10] These indulgences can also be paralleled on this side. A writer from a British internment camp says, during “a great sports week”: “There are already a lot in hospital with broken legs and arms.” ”

“ Next door to us across the line there is a concentration camp of Boche prisoners. They work on the railway all day shovelling stones in and out of trucks and lorries. To the eternal credit of England the treatment the prisoners receive, the food supplied to them, and the conditions under which they live are all of the very best. ”

“ Their disregard, as in the recently reported case of 115 helpless American military prisoners of war murdered in cold blood by the Germans near Malmedy, or in the notorious death camps of Oswiecim and Belsen-Bergen, is a relapse into barbarism, characteristic of the Hitlerite hordes. As a rule, however, the status of prisoners of war is universally respected and they receive a fair treatment from all nations, in accordance with the rules of international law. They may be employed by their captors for certain labors, but must be accorded fair living conditions. ”

“ SPEER: It is certain that concentration camps had a bad reputation with us, and the transfer to a concentration camp, or threat of such a possibility, was bound to reduce the number of absentees in the factories right from the beginning. But at that meeting, as I already said yesterday, there was nothing further said about it. It was one of the many remarks one can make in wartime when one is upset. ”

“ Now I skip to Page 2, the third paragraph of the English translation, quoting:
“Executions are not to be held in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp. If the camps in the Government General are in the immediate vicinity of the border, then the prisoners are to be taken for special treatment, if possible, into the former Soviet Russian territory.” ”

“ The main reason why the prisoners were in such bad condition towards the end of the war, why so many thousands of them were found sick and emaciated in the camps, was that every internee had to be employed in the armament industry to the extreme limit of his forces. The Reichsführer constantly and on every occasion kept this goal before our eyes, and also proclaimed it through the Chief of the Main Economic and Administrative Office, Obergruppenführer Pohl, to the concentration camp commanders and administrative leaders during the so-called commanders’ meetings. ”

“ There is absolutely no privacy for the prisoner of war. To be forced to remain, day and night, for months and years in idleness, with a crowd of others, not of one’s own choice is, I believe, one of the psychological factors which make internment (especially to many civilians) decidedly worse than imprisonment in a criminal prison. ”

“ The prisoners were sent, as I said, to the Kommandantur; then their clothes were returned and their cards were removed from the files.
M. DUBOST: Was the situation in this camp of an exceptional nature or do you consider it was part of a system?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: It is difficult to convey an exact idea of the concentration camps to anybody, unless one has been in the camp oneself, since one can only quote examples of horror; but it is quite impossible to convey any impression of that deadly monotony. ”

“ To the soldier the prison camp is an escape from worse horrors, the soldier is inured to a large measure of monotony, he is also inured to military control and certain peculiarities of the military manner. To the civilian the prison camp is a change from freedom to confinement, from comfort to hardship, often from prosperity to ruin. The civilian’s life has been one of varied activities, and becomes one of almost unrelieved monotony. He is in most cases quite unused to military control, and feels himself degraded to a kind of servitude. ”

“ The camps at Zossen, Wunsdorf, Nuremberg and Ratisbon are also very large.
The camps are divided into military divisions, and they are run like real military camps. The common prisoners sleep in dormitories, and they are furnished with a straw mattress, a pillow and colored bed covers. The men must keep their own beds clean, and they are compelled to take a bath every day. Many of the prisoners are employed around 116 the camp, some of them helping in the cooking and the baking. In a camp of 10,000 prisoners it is no easy task to get the meals ready. ”

“ COL. POKROVSKY: This document has not yet been read into the record. Permit me, Your Honor, to read a few excerpts. I quote Page 183:
“The prison camp in Minsk, covering a space about the size of the Wilhelmsplatz, accommodates about one hundred thousand prisoners of war and forty thousand civilian prisoners. The prisoners, crowded together in this small space, can hardly move, and are therefore forced to relieve nature at the very place where they happen to be. The camp is guarded by a detail of soldiers on active duty, of company strength. ”

“ Some specific things which the French possessed and the British lacked were overcoats, bunks, ample food, work, recreation, blankets, and the opportunity for exercise, and it should be remembered in extenuation of German prison camps in general—if extenuation is deemed necessary—that besides interned civilians, Germany has now nearly seven hundred thousand prisoners of war to house and feed. ”

“ Mock court-martial trials were not all held by prisoners. Even soldiers who were not prisoners and officers were sometimes guilty. In one camp in the central west several young men were placed with other C. O.'s who had been in camp longer or were segregated from the other soldiers. One of their number was sick and in the hospital when the trans fer was made. ”

“ The status of military prisons the world over has been an indictment upon humanity. In England, the Hulks and Dartmoor; in France, Verdun and Bitche; in Russia, Peter and Paul and the Schlüsselburg; in the United States, Libby Prison, Andersonville and Fort Delaware are sad examples of the cruelties of war. Idleness, starvation and homesickness conspired to make the wretched captives prefer death or daring escape to indefinite torture. ”

“ The fact of using war prisoners for the construction of a camp and for the repairing of destroyed runways does not seem to lend itself to any controversy.
“According to Article 31 of the Convention quoted above, war prisoners must not be used in works directly related to war activity. The construction of shelters, houses, and camps is not directly a war act. It is recognized that war prisoners may be employed in the construction of roads. Accordingly their utilization for the reconstruction of aviation camps that have been destroyed is permissible. ”