The Scourge of the Swastika: A History of Nazi War Crimes During World War II by Edward Russell

Author:Edward Russell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: war, history
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2008-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

When we finally scrambled over the embankment a picture of horror was revealed to us. A pit, about seven to eight metres long and perhaps four metres wide had been dug in the ground. The upturned earth was piled on one side of the pit and was completely soaked with blood. The pit itself was filled with numerous corpses of both sexes and all ages. There were so many corpses that it was impossible to tell how deep the trench was. Behind the pile of earth stood a detachment of Feldpolizei under the command of an officer. Many soldiers from units billeted in the area stood there, dressed only in shorts, watching the performance.

I approached the grave as near as possible in order to see for myself, and what I saw I shall never be able to forget. In the pit lay an old man with a long white beard, clutching a walking stick in his left hand. As he appeared to be still alive I ordered one of the policemen to finish him off and he smilingly replied, ‘I have already shot him seven times in the stomach; he can die on his own now.’

The bodies lay in the trench, not in rows, but as they had fallen from the edge when they had been shot. . . . I have never seen anything like this before, neither in the First World War, nor in this. I witnessed many disagreeable things in the Freiwilligen Korps88 in 1919 but nothing so horrible as what I saw at Zhitomir. . . . I wish to add that according to the testimony of German soldiers who have often watched these executions, several hundred persons are being shot like this every day.

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