A closer look at the Soviet “Extraordinary State Commission”(ESC) which claimed to have investigated “Fascist Crimes” Part II

By Wilfried Heink-

The second subchapter in the essay by Marina Sorokina is titled:

“A Broad and Authoritative Public Committee, Not Bearing Any Official Character”

“The idea of creating a special public organ for the investigation of Nazi war crimes was raised in the USSR at the very beginning of World War II, although for a long time the Soviet leadership did nothing about it.” writes Sorokina.[1] Then on 6 August 1941, Iakov Semenovich Khavinson 28:

“…who in prewar days had already put forward numerous ideas for the modernization of Soviet propaganda, sent a note to the secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (and director of Sovinformbiuro), Aleksandr Sergeevich Shcherbakov, in which he proposed the creation of ‘a broad and authoritative public committee, not bearing any official character’, as a ‘systematic source of information about Nazi crimes on the occupied territories of the USSR.’ Such an organ was necessary, Khavinson argued, because ‘the accessibility and effectiveness of such information abroad depends quite heavily on the character of the source that is disseminating it’…”

(28 Iakov Semenovich Khavinson (1901–92) was the principal director of TASS, a member of Sovinformbiuro, and from 1942 on, the head of Sovinformbiuro’s Department of Counterpropaganda. In 1943–46 he was a member of the editorial board and head of the foreign department of Pravda, and he later served as Pravda’s permanent correspondent for international affairs (under the pseudonym M. Marinin). [2]

The idea then was to create a committee “not bearing any official character”, because “who” wrote what was more important than “what” was written, as the last sentence above makes clear. In other words, the propaganda value was the determining factor. It continues:

“According to Khavinson’s plan, the committee was not only to pass on information it received but was also to engage directly in collecting materials about Nazi atrocities, in organizing the investigative proceedings in certain cases through interrogation of the victims, and in publishing materials it collected. Khavinson said that the main consumer for the future “product” would be foreign public opinion, and his proposal was buttressed by reference to the experience of World War I in Europe, when a number of countries created similar committees that consisted of eminent public figures and representatives from the spheres of culture, academics, and law. The Soviet committee, said Khavinson, must similarly include world-famous Soviet scholars, legal experts, doctors, writers, Red Cross activists, and so forth, whose authority and reputation would guarantee in the eyes of the international public that the future committee would be independent in its evaluations, judgments, and conclusions” [3]

According to this, the committee was to actively participate in the investigations, even though none of its members were qualified to do so. The reference to WWI is also of note, horror stories regarding German atrocities were spread throughout that war, and later exposed as lies. And then we have of course the propaganda value, and since the “consumer for” this “future product” was to be “foreign public opinion”, it was important that well known persons made up this commission. Nothing came of the Khavinson proposals at that time, one of the reasons, according to Sorokina, “…a period of extremely serious difficulties at the front”.[4] And:

“A seemingly more important reason for the refusal, however, was that the bureaucrats of Aleksandrov’s Agitprop—created after the purges of the late 1930s and lacking the cultural and educational veneer possessed by certain of their predecessors—quite simply did not grasp the opportunity they had to attempt to influence Western public opinion with psychological propaganda that was free from primitive ideological rhetoric…Despite the “psychological mobilization” of Soviet society for a “Great War” in the late 1930s[5], the Soviet system of information, propaganda, and counterpropaganda was not ready for struggle with an actual enemy on the eve of the war, when it came to propaganda not only were the population and the army completely disoriented in their understanding of who was “friend” and who was “foe,” but even the “propagandists” themselves did not truly understand the forces they faced.”[6]

Sorokina tells us that in Russia, next to nothing was known about Germany. This is why the “propagandists” were ineffective; the reference to propaganda should be noted. But this changed:

“On 6 December 1941, immediately after the beginning of the Soviet counterattack outside Moscow, Lozovskii, the deputy people’s commissar for foreign affairs, sent the State Committee on Defense (GKO) a letter addressed to Stalin and People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Molotov with a proposal to create two secret preparatory commissions: a financial-economic one to tally the damage inflicted by the Nazis and set reparations, and a political one to resolve the problem of postwar borders and the political structure of Europe.”41

(41 See “Zaniat´sia podgotovkoi,” 114–15. The latter initiative was quickly approved and on 28 January 1942, by a decision of the Politburo, the “Commission on Postwar Plans for the State Organization of the Countries of Europe, Asia, and Other Parts of the World” was created, headed by People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Molotov. Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyshinskii was made co-chairman of one of the commission’s working groups, for preparing proposals for Western and Northern Europe and the British empire).[7]

A little about Solomon Abramovich Lozovskii. Sorokina writes that: “Only in September 1942 was it decided that foreign correspondents of TASS would unofficially work for Sovinformbiuro, and only toward the end of the war (the summer of 1944) was a special Propaganda Bureau for enemy and occupied countries organized within TASS itself, headed by Solomon Abramovich Lozovskii”.[8] According to this, Lozovskii, a Jew, was in charge of producing anti-German propaganda. Interestingly, Iakov Semenovich Khavinson, another Jew, had already before proposed the creation of a committee “as a ‘systematic source of information about Nazi crimes on the occupied territories of the USSR’ “ (see above). Back to Lozovskii:

“The idea of a political body that would speak for the Jewish people of Eastern Europe was not of Soviet origin… The Communist contention that theirs had been the initiative, and that the JAC was begotten at a “public gathering of representatives of the Jewish people” in Moscow, on August 24, 1941, is without foundation.

A detailed plan for constituting a Jewish war committee was drawn up somewhat later by the leaders of the Jewish Socialist Bund of Poland, Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, both of whom had been released from prison in Moscow early in September 1941. How the plan was conceived, and what happened after it had been submitted to the Soviet government, we know from a number of documents drafted in October 1941 or shortly thereafter and published in this country in 1943: letters by Erlich and Alter to Lavrentii P. Beriya, People's Commissar for the Interior (chief of the NKVD), and to Stalin himself, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; an outline of the activities to be performed by the committee; and the draft of an appeal to the Jewish masses in Poland.The documents reveal that Erlich and Alter were received by Beriya after their release, and that in the course of a lengthy conversation an agree­ment was reached to seek the establishment of a Jewish committee to foster the fight against Nazism…Then, on April 6, 1942, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's correspondent in Moscow learned that an anti-Nazi “Committee of Soviet Jewish Intellectuals” had been formed, and on April 7 the newly founded organization, announced as the “Jewish Antifascist Committee,” issued an appeal to the Jews of the world. On April 23 the existence of the JAC was officially acknowl­edged at a press conference for foreign correspondents in Kuibyshev by Solomon A. Lozovskii, deputy chief of the Soviet Information Bureau.²³ … It was made clear that the JAC was to devote itself chiefly to in­fluencing Jewish opinion outside the Soviet Union, but not so much in order to safeguard Jewish interests or help the Allies as a whole to win the war, as to enlist support for the Soviet Union in particular. It was not intended to organize relief for Jews on Soviet soil, or even for the Jewish citizens of the USSR: the Committee's chief purpose was to obtain moral and material help for the Red Army. In the appeal of May 24, the Soviet Union was called the first force in the war against Hitlerism, and Soviet Jews were praised for the example they set the Jewish people: “We Jews of the Soviet Union have set you an example. … If all freedom-loving peoples were to do what the Soviet people are doing, fascism would soon be smashed to bits,” said the appeal at a moment when Hitler's second Russian offensive was sweeping everything before it. “The Red Army is the hope of all mankind,” proclaimed the appeal— “Jews throughout the world! Let us collect money, buy a thousand tanks and five hundred airplanes, and ship them to the Red Army!” The first issue of the Committee's newspaper, Eynikayt, led off with an article by the chairman, Solomon Mikhoels, the renowned actor, entitled “1,000 Tanks and 500 Bombers.”

(23 Questioned about antifascist committees operating in the USSR, Lozovskii mentioned five: The All-Slav Committee, commitees of Soviet women, of the Soviet youth, and of Soviet science, and the JAC. Of the latter Lozovskii said: “Jews have formed an antifascist committee in order to help the Soviet Union, England, and United States of America put an end to the bloodthirsty rage of Hitler and the other fascist apes who fancy themselves a master race.” Izvestiya, April 24, 1942.)[9]

The appeal issued following the meeting of 24 August 1941 was published in November 1941 by the “Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee”, Buckingham House 6-7, Buckingham Street, Adelphi, London, W.W.[10] This publication no doubt prompted Hitler, at the meeting of 12 December 1941, to order the expulsion of the Jews as a fifth column. The above is also evidence that Jews agitated against Germany wherever they were present, forcing the Germans to react. We do well to keep this in mind when reading/hearing about “innocent” Jews being shot.

Sorokina writes that the “creation of the “financial-economic” commission (in Lozovskii’s terminology), the prototype of the ChGK, took place in the winter and spring of 1942 in the inner sanctum of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR”, but Molotov immediately changed the name to call it “All-Union Committee of the Soviet Council of People’s Deputies for the Investigation of the Villainous Crimes of the Nazis and Their Accomplices and for the Determination of the Degree of Damage Caused by the War”, and Sorokina provides the reason for the name-change:

“Undoubtedly, one of the most important motivations for Molotov’s change was an attempt to connect innovative Soviet antifascist initiatives with initiatives taken all across Europe by émigré governments and representatives of the countries occupied by the Nazis, who were constantly appealing to the Allies with demands to call the aggressors to account. many of these countries were supposed to become beachheads for the territorial, ideological, political, and economic expansion of the Soviet Union after the war; and during the winter and spring of 1942 , the Soviet leadership repeatedly made declarations in its diplomatic notes about how it was necessary to call the German government and high command to account for their war crimes. So it was that by the summer of 1942, at a time when the Western allies were only just beginning to discuss the basics of creating an international commission for the investigation of Nazi war crimes (the future United Nations War Crimes Commission), the Soviet leadership already had concrete plans for this”.[11]

Those “appeals” by émigré governments were of course based on rumors. No investigation by a competent, unbiased body dealing with crimes allegedly committed by Germans ever took place. That people were shot by German soldiers is a fact: what is missing is that many, if not all of the shootings, were reprisal actions. Dr. Aschenauer provides details about the actions of “franctireur” (partisan) units in Poland, the first report by Einsatzgruppe III (rapid response unit) dated 6 September 1939, when German troops entered Poland on 1 September. [12] German troops were fighting partisans even back then, and the reprisal actions were interpreted as war crimes committed by the Germans.

The site of the Katyn massacre, committed by the NKVD, was discovered by the Germans in the summer 1942. However, the investigation did not take place until spring 1943, because a war had to be fought [13]. The creation of this extraordinary committee was likely a result of this discovery. On 20 July, Georgii Aleksandrov, director of Agitprop (Department for Agitation and Propaganda) took up the cause and:

“…sent a packet of documents to Central Committee Secretaries A. A. Andreev, G. M. Malenkov, and A. S. Shcherbakov, as well as to Molotov. The packet contained a note and the Central Committee’s draft decree on the creation of an ‘Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities, Violence, and Other Crimes Committed by the German Army on the Territory of the Temporarily Occupied Soviet Territories, and for a Tallying of the Damage Caused by the German Fascist Troops to the Population of the USSR and to the Soviet State.’”[14]

Thus instead of creating a public committee as suggested by Khavinson, “…Aleksandrov, who was known for his homegrown patriotism,47 proposed the creation of a typical nomenklatura body in the Stalinist mode”.[15] Members were to be high ranking party officials. For instance: “…the secretaries of the Central Committees of the Ukrainian and Belorussian Communist Parties, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR, the public prosecutor of the USSR, the deputy people’s commissars for internal and foreign Affairs,…”[16], making it impossible for the committee to function, the members could never meet since they were scattered all throughout the SU and “…especially considering that this was the ‘bitter summer’ of 1942 , which saw a terrible retreat on the Southern Front and prompted Stalin’s ‘Not one step back!’[17]

(47 This was evident in the fact that unlike Khavinson, Aleksandrov referred to the Russian experience of creating analogous institutions: the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry for the Investigation of Violations of the Rules and Customs of War (1915) and the Commission for the Calculation of the Consequences of the Intervention and the Civil War. I would note that the results of the work of both commissions were pitiful, for in both pre- and post- revolutionary Russia there was no system for the tallying of war victims; all calculations were based on probability. See A. I. Stepanov, “Obshchie demograficheskie poteri naseleniia Rossii v period pervoi mirovoi voiny,”( The general demographic loss of Russian population during the First World War) in Pervaia mirovaia voina: Prolog XX veka, ed. V. L. Mal´kov (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 482) (my emphasis)

The practice of “calculating based on probability” (footnote 47 above) continued throughout the “investigations” done by the ESC, the 4 million Auschwitz victims an example; but this is just an aside. The project, as proposed by Aleksandrov, “did not move forward in this form”, because the sponsor:

“…clearly did not understand (or was not informed of) the main reason why the party leadership was so invested in the enterprise in the first place—namely, to give international legal legitimacy to documentary materials that had been both collected and created by the institutions of Soviet power about Nazi war crimes, in order to use them as one of their long-term tools in the ideological and political struggle for the future of postwar Europe and the USSR”[18] (my emphasis)

One needs to digest this, for here the real purpose for creating this “Extraordinary State Commission” is revealed. The intent was “to give international legal legitimacy” to what was “collected and created” by the commission. Nothing wrong with that, although the part about “creating” evidence is disturbing. Question is, to gain international legitimacy, why not have authorities trained in criminal investigations and forensic experts undertake the investigations? If that had been done, and the results published and experts from other countries invited after the war, to verify what has been determined, the legitimacy of the ESC would never have been in doubt.

And then we have the part about the “ideological and political struggle for the future of postwar Europe and the USSR”. Ideology did play a part, but when Jodl outlined Hitler’s intent, on 3 March 1941:

“Dieser kommende Feldzug ist mehr als nur ein Kampf der Waffen; er führt auch zur Auseinandersetzung zweier Weltanschauungen“ (This coming war is not just an armed struggle, it is the confrontation between two ideologies)”[19]

it is condemned as Hitler’s attempt to impose National Socialism on others, when in fact the two ideologies, Communism and National Socialism, were opposing each other. Also, from this it appears that the “future of postwar Europe” was decided upon before the war was over (see also footnote 41 above).

We then learn that:

“In the early stages of the war, many organizations were involved in collecting information that exposed the crimes of fascism—from local soviets, the People’s Commissariat of Health, and the Union of Architects to academic bodies such as the Commission on the History of the Fatherland War and the Institute of the History of material Culture, among others.”[20]

Not one body of experts in criminal investigations was among them. And, changes were made again: In February 1942 it was decided to centralize the information. Two decrees were issued, both on 25 February 1942, one by the NKVD: “On Sending materials about the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders to the NKVD’s Bureau of State Records (UGA)” and one by UGA: “On the Process of Collecting, Tallying, and Preserving Documentary materials about Atrocities, Destruction, Robbery, and Violence Committed by the German Authorities on the Soviet Territories Occupied by Them”. These documents:

“…established that all documents recording crimes, regardless of their origin or the department to which they belonged, were to be handed over immediately to the NKVD’s Bureau of State Records or its local branches, and then to the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (TsGAOR SSSR), where a special “Great Fatherland War” division was created. As a direct consequence of this centralization, supported by the main military Prosecutor and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR, a system developed according to which the NKVD-KGB had total control over all information relating to the issue of war crimes. The only thing lacking in this secretive system was legitimacy for the information it produced. If virtually any kind of product used by the NKVD would suffice for the purposes of concocting domestic trials, very different ingredients were needed for the international arena, ingredients that were better suited to Western tastes and less discredited in the public eye”.[21]

The NKVD, responsible for numerous crimes [22], was put in charge of collecting material regarding alleged German war crimes. Prof. Maser writes that the numbers of people killed by the Germans were overstated by the Soviets to distract from their own killings and avoid being unmasked as war criminals.[23] Also, the material collected was for internal use only. It lacked legitimacy; it was not meant for foreign consumption. Another part that needs to be savoured: what assurance do we have that the material produced later was legitimate, since no historian has ever bothered to verify any of it to this day?

And because legitimacy was an issue and “very different ingredients were needed for the international arena”:

“…an expert on Western public opinion was called in—former ambassador to the United States (1939–41) and current member of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (NKID), Konstantin Aleksandrovich Umanskii, who spent the period of August–October 1943 adapting the draft to fit the goals of Soviet foreign policy.”[24]

Schwarz writes: “It is well known that after 1918 a large number of the Soviet diplomats had been Jews (Yoffe, Litvinov, Khinchuk, Umanskii, etc);…”[25], thus we have yet another Jew involved in “collecting and creating”(see above) material concerning alleged German war crimes.

After a few delays, on 28 October 1942, “a third proposal for the creation of the ChGK”, was sent to Molotov, signed by Aleksandrov, Umanskii and Aleksei Fedorovich Gorkin:

“[T]he Formation of the Extraordinary State Committee for the Calculation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and of the Damage Caused by Them to Citizens, Public and State Enterprises, and Institutions of the USSR…gave the party and Soviet nomenklatura even greater representation on the commission (35 persons) but also included a number of public figures”.[26]

The emphasis was on damage caused by the “German Fascist Invaders” and most members nominated were politicians, academics, trade unionists, etc. But, while the Soviets were working out proposals as to the nature of the commission:

“U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Lord Chancellor John Simon issued a joint statement on 7 October 1942, declaring their readiness to cooperate in the creation of a United Nations commission for the investigation of war crimes. This declaration forced the Soviet side to shift abruptly into reverse. Late on the evening of 4 October in Kuibyshev, Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Lozovskii delivered to the Czechoslovak ambassador, Zdeněk Fierlinger, and the Soviet representative of the Comité français de la libération nationale (CFLN), Roger Garreau, the Soviet government’s reply to the collective note it had been given on 3 July by the governments of nine countries occupied by the Nazis. In this declaration, “On the Responsibility of the Nazi Invaders and Their Accomplices for the Atrocities Committed by Them in the Occupied Countries of Europe,” the Soviet side first officially used the phrase ‘special international tribunal’.”[27]

Therefore, on 17 October, Lozovskii sent a letter to Molotov, proposing:

“…that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issue a special decree creating a “Commission for the Investigation and Collection of materials on the Atrocities Committed by the Nazis in the Occupied Territories of the USSR,”57 headed by a prominent government or public figure and with a staff of 10–12 persons. He also proposed giving an order through the Central Committee and the State Committee on Defense instructing all institutions to deliver to this commission all materials in their possession having to do with the atrocities committed by German troops in the occupied Soviet territories.”[28]

And with this we are finally at the creation of the ESC with its “ten active members” as referred to by Sorokina on p. 801 (see part I). But, footnote 57 is of utmost importance, here it is in its entirety:

(57 Ibid., d. 69, file 7 (“On the Formation of the ChGK”), ll. 3 –3 . An important annotation to the letter states that it was printed in three copies, including copies for Stalin and Molotov. What Lozovskii wrote is worth quoting in full: “materials on German atrocities are located in dozens of sites around the country. They can be found in such places as the Central Committees of Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Moldavian Autonomous Republic; in regional and city committees; among the political workers of regiments, divisions, and fronts; and in the RKKA (main Political Administration of the Red Army), Razvedupr (Central Intelligence Service of the Red Army), the NKVD, and the People’s Commissariat of Health.

The originals of a number of documents have already been lost, with only copies remaining. There has still been no full accounting of those who carried out these atrocities on the spot or the bosses who organized them (name, rank, place of activity, and so forth). I do not know the location of the original reports or the protocols of the commissions that have carried out investigations and inquiries into the atrocities. Probably they are scattered around various institutions. We have very important testimony on German atrocities from prisoners of war, but this testimony is to be found in part in the RKKA and in part with the NKVD and elsewhere. It is time to gather all these materials in one place, sort them, and start up files on each of the generals, colonels, majors, lieutenants, and privates both within and outside the SS. It is necessary to gather testimony from eyewitnesses while the trail is still hot and get their official signatures. All this will be necessary for us when we prepare our final results.”[29] (my emphasis)

No comment really necessary, other than to say that the practice of admitting “copies” of documents by the Soviets as evidence was continued at the IMT.[30]

This latest proposal arrived at Molotov’s desk at the end of October, and Molotov made some corrections:

“…the “committee” became a “commission,” and “calculation” became “establishment and investigation”; collective farms were added to the commission’s purview; and the phrase “and their accomplices” was added to the term “occupiers.” An expression that Aleksandrov had used throughout the text—“the Russian people and other peoples of the Soviet Union”—underwent a fundamental change in Molotov’s version when the first part of the phrase was dropped.”[31]

Lozovskii tried to have Jews added to the commission, “…the chairman of the Antifascist Jewish Committee, Soviet People’s Artist Mikhoels. In addition, it would also be good to include Academician Kapitsa; the editor of our English-language newspaper The Moscow News, M. Borodin; and the editor of our Jewish newspaper Eni Kait [as transliterated], Epshtein.”[32], but it appears that nothing came of that.

Sorokina writes that the final decision naturally rested with Stalin. From 30 – 31 October, Molotov met with Stalin and:

“…on 2 November 1942, the decree was signed by the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, and shortly thereafter it was published. In accordance with the decree, the ChGK was given the status of a public commission. Almost all Soviet and party functionaries were removed from its staff, leaving it a mere third of its former size, reduced to just ten people.”[33]

And finally:

“Practically speaking, the ChGK had been given back its image as a public body, just as Khavinson had suggested back in 1941. The prospect of an international tribunal forced the Soviet leadership to take into account the traditions of Western political and legal culture, even if only superficially imitating their attributes and conforming to “Western standards” of public opinion. On the one hand, the documentary materials that had been (and were being) collected on Nazi crimes in the USSR were supposed to have international legitimacy; on the other, they were supposed to be presented by representatives of Soviet society whose reputation in the West would be beyond question. The personnel roster of the ChGK was meant to reflect its special character as an “export.”[34] (my emphasis)

Thus, the ESC (ChGK) was finally established, the materials collected by it meant for export and the veracity “guaranteed” by “representatives of Soviet society whose reputation in the West would be beyond question”. Why was that so important? Why not have experts investigate, present their findings and invite anyone to verify those findings? If all of this had been legitimate, then this is exactly what would have been done. However, no investigations by experts in the field of criminal investigation ever took place. All of it was just a show, and the makeup of the committee, subject of the next part, confirms this.

To be continued…

Sources:

1. Marina Sorokina, People and Procedures. Toward a History of the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in the USSR, p.806
2. Ibid, pp.806/07
3. Ibid, p.807
4. Ibid, p.808
5. For details on the preparations for war, see “Die konspirativen Kriegsvorbereitungen Stalins” (Stalin’s conspiratorial war preparations) by Dr. Irina Pawlowa in “Überfall auf Europa”(Attack on Europe), Pour le Mérite – Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selent, Austria 2009, pp.109-143
6. Sorokina, People and Procedures, pp.808/09
7. Ibid, pp.809/10
8. Ibid, p.809
9. Solomon M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, Syracuse University Press 1951, pp.201-203
10. Heinrich Härtle, Freispruch für Deutschland, Verlag K.W. Schütz, Göttingen 1965, p.255
11. Sorokina, People and Procedures, pp.810/11
12. Rudolf Aschenauer, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Der Partisanenkampf gegen Deutschland 1939-1945.(War without borders. The fight of the partisans against Germany 1939-19450. Druffel-Verlag Leoni am Starnberger See, 1982, p.170ff
13. http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2009/09/katyn
14. Sorokina, People and Procedures, p.811
15. Ibid, p.812
16. Ibid
17. Ibid
18. Ibid, pp.812/13
19. Walter Post, Die verleumdete Armee, Pour le Mérite – Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selent 1999, p.43
20. Sorokina, People and Procedures, p.813
21. Ibid.
22. Alexander Solschenitsyn, Zeihundert Jahre zusammen. Die Juden in der Sowjetunion; The Black Book of Communism; Michael S. Voslensky, Das Geheimnis wird offenbar;, etc.
23. Werner Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, Olzog Verlag GmbH, München 2004, p.339; Maser refers to Louis Begley (Ludwik Begleiter) in Der Spiegel of 5 June 1995, p.180ff.
24. Sorokina, People and Procedures, pp.813/14
25. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p.363
26. Sorokina, People and Procedures, p.814
27. Ibid, pp.814/15
28. Ibid
29. Ibid
30. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-08-46.asp; Franz W. Seidler, Das Recht in Siegerhand, Pour le Mérite, Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selent 2007, p.80
31. Sorokina, People and Procedures, pp.815/16
32. Ibid, p.816, footnote 59
33. Ibid, p.816
34. Ibid, pp.816/17