Later, when the Red Army began to clear out the Germano-fascist hordes from the Soviet Union territory they had temporarily occupied and when the Soviet authorities began to discover the abominable crimes perpetrated by the fascist monsters and to find numerous graves of Soviet citizens, soldiers, and officers tortured to death by the fascists, the German Command took urgent measures to conceal and destroy all traces of their crimes. For this purpose, the German Command organized everywhere exhumations of corpses from their graves and their cremation. A special order of an Obersturmführer, dated “Rovno, 3 August 1943-IUAI No. 35/43c,” addressed to the Regional Commander of Gendarmerie in Kamen-Kashirsk, ordered him immediately to supply information concerning location and number of common graves of persons to whom special repressive measures had been applied in the district.
Among the documents discovered in the Gestapo building of the Rovno district has been found a report concerning the execution of the above-mentioned order, with the enumeration of about 200 localities, where such graves were registered. One can see from this list that the Germano-fascist henchmen primarily chose inaccessible and isolated spots for the interment of their victims. At the end of the list we read, “The list includes all the graves, including those of the commandos who worked here previously.”
I will now quote an extract of the appeal to the public opinion of the world from the representatives of several thousand former internees at Auschwitz:
“The gassing of unbelievable numbers of people took place upon the arrival of transports from various countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Norway, and others. The new arrivals had to pass before an SS doctor or else before the SS commandant of the camp. The latter pointed his finger to the right or left. The left meant death by gas. Out of a transport of 1,500, an average of 1,200 to 1,300 were immediately to be gassed. Rarely the quota of people sent into the camp was a little higher. It often occurred that the SS doctors Mengele and Thilo performed this selection while whistling a lively tune. The people destined to be gassed were obliged to strip in front of the gas chambers, after which they were driven with whips into the gas chambers. Then the door of the underground gas-chamber was closed, and the people were gassed. Death occurred approximately 4 minutes later. After 8 minutes the gas chamber was opened, and workmen belonging to a special commando, the so-called Sonderkommando, transported the bodies to the cremation ovens which burned day and night.