In announcing the verdict of guilty against the 21 top Nazi defendants here, the International War Crimes tribunal today cited “the consistent and systematic inhumanity on the greatest scale” carried on by the Nazis against the Jewish people, resulting in the extermination of 6,000,000 Jews.
“From the earliest days of the Nazi party, anti-Semitism occupied a prominent place in National Socialist though and propaganda,” the tribunal asserted. Reviewing the type of activity carried on against the Jews, it called attention to business boycotts, the elimination of Jews from various professions, deprivation of citizenship by the Nuremberg laws, confiscation of property, and constant beatings and terrorism culminating in mass extermination in concentration camps.
The court specifically mentioned mass-executions of Jews in cities of Eastern Europe, including Rovno and Dubno, and quoted the commandant of the death camp at Auschwitz as admitting the extermination of 3,000,000 between May, 1940, and December, 1943.
It recalled that Adolf Eichman, director of the Jewish extermination program, had estimated that 6,000,000 Jews were killed, 4,000,000 in concentration camps and 2,000,000 by Security Police units.
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