CYIL Vol. 7, 2016

PETR VÁLEK CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ to “the large scale machinery of deportation and the giant mechanized apparatus of extermination devices. Czechoslovak Jews e.g. were collected by mass arrest on assembly points; sometimes all people of certain places were gaoled”. 56 At the end of Enclosure 5, Dr. Ečer explained the systematic pattern of this crime: “As during the whole time of the occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic Czechoslovak Citizens were put under arrest and, either by detour via another concentration camp or straight away, were sent to Oswieczim – Birkenau, it is justified to charge all members of the police organization responsible for these arrests and deportations; whether or not the individual official was competent for the whole or part of the territory of the Republic and was in office during the whole or part of the time of the occupation.” 57 In case of the “Deportation of Civilians”, it is made clear that “at least tens of thousands of innocent Czechoslovak nationals were forcibly deported… just out of racial and national hatred and with the Nazi idea of deliberate extermination of “inferior” Jewish and Slav races.” The description of “Murder and Massacres” includes the gas chambers, the “selection”, forced labor, executions and suicides “mostly committed by throwing one’s self against the high-tension wires of the inner fence.” Under the term of “Systematic Terrorism” is meant “[a] deliberate and well considered system of terror organised and ruthlessly carried through by the exponents of the German Herrenrasse … spreading unimaginable horror among the inmates who were absolutely outlawed and deprived of any right.” There are numerous examples of “Torture of Civilians”, including scientific experiments. Detailed information is also provided concerning the crimes of “Deliberate Starvation of Civilians, Internment of Civilians under Inhuman Conditions, Forces Labour of Civilians in Connection with the Military Operations of the Enemy” and “Confiscation of Property.” Finally, Dr. Ečer added an estimate that “1,765,000 Jews were gassed at Birkenau between April 1942 and April 1944”, among them 30,000 from Bohemia and Moravia and 30,000 from Slovakia. 58 According to L. Rees, however, the total number of victims is 1,100,000, out of them 46,099 from Bohemia and Moravia and 26,661 from Slovakia, 59 so the amount of the Czech victims was actually much greater than estimated in June 1945. Today an international lawyer would probably qualify the well-known events in Auschwitz and Birkenau as genocide, crimes against humanity and partly as war crimes (murders of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians from the occupied territories) as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It understandable why, in June 1945, Dr. Ečer did not use the term “genocide”, since the term invented 56 Ibid. , Enclosure 5, p. 1. 57 Ibid. , Enclosure 5, p. 8. 58 Ibid. , Enclosure 5, p. 2-8. 59 REES, L. Osvětim: Nacisté a „Konečné řešení“ (Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’), Prague 2005. p. 302-303.

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