The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

108 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
‘In the prison in Omsk one day a fellow prisoner called me over
to a window which opened on the inner court. There was a shutter
on the window, but through a crack we could see a door into another
prison building.
‘In a short time a Black Maria [65] rolled up. The door in the
building opened and guards drove people into the open doors of the
prison van. Well over thirty prisoners jammed into the Black Maria
standing up. The doors were forced shut by the guards and the van
departed. I was going to leave the window but my cellmate said:
‘Just wait a bit. They will come back soon.’ And they did. When the
van doors were opened black smoke poured into the air and corpses
fell out onto the ground. Those which did not fall out by themselves
were pulled out with hooks by the guards. Then all the corpses were
dropped into a nearby basement sewer hole. Every day for a week
we watched this happen. That other wing of the prison was known as
the ‘kulak’ wing.’”
It goes without saying that the probative value of this story from
hearsay is rather low. If put into the context of well-documented Soviet
killing methods and experiments using a wide variety of poisonous gases
and other substances, however (see Bobrenjow/Rjasanzwe 1993, pp.
43, 171; Baldajewa 1993; Volodarsky 2009), it seems indeed that the
sick minds coming up with the idea of “gas vans” can be found within
the pre-war Soviet secret services.
In 1994 U.S. engineer Friedrich P. Berg reported about a four-part
TV documentary with the title “Monster: A Portrait of Stalin in Blood”
aired in the U.S. in 1993 about the collapse of the Soviet Union (Gauss
1994, p. 342). One segment of the second part of the series subtitled
“Stalin’s Secret Police,” is of special interest, as it confirms what we
suspect. At one point KGB officer Alexander Michailov states the following:
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“We’ve come across evidence that long before Hitler’s gas vans
came into being, Isai Davidovich Berg invented secret gas vans in
Moscow. It was a simple airtight van in which prisoners were delivered,
and when necessary, carbon monoxide exhaust fumes were
piped into the van.”
65
Soviet inmate transportation van.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=itPPRxy_AQ4&feature=related; the relevant scene starts at
3 min. 21 sec.