The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 109
It goes without saying that the van could not have been airtight in a
strict sense, if exhaust fumes were to be delivered into it. As to the type
of engine used, F.P. Berg wrote (in Rudolf 2003, p. 456):
“Diesel engines were not mentioned [in the documentary]. This is
explained by the fact that all pre-war trucks in the Soviet Union had
only gasoline engines. There were no Diesel engines, since the entire
transportation system in the USSR was based on earlier, western
engine types such as that of Ford Motor Co. More than likely, the
Soviet allegations of [German] gas trucks are truly based on the Soviets’
own mass murder technology to which they simply added Diesel
engines to make them seem more sinister and, most of all, more
German.”
The revelation about Soviet gas vans was confirmed two years later
by Russian writer Michael S. Voslensky, who had been a Russian interpreter
during the Nuremberg Trials, but who was later exiled as a dissident.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union he gained access to the
once secret files of the former Soviet Secret service NKVD. Among
other atrocities found there, he also reports the following (1995, pp.
28f.):
“And one final detail. During World War Two the people in the
Soviet Union were indignant when they learned that the German security
services used retrofitted vans to kill people with exhaust gases.
In the Soviet media these gas vehicles were called ‘soul vendors.’
They really were a diabolic invention, and their inventors were
criminals.
Only this wasn’t a German but a Soviet invention. In the USSR a
truck was constructed whose exhaust gases were piped into the enclosed
cargo box. The inventor was a certain Berg, head of the economic
department of the NKVD for Moscow and the area around
Moscow. Long before the war – in 1936 – one began to use Berg’s
invention. Berg himself was executed in 1939 as a participant at an
alleged ‘conspiracy of NKVD members against the leadership of the
State.’ Of course this plot was an invention. Nevertheless the reader
will hardly be able to feel pity for Berg.”
So when war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union in
June 1941, the stage was set, and the Germans had no idea what was
coming their way.