The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 113
ted. For example, they relentlessly questioned defendant Nikolai
Pushkarev, extracting from him [alleged] details of mass arrests and
executions of Soviet civilians. Throughout the trial, the judges interjected
comments intended to highlight the appalling nature of the defendants’
acts of collaboration.
In sharp contrast to the groveling lawyers, the State Prosecutor
commanded overwhelming authority during the military tribunals.
His role was that of director; generally theatrical and overbearing,
he set the tone for the trial and orchestrated it. He unyieldingly
dramatized and embellished the role of the accused in the crimes [allegedly]
committed, but at the same time was careful to implicate the
German government and high command, as well as the German officers
in charge of a particular region. […State Prosecutor]
Yachenin described in typically overblown terms the historical importance
of trying the defendants: ‘Today Soviet law will mete out
justice to the traitors, fascist hirelings, and boot-lickers now in the
prisoners’ dock. Tomorrow the court of history, the court of freedom-loving
nations of the world, will pronounce its inexorable verdict
on the bloodthirsty rulers of Hitlerite Germany and all its associates—on
the enemies of mankind who have plunged the world into
the welter of the present war. Not one of them will escape stern retribution!
Blood for blood, death for death!’
[…] the trial in Krasnodar established the model for the thousands
of trials that followed. […] And yet, for the Soviet government,
the primary significance of the tribunals lay not in the punishment of
the thousands of collaborators and German POWs, but in the propaganda
value that could be extracted from them. […]
Coverage of the Krasnodar Trial both within and outside the Soviet
Union amounted to a highly organized public relations campaign.
The highest levels of the Soviet regime, including Stalin himself,
received daily reports on the progress of the trials […]. But it
seems clear that they [the Soviet leaders] saw the trials as an instrument
of propaganda – as a means to publicize German atrocities
[allegedly] committed on Soviet territory.”
This attitude was even confirmed by Joseph Stalin himself, who, as
the probable initiator of those trials, must have known best about their
propagandistic nature. According to one source, Stalin is said to have
confided to an interlocutor in private that this trial was most beneficial