The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

122 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
ler – had ordered that there should be no further open talk about the
gas van on pain of arraignment for trial by a special court of S.S.
Prosecutor: Have you yourself ever seen a gas van?
Heinisch: Yes, I saw one in the town of Rovno, but not in action.
Prosecutor: Did you take part in the extermination of people by
means of gas vans?
Heinisch: No, I did not.
Prosecutor: Tell the Court in detail about your talk with Somann.
Heinisch: Somann told me that death caused by gas poisoning
was painless and more humane. He said that in the gas van death
was very quick, but actually death came not in twelve seconds but
much more slowly and was accompanied by great pain.
Somann told me about the camp in Auschwitz in Germany where
the gassing of prisoners was also carried out. The people were told
that they were to be transferred elsewhere, and foreign workers
were told that they would be repatriated and were sent under this
pretext to bath-houses. Those who were to be executed first entered
a place with a signboard with ‘Disinfection’ on it and there they undressed
the men separately from women and children. Then they
were ordered to proceed to another place with a signboard ‘Bath.’
While the people were washing themselves special valves were
opened to let in the gas which caused their death. Then the dead
people were burned in special furnaces in which about 200 bodies
could be burned simultaneously.
Prosecutor: Did Somann tell you on whose instructions execution
by gas poisoning was introduced?
Heinisch: Somann told me that in the autumn of 1942 a conference
took place between Hitler, Himmler, and S.D. Chief Kaltenbrunner,
at which it was decided to perform executions by means
of gas poisoning.” (pp. 89f.)
This statement proves that a lie becomes unstable the more a liar
talks about it. This statement is so full of preposterous claims that it
should make every historian blush. Not only have the Soviets never presented
any evidence about the gas vans which had fallen into their
hands, but the alleged Hitler order is a complete invention as well, of
which no trace exists.
How anyone could have claimed that the execution with exhaust
gases would take only a few seconds is beyond me. But the best part is
actually what Heinisch is telling about gassings in Auschwitz, the black