The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 125
claimed span of time (7 to 10 minutes, p. 17) technically impossible,
though. I may add in passing that some witnesses claimed that the vans
looked like motor buses (pp. 9, 17), moving trucks (p. 29) or ordinary
prison vans (p. 50).
It is astounding that, as early as late 1943, the Soviets had prisoners
in their custody who were allegedly well familiar with the “gas vans,”
but that none of these vans had fallen into their hands, although it was
claimed that they had been frequently deployed behind the enemy lines
by the Einsatzgruppen (see the Becker document of 16 May 1942 and
the Just document of 5 June 1942). If these prisoners knew those vans
so well, how come that there are no drawing prepared by them?
Once more the trial transcript repeatedly claims as one of the major
motivations for the alleged gas van murders the clearing of hospitals
(pp. 54, 56-58, 74, 84, 96, 100, 102-108). It is interesting to note that
Jews are not mentioned even once as the victims of these gas van murders
in either trial. They were added into the story only after the war,
when depicting Jews as the unique victims of every German atrocity
had become all the rage.
In a later publication entitled German-Fascist Occupation Troops in
the Stavropol Area: Soviet War Documents, from December 1943 and
published by the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC, we have a description
of the gas van on page 172. According to that description, the
engine was a “Sau[r]er” engine, hence with certainty a Diesel engine.
The connection made here to a company called Saurer is significant,
because it reappears in the infamous letter from Becker to Rauff in Nuremberg
File 501-PS.
3.4. The Psychological Framework of Postwar
Confessions
Much has been said and written about the appalling conditions prevailing
during the trials against alleged war criminals in Germany immediately
after the war and in the ensuing decades as well as about the
many reasons for false or inaccurate confessions and testimonies. Instead
of repeating or summarizing this, I refer the reader to a paper by
Manfred Köhler (2003) and to the pertinent chapter in Rudolf’s Lectures
on the Holocaust (2010, pp. 292-358). Later on, when dealing