The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 127
This scandalous case of miscarriage of justice was thoroughly documented
(Wells/Leo 2008) and led to a documentary in the U.S. public
broadcasting channel PBS on Nov. 9, 2010. 70 In it Tom Wells expounded
that the threat of capital punishment hovering over those four innocent
men had a similar effect as the presentation of the torture devices
had during medieval witch trials.
Hence, all it takes to make almost every person confess almost any
crime is to put him or her into a desperate situation which has apparently
only one exit: comply with the wishes of your tormentors. In the long
run, everybody will confess. Physical abuse is no prerequisite. After
endless exhausting interrogations and weeks or months of incarceration,
the prospect of many more months of this and of many years, nay, decades
in prison – or even of the death penalty – makes almost every defendant
willing to say just about anything the interrogator wants to hear
– if only the threatened punishment can be averted or ameliorated:
We know you are guilty. If you don’t confess and cooperate, we’ll
lock you away for the rest of your life – or maybe we will even put
you onto the electric chair.
One must keep in mind that we are dealing here with criminal proceedings
of “every day” crimes in a highly developed and sophisticated
legal system.
How much worse must it have been for the German defendants during
the immediate postwar trials, where the defendants had no recourse
to any efficient defense, where third degree torture was common practice,
and where the death penalty was meted out by the hundreds? And
how bad must it have been for the German defendants during the trials
in West Germany ever since, where disputing the reality of the claims
made by the prosecution posed the risk of an even more severe punishment
for lack of contrition and repentance?
Having said this, I will now turn to the various “confessions” and
witness statements made regarding the “gas vans” without repeating
over and over again the basically worthless nature of such confessions.
70 See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions as well as their website
with literature about this phenomenon at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/theconfessions/false-confessions-and-interrogations.