The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

146 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
“The gas van was a large truck with a ca. 4 to 5 m long, ca. 2.20
m wide, and 2 m high cargo box. It was lined with sheet metal on the
inside. There was a wooden grate on the floor. There was a hole in
the floor of the cargo box which could be connected to the exhaust
pipe with a flexible metal hose.”
Hence Burmeister’s knowledge had been “streamlined” over the
years to fit the orthodox “truth.”
Another “confession” from the Polish files stems from Walter Piller,
the former deputy commander of the Chemno camp. When he penned
down this text in May 1945, he was a PoW in the custody of the Soviet
Union. So here we have a direct documentary link between the Stalinist
wartime show trial in the Soviet Union and its copycat version in Poland
after the war. Kogon reproduces large parts of this piece of Soviet
war propaganda (ibid., pp. 95-99). Since Mattogno has dealt with
Piller’s “confession” in detail (2011a, chapter 7.1.), I will restrict myself
to the passages dealing with gas vans (ibid., p. 98):
“At the end of this ramp was a closed truck into which the Jews
had to climb. When seventy or ninety people were inside, the doors
were closed and the van drove the two hundred–odd meters to the
crematory ovens. On the way, Laabs, the driver, opened a valve
through which gas flowed. The occupants died within two to three
minutes. The gas used was produced by the gasoline engine.”
If the deputy camp commander didn’t know, who would have? The
story about the valve in the driver’s cabin and the swift execution within
2 to 3 minutes sticks out of the mass of witness accounts like a sore
thumb. Soviet war propaganda, as I said. An interesting aspect is the
gasoline engine, whose exhaust gases would have been suitable to kill,
although hardly within three minutes after opening “the valve.” Considering
that the Soviets insisted on a Diesel engine as a source of the exhaust
gas still during the IMT, it is unlikely that this version came from
there. On the other hand, the German word for gasoline (Benzin) is frequently
used by people unfamiliar with technical issues to describe the
fuel for any kind of internal combustion engine.
The affidavits by various witnesses compiled in preparation of these
trials will be discussed in detail in the next four subchapters.
3.6.2.3. The Interrogation of Bronisaw Falborski
Appendix 9 contains a reproduction of the original as well as a translation
of the “Protocol of the interrogation of a witness,” which took