The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 147
place on 11 June 1945 in Koo (Poland). 77 In it Falborski claimed to
have repaired a truck he considered to have been a “gas van.” He described
it with no great details as a black truck with a cuboid cargo box.
He stated that he “had the impression that there were only two” of these
trucks driving forth and back between the Chemno castle and a forest
where, according to other witnesses, the mass graves of the gassing victims
are said to have been located.
Right after this statement Falborski says:
“Three times I saw a converted moving truck van which is currently
in the courtyard of the former ‘Ostrowski’ company. Once I
had already seen this vehicle in the forest, the second time on the
road and the third time when it was just coming out of the courtyard
of the Chemno castle.”
With this Falborski suggest that the Ostrowski Magirus was either
identical with one of the two trucks mentioned by himself which were
allegedly shuttling forth and back from the castle to the forest, or he
implies that this moving truck was a third vehicle repeatedly making the
same tour. At any rate, this links this vehicle to the alleged gassings in
the eyes of this witness.
Since the Polish investigation commission came to the conclusion
that this truck had indeed been nothing else but an innocuous moving
truck (see chapter 2.1.), it can therefore be stated with certainty that the
witness Bronisaw Falborski did see nothing else but a harmless moving
truck driving about, and subsequently also that the other trucks driving
along the same route were on similarly innocuous missions.
So how do we assess Falborski’s description of the repairs he claims
to have made on an exhaust system of a truck with apparently homicidal
features? The answer to this question lies hidden in the witness’s testimony.
If we carefully analyze what he tells us about the exhaust system
he claims to have repaired, it turns out to be nonsensical:
a) Large trucks do not have tail pipes reaching all the way to the end
of their cargo compartment. Their exhaust pipes exit either overhead of
the driver’s cabin or on the left side behind the driver’s cabin. The reason
for this is that the engines of such trucks are always in front of or
underneath the driver’s cabin, and adding useless five meters of exhaust
pipe to reach the truck’s end would be a crazy waste of material and
would be asking for trouble.
77
Copy and German translation in ZStL ref. 203 AR-Z 69/59, special binder A; also in
Bednarz 1946c, pp. 28f.