The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

150 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
‘Those who couldn’t walk, were slain?’
‘Yes, those who’d fallen.’
‘Where did this happen?’
‘The Jews were collected in the Koo synagogue. Then they were
herded to the station, where the narrow-gauge railroad went to
Chemno.’
‘It happened to all the Jews in the area, not just in Koo?’
‘Absolutely. Everywhere. Jews were also murdered in the forests
near Kalisz, not far from here.’ […]
‘Was the road between Chemno, the village and the woods
where the pits were asphalted as it is now?’
‘The road was narrower then, but it was asphalted.’
‘How many feet were the pits from the road?’
‘They were around 1,600 feet, maybe 1,900 or 2,000 feet away.
So even from the road, you couldn’t see them.’
‘How fast did the vans go?’
‘At moderate speed, kind of slow. It was a calculated speed because
they had to kill the people inside on the way. When they went
too fast, the people weren’t quite dead on arrival in the woods. By
going slower, they had time to kill the people inside. Once a van
skidded on a curve. Half an hour later, I arrived at the hut of a forest
warden named Sendjak. [79] He told me: ‘Too bad you were late.
You could have seen a van that skidded. The rear of the van opened,
and the Jews fell out on the road. They were still alive. Seeing those
Jews crawling, a Gestapo man took out his revolver and shot them.
He finished them all off. Then they brought Jews who were working
in the woods. They righted the van, and put the bodies back inside.’”
30 some odd years after the war Falborski had obviously enhanced
his memory with what he had heard since the war’s end. I also wonder
if by then Falborski had knowledge about the Becker document talking
about the gas vans skidding about.
Stories from hearsay related some forty years after the alleged event
are notoriously unreliable. In order to proof this, let’s imagine this scene
described in detail by Falborski at the end of the above quote. According
to orthodox historiography, between 50 and 100 people were
crammed into these trucks. The truck was operated by one or two men,
and it was only occasionally accompanied by a car with one or two
79 In 1945 his name had been Maj, see Appendix 9.