The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

156 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
be derived from the fact that the peasant
Andrzej Miszczak, who had lived close to
the Chemno camp, could accurately retell
Srebrnik’s miraculous survival story
(Bednarz 1946c, p. 52f.):
“Apart from urawski maybe also
the Jew Simon Srebrnik was rescued,
who got shot in the back of the head
by the Germans, thus killing him, or
so they thought. But the wound wasn’t
lethal, and Srebrnik survived.”
And here is yet another dramatic
atrocity story by Srebrnik, which I refuse
to believe, but the reader may disagree
with me here:
Illustration 6: Micha
Podchlebnik (Bednarz
1946c, Illustration p. 10)
“Finkelstein, whom I have already mentioned in my testimony,
had to throw his own sister into [the] flames. She regained consciousness
and shouted, ‘You murderer, why are you throwing me
into the furnace? I’m still alive.’”
3.6.2.5. The Interrogation of Micha Podchlebnik
This witness is said to have been the second of three survivors of the
Chemno death camp. In his interrogation of 9 June 1945 before investigative
judge Bednarz, Podchlebnik claims to have merely heard how
the gassing procedure in Chemno was carried out (Podchlebnik 1945):
“Suddenly, I heard a truck door slam followed by an outburst of
screaming and banging on the truck’s walls. Then I heard the engine
start and after six-seven minutes, when the screams fainted and died,
the truck left the palace grounds. Next we were ordered to go to a
large room upstairs.”
Why the persons herded into the van would suddenly start to scream
after the door had been shut is a mystery. Here, too, the gassings are
said to have been committed while the truck was stationary, a procedure
conducive only for vehicles with gasoline engines.
The witness’s next statement is a story he heard from other inmates
who had allegedly unloaded the vans, hence this is from hearsay:
“They removed the corpses from large black vans, in which according
to their accounts, Jews had been poisoned with exhaust
fumes.