The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

160 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
of the van’s make and of the device which allowed switching the gas
from flowing into the box rather than escaping to the outside. He
claimed that two vans operated at Chemno: a larger with a capacity of
about 130 people, and a smaller one for up to 80 to 90 people (all p.
62).
Regarding the duration of the gassing procedure he claims the second
fasted – and unrealistically short – time of all witnesses:
“After four minutes, when [the victims] ceased moaning – the car
was moving in the direction of the crematoria.” (p. 60)
With respect to the unloading procedure urawski writes:
“After opening the car door, 5 to 6 minutes still had to pass before
you could get inside. […] I may mention that bodies found next
to the exhaust pipe were burnt, so that their skin came off.” (p. 62)
Again, since the exhaust gases created by the van were almost immediately
rendered relatively harmless by mixing with the ambient air –
since they were warm or even hot, they would have risen swiftly – there
was no reason to wait with the unloading procedure.
The second sentence is the only reference that I have encountered so
far indicating that the hot exhaust gases had a thermal effect on some of
the victims. Considering that the entering exhaust gasses cannot have
been much hotter than 150°C and that the corpses could not touch it due
to the wooden grate, it is not perceivable how this could have lead to
such intense burnings that the skin peeled off, which requires heat as is
produced in fires only.
The credibility of this witness becomes clearly perceptible when he
talks about the speed of cremation in Chemno’s open earth furnace,
about which writes:
“The corpses were burning fast. Approximately 15 minutes later
they were already burned.” (p. 63)
However, cremating corpses in open incineration devices takes
hours rather than minutes (see Mattogno 2011a, chapter 9).
That there was some cross-fertilization among the witnesses can be
seen from urawski’s testimony about Finkelstein’s unfortunate sister:
“I heard that the worker Finkelstein had to push his sister into
the furnace, who was still alive. Further details on this I do not know
because it happened before my arrival.” (p. 64)
This was only the climax of a theme which urawski had developed
in the three preceding sentences: