The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 177
little camp of Bornhagen was the first to receive one, nor is such a claim
backed up by anything.
Despite the collective length of these two verdicts and their associated
appeal decisions, little more can be gleaned from them for the present
technical purpose. The court itself stated that many testimonies
were presented to the court only in writing, since most witnesses had
emigrated from Germany at the time of the trial and were therefore unable
to testify in person. Since the various testimonies about the defendant’s
alleged crimes were riddled with contradictions, impossibilities
and “untrue statements,” the court moreover stated:
“These contradictions about the descriptions of the incidents are
so huge and affect the decisive events so much that no findings could
be made which would suffice for a conviction.” (p. 205)
Many such “untrue statements” were never even detected by the
court. For instance, one witness implied that mass murder with gas vans
had occurred as early as 1940 (p. 228), which indicates that just about
any van or truck picking up inmates was a target for being named a “gas
van” by some witness.
So how could the court be so sure that the alleged mass murders
with a gas van took place in the first place? I quote:
“Finally it has become generally known from the war crimes tribunals
that countless Jews had been exterminated in such a way.”
(p. 234)
That the historical “truth” had been cast in stone at the very outset of
this trial is also hinted at by the verdict of the Mannheim Upper District
Court (Oberlandesgericht). After the first verdict had been handed
down on 8 Nov. 1949 by the LG Stuttgart, the defendant filed an appeal
with the Mannheim Upper District Court, in which he requested, among
other things, that the LG Stuttgart also rule about the alleged mass murder
with gas vans. In its decision the Mannheim court rejected this request,
stating among other reasons also (p. 244):
“An acquittal is legally out of the question already because the
authorization by the military government does not extend to the sentencing
of this case under the aspect of crimes against humanity.”
This indicates that the German postwar trials in such cases were indeed
little more than extensions of the Allied postwar trials.