The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 179
of this NMT trial. Rübe’s affidavit, among other things, sealed
Strauch’s fate.
Although Rübe was released from Allied custody after signing his
affidavit, it bought him freedom only for a short while. Still before the
creation of the Federal Republic of Germany he was arrested by “German”
authorities and put on trial himself. Although the verdict against
him mentions his involvement in the above-mentioned alleged execution
of Jews from the Sluzk ghetto (pp. 12, 36), this was not the focus of
the trial, as Rübe had successfully claimed to have been a mere spectator
of this event. The focus of this German trial was Rübe’s alleged involvement
during the elimination of the Minsk ghetto, where numerous
witnesses claimed that he had committed cruelties and murdered some
of the ghetto’s occupants.
Since Rübe had helped with his affidavit for the NMT to cast the official
version into stone, he had no line of defense left during his own
trial. It is again important to note that this court as well made ample use
of testimonies from hearsay and presented written statements by witnesses
who never appeared on trial. Their statements had been taken
much earlier and sometimes even during the so-called “Spruchkammer”
trials (pp. 23f.), which were Allied postwar denazification tribunals
with no legal basis and no due process. It is in this context that a gas
van is mentioned (ibid.). Except for the amount of people allegedly
forced into this vehicle (50 to 80, p. 24), no details are given.
Rübe’s defense in this context is very interesting. He admitted the
existence of one such van, yet claims that the “gas pipe had been defective,
as a result of which the van had never been used” (p. 27). Since the
court could not establish that Rübe had ever been involved in the use of
such a van, he was acquitted of the according charge.
All we can learn from this case is that there is a strict historical and
legal continuity between the Allied postwar tribunals and the subsequent
(West) German postwar trials, where the conditions may have
been more humane, but a defense regarding gas van (and other) claims
was possible only when accepting the main line of the orthodox version
of history.
3.7.2.3. LG Wiesbaden, Verdict of 24 Mar. 1952
This trial is interesting, as it ended with an acquittal for all five defendants
who had been accused of wittingly causing the death of numerous
individuals by transferring them from regular prisons to concen-