The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

182 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
It was invented by defendants like Schäfer in an attempt to hide behind
it.
Moreover, if the Saurer Diesel engines couldn’t do what Schäfer and
the verdict claim they did (killing within 15 minutes), if therefore his
testimony isn’t true, then why would he say such things?
The answer to this question lies in what I have stated in chapter 3.4.
about the impossible situation German defendant’s found – and are still
finding – themselves in during postwar trials. Schäfer was the responsible
person for what happened in that camp, as the court correctly established:
“The Semlin Judenlager was under the defendant’s control. This
means that nobody could carry out an order in this camp without his
permission and cooperation.” (p. 166)
So if the “truth” is a lie but is cast in stone, how would you defend
yourself as the one whose signature is under each document, real and
fake? Now read Schäfer’s statement once again. He chose the only path
open to him. It is a lie itself, as it can be assumed that during the war he
mostly did what he thought was right and necessary. The disgust he
claimed to have felt when he read the incoming telegram is itself a lie
serving yet another lie: that he wanted to resist but couldn’t. The only
credible version is that back then he didn’t see a reason to resist. And
this was not so because he was a monster – the court himself stated
eight times that he is a decent man (pp. 159, 161, 163, 168 (2×), 169
(2×), 171) 95 – but because he didn’t see anything monstrous happening.
Although the court claims that its allegations regarding the deployment
of these “gas vans” are partly “based on the defendant’s own
statements” (p. 154), it is unclear which part of it was confirmed by the
defendant in which way, as the other part of the court’s story not backed
up by documents had been contributed by unspecified witnesses, about
whose testimonies we learn nothing from the verdict.
About the “gas van” itself the court stated:
“The special vehicle Saurer was a especially constructed vehicle
for this purpose, with which the exhaust gases of the running engine
were piped into the interior of the closed vehicle by means of a spe-
95 Even more so in a different verdict against Schäfer for his role in the deportation of Cologne’s
Jews, case 403, LG Köln, verdict of 9 July 1954, Rüter et al. 1968ff., vol. 403,
pp. 575-602. During this trial Schäfer claimed he had sincerely thought the Jews would
merely be resettled “like the Red Indians were into some reservation.”