The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

186 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
But emotional considerations aside, the real absurdity of this statement
is the claim that most of the time the gas van wasn’t even used as
such. Instead, it served as a mere transport vehicle.
Hence I think this is just a defense stratagem by Dr. Schumacher to
downplay the use of gas vans, since he must have felt that he could not
deny them away. On his appeal he was sentenced to four years imprisonment.
Another defendant, referred to only as “P.,” had invented a different
tack to completely avoid punishment for an alleged execution, profiting
from the above claim that the “gas van” usually served merely to
transport inmates to the execution site:
“It cannot be seen from the [execution] order that this time it was
not to be implemented by shooting but instead by gassing. P. subsequently
went to the prison courtyard in the early morning in order to
drive with the loaded inmates to the execution site, as he thought.
When he arrived at the prison courtyard, the last prisoners were
about to be loaded into the gas van, which P. did not recognize as
such; among them was also a woman, and when looking into the gas
van he also recognized another woman and 2 little children of some
1 to 2 and 4 to 5 years of age. The driver closed the truck and drove
it to the gate of the prison courtyard, where he stopped it. P, however,
had entered a car standing on the road in front of the prison
courtyard in order to follow the prisoner truck to the execution site,
as he had done during the execution in April. Yet contrary to his expectation
the prisoner truck did not come. After some 10 to 15
minutes had passed, P. left his car and went to the prison courtyard
in order to find out why the truck was not coming. When he asked
the driver there, he told him that the inmates had been gassed. The
driver, whose name could not been found out, had run the engine on
high speed for several minutes and had led the exhaust gases into
the van’s interior, after he had closed the van’s door and had driven
the truck to the prison’s courtyard gate. Only then did the defendant
P. realize that the special treatment happened by gassing this time
and not by shooting.” (p. 118)
The court believed him. He was acquitted.
3.7.3.2. LG Koblenz, Verdict of 21 May 1963 & 10 Nov. 1965
During this trial eleven defendants were accused for various (mass)
homicides, mainly by shooting and gassing in “gas vans,” during their