The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 189
show up in any verdict of that time. Wikipedia also claims that he was
released from prison on 15 July 1960 due to a stroke he had suffered,
which sounds probable, as he suffered more strokes later on. Yet at that
time he was probably only in investigative custody. When Becker was
called as a witness during a later trial against defendants accused of
having participated in the Third Reich’s euthanasia program, Becker’s
mental health had deteriorated to such a degree that he was not even capable
of testifying as a witness, as he could “hardly get a reasonable
sentence together,” as the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported
(1967b).
The quality of Becker’s statements of 1960 can be derived from the
interrogation protocol prepared on occasion of Becker’s interrogation of
26 March 1960, excerpts of which have been published by
Klee/Dreßen/Rieß (1991), from which I will subsequently quote several
sentences, followed by my comments (pp. 69-71): 102
“I was to pay particular attention to the mechanical functioning
of these vans. I would like to mention that there were two types of
gas vans in operation: the Opel-Blitz, weighing 3.5 tonnes, and the
large Saurerwagen, which as far as I know, weighed 7 tonnes.” (p.
69)
If true, this sets the record straight about the alleged Diamond trucks
used as gas vans, or any other make or model. According to this, Becker
must really have known all the technical details of these gas vans. Unfortunately
he was never asked to reveal any details about them during
his many interrogations.
“I thus left by train on 5 or 6 January 1942 traveling via Cracow
and Fastov to Nikolayev. From there I flew in the Reichsführer’s
plane to Simferopol in the Crimea. […] I reported to the head of
Einsatzgruppe D, Otto Ohlendorf, sometime in January. I remained
with this group until the beginning of April 1942 and then visited
each Einsatzgruppe.” (p. 70)
Sure, little Becker fetches Heinrich Himmler’s personal plane, which
just happened to wait for him in the world metropolis of Nikolayev, and
from there he flies around behind the Russian front inspecting the gas
vans of the various Einsatzguppen.
102 Tellingly; the German Wikipedia webpage quoting excerpts from this testimony does not
quote any of these passages, except for the last one, see
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Becker_(Chemiker).