The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

196 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
Castle, 109 and “exact circumstances of which can no longer be determined.”
During that event the defendant “S.” (Alexander Steinke) is
said to have been injured (pp. 240, 259, 326). The court conjectures that
this explosion was identical to the one referred to in the first paragraph
of the Just document (p. 285), even though a “gas van” parked in the
castle’s court yard could not possibly lead to an explosion in the castle’s
basement. The court made this forced parallel between the Just document
and the eyewitness accounts in order to give both a higher degree
of credibility by means of an alleged “convergence of evidence,” which,
however, did not exist here at all. This is also visible from the court’s
claim that, since the number of gas vans mentioned in the Just letter is
the same as is said to have been deployed at Chemno, the Just letter
must be talking about these three Chemno vans. However, the context
clearly shows that the reference to the alleged explosion in Chemno is
set in contrast to the general use of these vans, so the author is talking
about a general deployment of the vans and not just those at Chemno.
Hence, and if considering the dubious nature of the Just document,
whatever the Just document says about the number of vans deployed
cannot really be used to verify the claims of other sources. It might be
that this document’s claim of three deployed gas vans is the original
source of the claim that three gas vans were used in Chemno – or vice
versa. But that would only prove a cross-fertilization from early witnesses
to the document’s creators and then from the document to later
witnesses.
The rest of the verdict consists of lengthy statements about the lives
of the defendants as well as of the accusations and the reasons for the
verdict. All this is of no importance to us, except perhaps of the following
peculiar passage from the reasons given for the rejection of an appeal,
which had been filed by the defendant Ernst Burmeister (p. 350):
“The reading of German translations of protocols written in
Polish about the findings made during an inspection of a so-called
gas van as well as about the interrogation of the – meanwhile executed
– deputy camp commander Piller was not a violation of article
249 of the Penal Law. Since the translations carry the attestation
clause of a sworn court interpreter, whose signature is also certified
by the court, they could be read without that their accuracy had to
109 Regarding Kulmhof/Chemno one has to distinguish between the town as such, where
Poles lived, the separate “castle,” and the “forest camp” some four km apart (Kogon et
al. 1993, p. 75).