The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 207
means clear, though, whether these vehicles served the purpose of mass
murder. They may just as well have been simple producer gas vans.
3.7.4.5. LG Hannover, Verdict of 7 June 1966
This trial is probably the most interesting from the point of view of
our research topic, because the defendants are said to have been the individuals
in charge of designing and building the “gas vans:” August
Becker, the author of the infamous Becker letter, Friedrich Pradel,
whose signature or initials can be found on some of the documents investigated
here, and Harry Wentritt. Since August Becker had suffered
several strokes by 1966, he was declared unfit for trial and incarceration
(see chapter 3.7.3.3.). The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel (1966)
described Pradel’s case as follows:
“The old Sturmbannführer’s eyes are welling up. ‘Your Honor’,
he sobs, ‘I really have no knowledge about exterminations of Jews.’
The former SS man currently sitting in the dock of the Jury Court
in Hanover is accused of aiding in 6,000 cases of murder. According
to the indictment, Friedrich Pradel, 65, once head of the motor vehicle
department II D 3a of the Imperial Security Main Office
(Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), is said to have arranged for the
construction of at least 13 mobile gas chambers and to have sent
them from Berlin to their deployment in the east.
Also on trial is the man who mounted the killing utensils into the
gas vans as the head of the RSHA car repair shop: the former SS-
Untersturmführer Harry Wentritt, 63. […]
Pradel claims not to have known that the ‘97,000’ who were systematically
killed without a verdict were Jews: ‘I thought persons
sentenced to death would be executed in the vans – that is to say
captured partisans and maybe also soldiers of enemy armies.’ And
whiningly enraged: ‘But Jews –, no, never.’
Pradel could also not remember the telegrams in which SD
Einsatzgruppen, with explicit reference to ‘new transports of Jews,’
requested more gas vans from his department or – as the commander
of the security police in Minsk did on 15 June 1942 – requested
‘to also send ten [correct: 20] exhaust hoses, since the existing ones
are already leaking.’
But Pradel can at least remember the purpose of the gas vans: ‘It
was meant to be a more humane kind of execution,’ he says reluc-