The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

214 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
courtyard would never have resulted in dangerous levels of carbon
monoxide.
We need to keep in mind that the KTI wasn’t just some institute.
Remember Q, the quirky inventor of gadgets in the James Bond movies?
That’s the type of people we would expect in such an institute in a
nation that during those years was leading the world technologically.
They knew what they were doing. And they knew that exhaust gases of
idling Diesel engines would not kill anybody. So why did all those doctors
of crime technology testify otherwise?
Whereas there is documentary evidence about the existence of 30
Saurer trucks for some unknown special purpose, no such evidence exists
about the procurement and conversion of the wraithlike Diamond
trucks (or Becker’s Opel Blitz, or Burmeister’s Renault, etc.) – apart
from the mere claims by the defendants that they existed, although they
couldn’t explain who delivered them and who had converted them (p.
621).
The court subsequently summarizes a number of statements by witnesses
claiming to have driven such gas vans. The most striking example
of the statements quoted, and the one revealing the circumstances
under which those witness statement came into being, is the following
(p. 626):
“The witness Gne. committed suicide in the pretrial detention
center Berlin-Moabit on 20 July 1961 by hanging himself. In his unsworn
affidavit which was read by the Jury Court he confirmed having
transferred a Diamond gas van together with Ge. from the Imperial
Security Main Office in Berlin via Riga to Minsk […].”
Hence an unsworn statement by a man who had committed suicide
five years earlier due to the situation that made him write this statement
was used as evidence during this trial.
On the same verdict page we read what two other “voluntary” witnesses
claimed “independently” from one another that they had arranged
for a gas van to be sent back to Berlin for repairs in order to
make sure that the cargo box was airtight! (A Diamond truck in one
case, a Saurer in the other.) The defendant Wentritt denied having received
those trucks in Berlin and having made any such repairs, but the
court didn’t believe him. However, no gas van with an airtight gassing
box could function, so the witness’s story is false, plain and simple.
This nonsensical statement was obviously copied from the 4th para-