The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

216 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
volved. Even Widmann’s interrogator was doubtful, as he asked him
whether such a single experiment would have justified such a journey
(Friedlander/Milton 1993, p. 483). For some incomprehensible reason,
however, he thought he couldn’t take along a bottle or two of carbon
monoxide or a wood gas generator. But taking along 400 kg(!) of explosives
on this long journey was no problem and was also indispensible,
since, after all, the German army in the east had no such thing as
explosives. Maybe they were fighting their war against the Red Army
with hammers and sickles…
Instead of putting his two exhaust hoses to “good” use in Minsk
right away, though, those smart Germans decided to blow up a few
mentally ill people instead using several hundred kilograms of explosives,
even though a few kilograms, properly arranged, would have sufficed
completely. Hence, already the sheer amount of explosives said to
have been used proves beyond doubt that the inventors of this story
didn’t know or didn’t care what they were talking about.
And surprise, surprise: this method turned out to be a bloody mess!
But since not all people had died with the first round of dynamite, they
allegedly blew them up a second time, only to find corpse parts scattered
all over the surrounding trees.
Widmann even attended a conference, during which the results of
this experiment were analyzed (Friedlander/Milton 1993, p. 483):
“During the conference with Nebe we reached the conclusion
that, although killing with explosives ‘occurs with a jerk,’ it was not
feasible due to the comprehensive preparatory works; in addition also
due to the large amount of work in context with filling up the explosion
craters.”
– not to mention picking up the intestines from the tree branches
over there… (similar the description in the verdict, p. 563.)
Who were the mentally sick people here? The alleged victims,
Widmann and his colleagues, the journalists from Der Spiegel, the
prosecutors and judges during this trial who repeated this nonsense, or
the orthodox historians who parrot it without twitching an eye? 115 Or
maybe all of them?
115 Excerpts of it have been quoted by Krausnick/Wilhelm 1981, pp. 548-552, without any
critical comment; the curious reader may read this nonsense online at
www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/ftp.py?people//w/widmann.albert/Sentence-on-
A.Widmann.txt; when quoting Widmann, Kogon et al. 1993, p. 52f., seem to have been
at least dimly aware of the nonsense, hence they mention the explosive experiment only
in passing.