The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 219
passages of the Hannover verdict. Regarding an analysis of this description
I refer the reader therefore to the previous chapter.
An article by the local newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten 117 quotes
the witness Paul Werner, a wartime superior of Widmann, as having
“consciously heard” about the “gas vans” only after the end of the war,
just like Widmann insisted that during the war he never heard anything
about Jews being killed in gas vans, although he admitted to have
known about their existence. He claims to have thought that this was
just an extension of the euthanasia action. He also declared to have performed
gas analyses of the air inside such a “gas van” in action. The
verdict writes about this (pp. 567f.):
“In the spring of 1942, possibly already in January 1942, the defendant,
who by then knew about earlier gas analyses, and his
coworkers received the order from Dr. Heess to once more perform
measurements and gas analyses at a gas van located in the courtyard.
[…] The purpose of these gas analyses was to either determine
the time needed to obtain an absolutely lethal CO content of 1% in
the cargo box, or whether an explosive gas mixture develops inside
the van due to the exhaust gases piped into it (because such a van
had exploded in Kulmhof in spring of 1942). Due to the measurements
and gas analyses performed by the KTI and the technical
works of the automotive department D 3a, the first Saurer vehicles
were operable around January 1942.”
Here we have another court reference to the explosion in
Kulmhof/Chemno, this time even with cause given: the concentration
of carbon monoxide inside the cargo box had allegedly risen beyond the
lower explosion limit of 12%, although this value is unachievable with
Diesel engines and extremely unlikely with gasoline engines. Also, if
Widmann was indeed ordered to do measurements as early as January
1942, the Chemno explosion must have occurred at the beginning of
January 1942 at the latest, and not in May as the Bonn court had
claimed.
Widman, by the way, gave a different reason for taking gas samples
inside a standing “gas van” with an idling Diesel engine: he claims that
this was made in order to find out when a lethal content of 1% carbon
monoxide in the air was reached (Beer 1987, p. 411) in order to ensure
a swift execution. With exhaust gases from an idling Diesel engine,
117 Newspaper article of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten posted at www.landesarchivbw.de/stal/grafeneck/grafeneck08b.htm
(probably 16 March 1967).