The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 221
prison term for it, primarily because right after the war the defendant
had already spent more than three years in Allied custody due to his
mere SS membership (p. 419).
I may mention in passing that during a pre-trial interrogation Enge is
said to have stated that “it was an open secret that Jews were being
gassed with that van” (Manoschek 1998, p. 231). That remark may be
innocuous, but it may also indicate that Enge found out about this secret,
unknown to him at that time, only after the war, when everybody
claimed that the alleged “Nazi genocide against the Jews” was an open
secret. This notion is supported by yet another statement made in 1952
by a head of department in Harald Turner’s wartime military administration
in Serbia, a certain Dr. Walter U. He is said to have stated that
he “found out from ethnic German circles in the spring of 1942 that the
Jewish inmates of the camp were being gassed” (Manoschek 1998, p.
231). If this alleged mass murder with special vehicles had been a fact
indeed, it seems unlikely that a head of department of the German military
administration in Serbia would have found out about that fact only
from rumors spread among civilians in Serbia. It does not seem very
likely either that Dr. U. made up this story in order to hide any firsthand
knowledge he might have had. In that case a flat denial of such
knowledge would have been the most likely approach.
3.7.4.8. LG Dortmund, Verdict of 16 Jan. 1969
The defendant during this trial was Herbert Andorfer, at war’s end
an SS-Obersturmführer who had volunteered for service at the SS
headquarters of an Einsatzgruppe in Serbia. All through the war Andorfer’s
official primary occupation was fighting partisans, initially in
Serbia, but later also in Italy (p. 676). Starting in January 1942, however,
Andorfer was the head of the Semlin Judenlager until it was dissolved
in the summer of 1942 (p. 679). In that function he is said to
have regularly accompanied the “gas van” on its 15 km long way out of
the camp through Belgrade to the burial ground. Since this involved
passing the newly established border between wartime Croatia and Serbia,
Andorfer’s claimed primary duty was to make sure that the van
would not be stopped and searched at that border. The defendant confirmed
these claims, although he claimed that he thought the occupants
of the van had been dead by the time it left the camp (p. 683). He received
a 2½ year prison term for aiding and abetting in mass murder.