The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

224 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
help Jews avoid being arrest by the Gestapo or to ease their lot after imprisonment
(pp. 19f.)
This raises the question how two philo-Semites could so easily be
converted into mass-murdering automatons once deployed behind the
eastern German frontline in Russia.
According to this verdict, Einsatzkommando 8 is said to have received
a “gas van” in May or June 1942 and is said to have used it until
September of that year (pp. 25, 33f.). 119 The verdict’s description of this
van is terse (p. 33):
“This vehicle was a box-like vehicle similar to a moving truck,
lined with sheet metal on the inside. A hose connected to the exhaust
pipe of the van was used in order to pipe the engine exhaust gases
into the hermetically sealed van […].
When the gas van was filled, the winged doors were closed, and
the driver Schl. drove the van with an accompanying person and under
guards to a tank ditch. Meanwhile in the interior the victims
stood cram-packed next to each other on the fully used loading surface
[…]. After a drive of 10 or 15 minutes the gas van reached the
tank ditch. Here the actual killing operation commenced. The hose
was connected, the engine brought to a certain speed, and thus the
victims were killed within 10 to 15 minutes by means of the exhaust
gases piped into the van.”
It is not clear what the sources for this description are, although it
may be assumed that the Becker and Just documents listed in the verdicts
(p. 7) were of major importance, all the more so since the verdict
itself states (p. 34):
“About the gas van deployments conspicuously few witnesses
made more detailed statements. Even those witnesses who, despite a
general unwillingness to make statements, have stated relatively
much about the shooting actions, became instantly reluctant when
confronted with questions about the gas van actions.”
While the court considered the horrific nature of the gas van deployments
as the main reason, I posit that lack of knowledge about any
technical or operational detail made the witnesses reluctant. Shootings,
after all, happen in every war, so no fantasy or inventions are necessary
to report about them, whether real or invented. Yet those elusive gas
vans are obviously a different matter altogether. In addition, what scant
119
Note that this timeline contradicts the data in the wartime document analyzed in chapter
2.2.8.