The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

226 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
A possible point in case here is the witness referred to by the verdict
merely as “Schl.” He was the main witness for the “gas van” mass murders,
as he testified extendedly about his alleged activities as the driver
of the gas van deployed at Einsatzkommando 8 (pp. 34, 39 56-58).
Since Schl.’s detailed confessions amounted to a massive selfincrimination
leading to his own indictment and trial in front of the
same court a little while later (see chapter 3.7.4.11.), the court interpreted
his confession as credible (p. 34). Never mind the fact that, according
to the witness Graalfs, during another trial Schl. had admitted while
testifying in court that he did not know whether he was telling “the truth
or poetry” and that at that point he tried to distance himself from the
matter (p. 58).
It was convenient for the court that almost all witnesses testifying
during this trial had themselves been members of the German armed
forces in one way or other, which somehow in the eyes of the German
judiciary and the public at large renders their statements credible only if
they are self-incriminating. Hence the judges could at will declare this
or that statement as plausible or implausible, depending on the need to
come to the expected, politically correct verdict.
The case of the witness “Pri.” undergirds this notion. Pri. had
claimed that at one point all the inmates of the Mogilev prison were
shot because some of them had been diagnosed with typhus. Apparently
this claim had not been bandied about sufficiently yet, so none of the
defendants or other witnesses could “remember” such an event, hence
the court acquitted the defendants in this regard (p. 74). Yet instead of
concluding that Pri. had probably either made up the event or was no
longer capable of distinguishing between fact and rumor and thus had to
be rejected as an unreliable witness, the court followed Pri.’s second
wild story about the summary execution of the inmates of an insane
asylum with engine exhaust gases, just because the submissive defendant
Ha. had admitted his involvement in this event (pp. 74f.).
3.7.4.10. LG Darmstadt, Verdict of 18 Apr. 1969 & 23 Dec. 1971
This trial was held against three defendants, two of which were indicted
exclusively for their participation in mass shootings (Theodor L.
Chri[?].[?], Karl Ernst R. Kre[?].), which is of no relevance to the present
investigation. These two defendants were acquitted in 1969,
whereas the third, Wilhelm Findeisen, was retried and sentenced to 37
months imprisonment for his involvement in mass gassings as the driver