The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

230 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
the judges following each and every single one of his tales have exhibited
a mind that is just as inflexible.
3.7.5. From 1970 to 1974 (6 trials)
3.7.5.1. LG Frankfurt/M., Verdict of 19 Mar. 1971
This trial was held against the defendant Karl Stro.[?] for his alleged
involvement in mass shootings and gassings using a gas van while serving
in Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev and other location in the occupied
Soviet Union. As in the case against Heinz Joachim Schl. (see previous
chapter), this defendant was also acquitted due to a “putative
emergency situation” (pp. 144-146).
The verdict’s description of the van and the gassing procedure is rather
terse (pp. 138f.) and reads like a shortened summary of descriptions
given by other German post-war verdicts. According to this, the van
could hold 50 to 70 victims, had a double door at the back of its cargo
box, was lined with sheet metal on the inside, was equipped with several
wooded floor grates, beneath which were pipes sporting small holes
to distribute the exhaust gases, which were piped in via a hose. The van
would kill the victims while stationary within 8 to 10 minutes with the
engine revved up. One specialty of the van described by this court is
that it had “observation slits” in the back doors. If referring to observation
openings at all, other verdicts state that the gassing could be observed
from a window leading from the driver’s cabin to the cargo box.
The procedure itself was, so the verdict, even “more cruel” and “more
terrible” than the executions by shooting which they were meant to replace
(pp. 139, 143).
In addition to this, the verdict claims that the defendant was also indirectly
involved as a guard in killing mentally sick people locked up in
a room, into which the exhaust gasses from a truck were piped via a
hose and through a hole freshly broken through a wall (p. 140; cf. chapter
3.7.4.9.). This reads like a repetition of the story told by Albert
Widmann (see p. 218), which is not to say that it is necessarily untrue.
Since euthanasia killings were performed in Germany proper, it is possible
that similar deeds were committed in various German occupied
territories as well.