The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 231
3.7.5.2. LG München I, Verdict of 22 Mar. 1972
This trial had three defendants, given in the verdict only with the
first three letters of their last names: Karl Fin.[?], Siegfried
Schu.[chardt], and Theodor Lip.[?] They received 4½, 5 and 3 years, respectively,
for their alleged involvement in the mass murder by shooting
and gassing in a gas van in numerous locations of the occupied Soviet
Union as members of Einsatzkommando 10b (pp. 63-66).
This verdict’s description of the gas van allegedly used and the gassing
procedure is very short as well (p. 75):
“This gas van was a truck with an enclosed cargo box resembling
a moving truck, whose rear doors could not be opened from
the inside. Exhaust gases were piped into the interior during transit,
and thus the human beings were killed.”
On the same page we also find this quite astounding statement:
“As a result of complaints from members of the command, the
defendant Schu. later refused to use the gas vans again, on the
grounds that it was impossible to persuade the people [the members
of the command] to carry out such a task.”
Such a statement does not only undermine any defendants’ attempt
to claim that refusing to cooperate in these killings was threatened with
punishment, but it also undermines the claim of orthodox historians that
the vans were introduced to alleviate the stress of German soldiers
asked to shoot people.
3.7.5.3. LG München I, Verdict of 14 July 1972
This trial was against three defendants (Kurt Tri.[?], Friedrich
Sev.[?], Heinrich Gö.[?]), each of whom received a four year prison
term for adding and abetting in mass murder ostensibly committed
while a member of Einsatkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D in southern
Ukraine. For the present study only the case of Dr. med. Heinrich
Gö. is relevant, as he was accused of ordering the asphyxiation of 214
sick children residing at a children hospital in Eysk (Jeissk in the verdict)
in October 1942 by means of a gas van.
The verdict’s description of the gas van is again rather short and
reads as follows (p. 408):
“The ‘gas van’ or – as the Russians called it – the ‘soul killer’
was a large truck with a cargo box. It had false windows painted on
the outside walls, and a large double door at the back with which the
cargo compartment could be closed. The cargo box was lined with