The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

236 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
3.7.6. From 1975 to now (1 trial)
3.7.6.1. LG München I, Verdict of 19 Dec. 1980
This trial was conducted against the defendant Dr. Kurt Christmann,
head of Einsatzkommando 10a within Einsatzgruppe D. He has been
accused of mass gassing of Soviet partisans, among them children,
while stationed in Krasnodar. Christmann was also the (absent) chief
villain during the Soviet Krasnodar show trial of 1943 (People’s Verdict,
1944, pp. 14, 17f., 21). With this, the stage was set for a repetition
of this show trial, for which numerous Soviet witnesses testified who
had been “screened” by the Soviet secret service KGB before their appearance
in court (p. 271). Köhler (2003, p. 114) has highlighted the
manipulative character of these KGB screenings, which became a public
notoriety during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.
Although the defendant claimed that his trial was yet another communist
setup (p. 270), the court tried to dispel this claim by arguing that
the various testimonies of Soviet as well as German witnesses made
“independently” from each other over a period of several decades could
not possibly have been orchestrated by the Soviet authorities (pp. 271-
274). Even though that would be true regarding details of such testimonies
– which, however, could not possibly be expected to be congruent
anymore after almost four decades had passed – the conspicuous feature
of most of those testimonies is actually there general lack of details. For
the most part the witnesses merely repeated war time propaganda
claims and postwar mass media clichés and pinned them on which ever
defendant they were let loose against.
The verdict describes the “gas van” as follows (p. 251):
“As an external identification sign a card-game heart was painted
on the truck according to the designation of Einsatzgruppe
‘10a.’ It was a 6 ton truck with a gasoline engine and a closed cargo
box with a loading surface of at least 2 × 4 m. It was lined with
sheet metal on the inside, had no seats, no separating walls and was
locked hermetically from the outside air with a winged door at the
back. As camouflage both toward the local populace as well as toward
the victims who had to enter the truck, false windows and
closed curtains were painted on the left- and right-hand outer side of
the cargo box, which, however, was pitch-black dark on the inside
with the doors closed. By means of a lever the driver could pipe the