The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 241
communist copy-cat trials of cases previously “established” as fact by
West German courts.
Having said all this, I will now briefly summarize and analyze passages
of these verdicts strictly pertinent to our topic. (In contrast to the
West German trials, the East German trial cases were numbered antichronistically
by Rüter et al., so here we start with the latest and proceed
to the earliest.)
3.8.2. LG Berlin, Verdict of 14 Aug. 1978
This case involves Herbert H. Paland, a former member of the German
secret military police unit 570, who is said to have also been involved
in the killing of Soviet partisans by means of a “gas van” in Mogilev
in June 1944 (see the parallel West German case held four years
earlier as described in chapter 3.7.5.5.).
The gas van is described as follows (p. 500):
“On orders by MP commissar Rie. a truck was converted into a
gas van. The closed cargo box was lined with sheet metal on the outside
[sic] and thus airtight. It had a double door at the rear end. By
means of a special construction exhaust gases of the engine could be
piped into the interior of the cargo box. The gases entered from an
opening near the driver’s cabin.”
According to this verdict, not four but five persons were gassed in a
truck, which also sported benches along the side wall for the victims to
sit on. The gassing took place during a 2 to 3 km transit through Mogilev,
i.e. within some 5 minutes (p. 500).
The “new” features here are: an outside lining, a gas inlet near the
driver’s cabin (probably so the driver can operate it from his cabin?),
and benches for the victims to sit on. The theme of an outside lining
may stem from a Jewish propaganda booklet published in the U.S. in
1943 entitled “The Black Book of Polish Jewry,” which describes the
gas vans in that way, although expressly without any seats (and with a
gas apparatus inside the driver’s cabin; Apenszlak 1943, pp. 115-118).
This story was in turn based on the so-called “Szlamek Report,” a diary
allegedly written by one of the Jews working the Chemno camp. This
unknown “Szlamek” is said to have worked there for only two weeks in
January 1942 before he managed to escape. His testimony has also been
reproduced by Sakowska (1993, see pp. 162f., 166 for the relevant passages).
Carlo Mattogno has thoroughly scrutinized the Szlamek Report,
to which I refer the reader (2011a, chapters 6 & 16).