The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 247
those made regarding other “gas vans,” I will quote Byford’s findings
next. One claim about the Banjica “gas vans” goes as follows:
“In the autumn of 1944, shortly after the liberation of Serbia, the
Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes
Perpetrated by the Nazis and Their Accomplices established a special
task force devoted to the investigation of crimes committed at
Banjica. After a four-month-long enquiry, the task force published a
report, which concluded, among other things, that ‘Hitler’s fascists’
in charge of the camp had at their disposal several specialist vehicles,
in the form of smaller railway wagons, which were hermetically
sealed and had a device that generated gases.” (p. 10)
This is yet another encounter of hermetically sealed wagons, although
on rails for a change, which in lack of an engine is said to have
sported some “device” as a source of poison gas. These wagons are said
to have been “mainly used at Semlin” to kill Jews, but also in Banjica
(ibid.). The commission’s findings are the earliest recordings and compilations
of witness statements, which should render them more reliable
than later collections, yet this description of the “gas vans” – allegedly
used in both camps! – is at odds with the story as it is accepted today.
The indictment against August Meyszner, who was prosecuted in Serbia
shortly after the war, replaced the rail wagon by a “hermetically sealed
truck,” yet maintained “a specially designed device” to produce the gas
(pp. 10f., and once more on p. 11).
There is even an account on cyanide gas chambers:
“[The witness] also mentions the ‘special pastime’ of ‘Dr. Jung,’
[…] which involved ‘releasing cyanide into the gas chambers while
observing its effects on the victims.’” (p. 12)
Some witnesses described the vehicle as looking like a “furniture
removal truck” (p. 23), others as an “armored truck” (pp. 15, 23); according
to one witness it was a “rather large truck with the body made
of wooden planks” (p. 17), “larger than other trucks” (p. 35), whereas
another insisted that it was “made entirely of aluminum, coated in metal
on the inside, so that no air could get inside … instead of windows it
had a grille which allowed gas to get in, gas that was mixed with the
exhaust fumes” (pp. 17, 35). Whereas most witnesses claim that the
vans were meant to kill the prisoners, one witness declared that they
were “only meant to make the inmates unconscious, so that they would
not realize that they were about to be shot,” another that the victims
walked out of the truck very much alive (p. 18).