The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 249
the uncorroborated nature of survivors’ accounts. Instead, the story
of the gas van was accepted unquestioningly and perpetuated, in a
matter-of-fact way, as an indisputable fact about Banjica and an important
entry in the catalogue of heinous crimes perpetrated there by
the ‘Fascists and their accomplices.’” (p. 19)
It goes without saying that this is true for almost the entire orthodox
historiography on the Holocaust. Byford elaborates further:
“In fact, the approach [of the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission]
to evidence was determined primarily by political concerns.
Given that the findings were to be used to justify Yugoslavia’s claim
for reparations, the main criteria in the selection and evaluation of
evidence was whether or not it strengthened the Yugoslav case. This
meant not only that casualty figures were routinely exaggerated
[…], but also that there was no real willingness to differentiate verifiable
fact from rumor, at least not when rumors were more ‘convenient’
than material evidence.” (p. 25)
Byford’s assessment is similar with respect to the Historical Archive
of Belgrade’s activities of compiling witness statements in later years,
which wasn’t interested in witness statements as such but in “details of
events that were compatible with the established ideological agenda” of
heroizing the Yugoslav resistance fighters (p. 29).
Even though portraying oneself as a hero and having financial consideration
may have played a role, this explanation falls short of the
complex motivations of the victors of World War II, which, next to
simple lust for revenge and justifying one’s own deeds, also included
the determination to once and for all break the neck of an enemy – politically,
economically, demographically, and psychologically – who, in
the victors’ eyes, had twice within 30 years thrown the entire world into
an abyss of mass butchery and mass murder. Or to put it succinctly:
If we had finished the job after World War I, Auschwitz would
never have happened. So let’s finish it now!
Hence those Holocaust claims were welcome as a justification to
prepare the world psychologically to finish the job: genocide against the
German people. That was the general mood between 1942 and late
1947, which saw a huge surge of mass murder and ethnic cleansing
against anything German. Yugoslavia was no exception from this, as
this country ethnically cleansed its German minority with utmost brutality
after the war. But even after this anti-German genocidal hysteria had
subsided, the world still needed – and is still in need for – a scapegoat