The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 257
A frequent claim made in witness accounts
which is not listed here is that the “gas vans”
had a hermetically sealed or airtight cargo box
(see e.g. The People’s Verdict 1944, pp. 8, 17,
50, 65, 85, 89, 110; Kogon et al. 1993, pp. 53,
57, 59; Beer 1987, p. 403; LG Stuttgart, 8 Nov.
1949, p. 239; LG Wiesbaden, 24 Mar. 1952, p.
354; LG Karlsruhe, 20 Dec. 1961, p. 100; LG
Bonn, 30 Mar. 1963, pp. 230f., 277; LG Koblenz,
21 May 1963, p. 194; LG Frankfurt/M.,
12 Mar. 1966, p. 344; LG Hannover, 7 June
1966, pp. 616, 619; LG Stuttgart, 15 Sep.
1967, p. 565; LG Kiel, 11 Apr. 1969, p. 33; LG
München I, 15 Nov. 1974, p. 287; LG Berlin,
14 Aug. 1978, p. 500; LG München I, 19 Dec. 1980, p. 251; interestingly,
the verdict by LG Darmstadt, 18 Apr. 1969, pp. 93f., speaks both of
an airtight and a merely “almost” airtight cargo box).
The fact that many witnesses and court verdicts
speak of a truck resembling a moving van
could be interpreted as “converging evidence”
for the truth of such claims. However, at closer
inspection the opposite turns out to be true.
Moving vans have two distinct features: First
the area above the driver’s cabin is also used a
storage space (see Illustrations 12 to 17 in Appendix
1). Second, in order to maximize the
space available for the storage of furniture, the
cargo box was always considerably higher than
wide, often even higher than average trucks:
2.50 m and more.
In contrast to this, the thirty cargo boxes ordered
from the Gaubschat Company most definitely
did not include the space over the driver’s
cabin and were only 1.70 m high at a
Illustration 7:
Schematic drawing
of rear view of a
Saurer truck with
Gaubschat cargo
box, 2.30 m wide,
1.70 m high.
Illustration 8:
Schematic drawing
of rear view of the
same truck with
furniture cargo box,
2.30 m wide, 2.70
m high.
length of 5.80 m. With an assumed width of some 2.30 m, the Saurer
trucks with Gaubschat cargo boxes would have looked from the rear
like Illustration 7, whereas a moving van’s rear view would have looked
like Illustration 8. In Illustrations 9f. I have juxtaposed the side view of
a Gaubschat Saurer (my drawing) and a hypothetical Saurer moving