The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 267
Be that as it may, when reading the witness statements, it is striking
that according to many of them the “gas vans” were equipped with a
hermetically sealable cargo box. Since this feature renders a long-term
operation of the engine impossible or would lead to the destruction of
the cargo box, and because there is no way around this physical reality,
we are confronted with a problem.
It is, on the other hand, strange that to my knowledge only one witness
ever uttered a word about the effects of the exhaust gases’ high
temperature (see chapter 1.3.1.). It was the Polish witness Mieczysaw
urawski who stated: “I may mention that bodies found next to the exhaust
pipe were burnt” (Bednarz 1946c, p. 62).
Hence, on top of the potentially noxious content of the exhaust gases,
the cargo box would also have been a huge cooker, in which those
doomed to die would have been exposed to the hot exhaust gases,
which by itself would have led to their eventual, although very slow
demise. The consequences of this thermal effect would have been visible
at the corpses and would have increased the horror of the spectacle
presenting itself to the commandos ordered to drag the corpses out of
the cargo box after the door had been opened. We note that the analyzed
documents remain silent about this point as well.
After critically reviewing witness claims about the murder of non-
Jewish Serbs with gas vans in wartime Serbia, orthodox historian
Byford rejected them as unconvincing (see chapter 4.1.).
After scrutinizing the entire plethora of evidence about the remaining
gas van claims, we cannot but join Byford in his verdict.
Mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Michel de Boüard, himself an inmate
of the Mauthausen concentration camp during the war, stated the following
about the quality of survivor stories, which is just as true regarding
the gas vans (Lebailly 1988):
“I am haunted by the thought that in 100 years or even 50 years
the historians will question themselves on this particular aspect of
the Second World War which is the concentration camp system and
what they will find out. The record is rotten to the core. On one hand
a considerable amount of fantasies, inaccuracies, obstinately repeated
(in particular concerning numbers), heterogeneous mixtures,
and generalizations and, on the other hand, very dry critical [revisionist]
studies that demonstrate the inanity of those exaggerations.”