The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

268 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
4.3. A Hypothesis on the Origin of “Gas Van” Claims
If it is true that it is impossible to operate a “gas van” as described
by piping exhaust gases into a hermetically sealed cargo box, why did
so many witnesses claim or even insist that the cargo box was indeed
sealed? How could the witnesses en masse claim something that cannot
be true?
Killing with poisonous gases comes with the natural assumption that
the gases thusly used must be very dangerous, indeed. It is therefore only
logical to assume that those outside the gassing locale who are performing
the gassing or who are mere bystanders need protection from
this very poison, which is achieved by hermetically sealing the gassing
locale. This assumption is reasonable for the use of Zyklon B and other
poisonous gases, and it is correct also for the use of carbon monoxide in
gas chambers contained within closed buildings, where the operators
themselves are inside the same building, although in different adjacent
rooms.
The situation is of course different for gassings with carbon monoxide
in “gas vans” or freestanding rooms, as is said to have been the case
in the Action Reinhardt camps. Here any escaping carbon monoxide
would have quickly been diluted by the surrounding air and hence rendered
harmless.
It is an irrefutable fact, though, that the sheer amount of gas produced
by the engines rendered those claimed gassing technically different
from those were only a minute amount of gas is said to have been
applied once, as in the case of Zyklon B. Neither the mobile nor the stationary
CO gas chambers could have been hermetically sealed (although
witnesses claimed sealed gas chambers also for the stationary kind 126 ).
It may therefore be surmised that the witnesses added to their story
not something they had observed but what they assumed due to prevailing
clichés and fantasies: poison gas must be sealed off hermetically. It
also sounds more dramatic, as the poison gas appears more dangerous
than a substance that can escape the chamber without harming anyone.
If it is moreover a fact that the Germans all over Europe used vans
and trucks fueled with wood gas generators, how come that nobody ever
claimed that their generator gas was used for mass murder? The answer
to this question may also shed light on the origin of the “gas van”
126 See Mattogno 2004, Graf/Kues/Mattogno 2010 and Graf/Mattogno 2003 for details.