The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

270 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
d) The danger of the extremely poisonous wood gas required special
caution, which was emblazoned on labels affixed to the device itself.
So imagine the following scene observed by a later “witness” who
has never heard of producer gas vehicles: An SS man goes to the back
of his van’s cabin and starts manipulating a device equipped with skulls
and bones signs, “Poison!” and “Danger!” words. This device is directly
attached to the van’s cargo box. A pipe is leading from the engine to
bottom of that device (or vice versa, but how could the witness know
which way the gas flowed?).
Et voilà: you have a “gas van witness.”
There are, of course, other vehicular occurrences which might have
contributed to the rumor about gas vans. In chapter 2.2.6. I elaborated
on the probable purpose of the special vehicles ordered by the RSHA
and manufactured by the Gaubschat Company. If my hypothesis is correct
that they were vans to transport corpses, then numerous witnesses
must have seen how these corpses were eventually unloaded. It seems
almost inevitable that at least some of these witnesses must have
thought or later concluded from stories spread by rumors, by the media,
by the judiciary and by historiography, that what they had experienced
was the last step of a gas van murder.
German disinfestation vehicles as mentioned in chapter 2.4. may
have added to the rumor, in particular if some of them used their own
hot exhaust gases for hot air disinfestation by piping them into their disinfestation
compartment via a metal hose.
Although it is possible that the Soviet gas vans mentioned in chapter
3.2.1. may have inspired some Soviet official to invent stories about
German “gas vans,” I do not believe that the general populace in the
Soviet territories temporarily occupied by the Germans had any
knowledge about these Soviet vans. Hence I consider their existence not
sufficient to explain why so many witnesses testified to their existence
in German hands, all the more so since some of the witnesses had no
connection to the Soviet territories to begin with.