The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

298 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
c) Giving initials of the author (Rf) and of the secretary (Hb) was not
practiced on any of the other RSHA letters in this file.
d) The letter’s serial no. “167/42g” is handwritten, not typed.
e) No location (Berlin) is given
f) The year is only types as “2” instead of “1942”
g) The paragraph starting with “2.)” was typed (squeezed in over the
“I.A.” line) after the paper had been removed from the machine, resulting
in it being shifted and slightly rotated.
h) Since it does not belong to the other documents of this file R 58/871
f°1, somebody must have put it there on purpose.
i) Friedrich Pradel was not a major but rather an SS-Hauptsturmführer
(equivalent to a captain).
I leave it up to the reader to decide whether that has any relevance.
The request allegedly came from the Mauthausen garrison physician.
Considering that the Saurer special vehicles with their Diesel engines
and low cargo boxes could not have served as mobile homicidal gas
chambers, it would be interesting to know what the original request was
for – if it ever existed.
Using “steel bottles with carbon [mon]oxide or other means” instead
of these non-homicidal special vehicles is a strong indicator that the author
forced a link between two items which cannot, in reality, have existed.
Assuming for the sake of the argument that the Mauthausen camp
authorities really wanted to urgently murder people with carbon monoxide,
any wood gas generator in their motor pool would have done the
trick. Why request some rare, secret device from an Institute in Berlin?
How could they have known about this secret device in the first place?
And why did Rauff not complain that his State Secret was being bandied
about by just about anyone?
I posit that this document was created for the Nuremberg trial in order
to get some documentary “corroboration” for the – obviously false –
gas van claims made by Hans Maržálek (see chapter 3.5.7.).