The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 31
2. Documents
2.1. Photographs
If, due to lack of reliable information, one assumes that not a single
gas van and no characteristic part of it survived the war, then the next
question to ask is whether photographs of the time span exist during
which these vehicles were allegedly used. And in fact, several photos of
vehicles do indeed exist about which it is claimed that they served as
“gas vans.”
The best known of these photographs was reproduced by Gerald
Fleming (1984, after p. 92) with the caption:
“Gas van used to liquidate Jews at the Kulmhof (Chelmno) extermination
camp and near Konitz.”
Christopher Browning reproduced this and a similar photo of the
same vehicle with a similar caption (1985):
“Gas Vans (2 pictures), taken by Polish photographer after the
liberation –Yad Vashem Archives.”
The originals of these photos (four of them all in all) were taken by
the Commission of Inquiry into the German crimes in Poland and are
now in the Commission’s archives in Warsaw (signatures 47396 to
47399). Copies of the originals of these photos are, i.a., located in the
archives of the Auschwitz State Museum and of the Yad Vashem Institute
in Jerusalem, from where one can easily procure a copy. 22 In 1988
Yad Vashem has stated in a letter to a revisionist researcher that back
then the photos published by Fleming and Browning were the only ones
it had showing a gas van, and it asked to send in further such photos,
should the occasion arise, from which one may deduce that at that time
Yad Vashem didn’t have any other photos either (see Appendix 10).
The photos are reproduced in Appendix 1 (starting on page 275). What
do we see there?
The first photo (illustration 12) shows a truck which has been photographed
from the front slightly to the left so that one can see its left
22 Search online at http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/search.html.