The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

32 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
side. Three men are looking at the truck. The photo in illustration 13
shows that the truck had a cargo box closed at the rear by a two-winged
door, the left wing of which is standing wide open in the first photo.
The cargo box extends into the room over the driver’s cabin as is common
for moving trucks. The radiator grill sports the logo of a German
producer: Magirus. 23 As can be seen from the second image, the wheels
of the truck seem to be missing, and the number plate is invisible. A
photo taken from the rear shows that the cargo box was made of many
vertical wooden boards (Illustration 15, p. 277). A photo taken from the
interior of the truck’s cargo box, though blurred, does not show the
wooden boards, hence has obviously been lined with same sheeting.
The picture also shows some probably wooden framework of unknown
purpose (see Illustration 16, p. 277). As we shall see later, such a
framework is never mentioned by any witness.
Although both Gerald Fleming and Christopher Browning have
claimed that this is a homicidal “gas van”, an impartial observer can
easily recognize that nothing visible about this vehicle supports this
claim. But then why do orthodox historians like Browning and Fleming
present it as a depiction of a gas van for homicide? Have they investigated
and verified their sources before they added their caption to this
photo of an absolutely mundane, apparently decommissioned vehicle –
perhaps one among many thousand others that could be found?
Another detail catches the attentive reader’s eye: All witnesses quoted
in the literature as well as in the various court protocols claim that
the “gas vans” exclusively belonged to the five makes Saurer, Diamond,
Opel, Renault, and Daimler Benz (see chapter 4.2.2.); 24 Magirus is not
mentioned a single time. 25 The two important documents which we will
discuss later in detail likewise mention merely “gas vans” made by
Saurer and Diamond.
23 The Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG in Ulm, Germany, which had been formed in 1936
as a merger of the truck manufacturer Magirus and the engine manufacturer Humboldt-
Deutz plus in 1938 with the steel producer Klöckner-Werke AG, used this logo only until
the end of 1939 for its trucks, so that the truck in the photo must be older than this. Starting
in 1940 a circle with the words “Klöckner-Deutz” was used as a logo; see
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magirus-Deutz.
24 With one extraordinary exception: A West-German court verdict claimed in 1974 that a
Ford truck built in the USSR was converted to a gas van in a makeshift way as late as
summer 1944, see chapter 3.7.5.5.
25 There are two Polish witnesses who falsely identified the truck shown in the photograph
discussed here as a gas van: B. Falborski (chapter 3.6.2.3.) and S. Srebrnik (chapter
3.6.3.1.).