The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

358 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
Anyway, with this new make and model we truly have an astounding
variety of engines and chassis allegedly used. This did most certainly
not facilitate the task of the company which had to custom-tailor the
“hermetically sealed cargo box” and thusly turn innocuous vehicles into
“especially equipped vans”! SA]
At its end Choumoff’s paper contains a gem which I will not withhold
from the reader:
“I know – because I have heard it –, that gas vans existed back
then and how they operated.”
The decisive point here is that Choumoff’s description of the way
these “gas vans” allegedly operated is so rudimentary and yet at once
expressed with such resolve that it is impossible to take this assertion at
face value. At the end of the day, Choumoff merely repeats a rumor:
“because I have heard it,” and that’s probably the essence of his essay.
In connection with his statements about the “exhaust gas vehicles”
(p. 39) we learn about “the declaration of a witness” talking “about a
hermetically closed vehicle [...], a van [...] equipped in such a way that
its exhaust gases could be split. One part was piped into the van’s interior,
where the inmates were.” Now this is much more interesting:
When first turning to the issue of gas vans, I asked how an engine of
a vehicle could operate, if its exhaust gases were piped into an enclosed
cargo box. This peculiarity runs like a red thread through all descriptions
of these vehicles, and I posit that a manual or automatic device
must have existed within the exhaust system permitting the release of
some of the exhaust gases directly to the exterior. Although such a device
would have prevented a pressure build-up inside the cargo box and
thus its leakage or destruction, it is questionable whether enough gas
would have entered the cargo box under such circumstances to affect a
swift asphyxiation. This would have been possible only, if the allegedly
“hermetically sealed” cargo box was exactly not sealed but rather sported
some opening(s) through which the gas could have escaped in order
that the cargo box fulfills the role of the muffler. (In this context I remind
the reader of the logic underlying the first change requested by the
Just document.) However, if assuming that such a device to split the exhaust
gases was indeed present in those vehicles, and when considering
the temperatures and the corrosive nature of the exhaust gases, then the
manufacture of such a device would have required the use of special
stainless steel, which was rare and expensive in Germany at that time.