The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

366 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
opment and deployment of the gas vans. This is suggested by the frequent
measurements conducted and by the already mentioned file memo
of 5 June 1942. [...] Furthermore the following is stated in the file
memo of 23 June 1542 [correct: 1942]: ‘The slide-covered openings in
the rear doors are to be omitted, and replaced with open slits of 100 ×
10 mm in the upper back wall (not door).’”
REMARK: As I have already emphasized, such slits would indeed
have prevented an excessive internal pressure by letting the exhaust
gases escape from the cargo box. But this does not explain how the gas
vans could have operated flawlessly without those slits for the first
97,000 victims which “were processed with 3 deployed vehicles.”
2. QUESTION: “Isn’t it amazing that of the thirty gas vans which are
said to have been in operation not a single one has ever been found?”
ANSWER: “It would not be surprising if no gas vans had been found
after the war, because the gas vans, like all other traces left by the extermination
of people, were destroyed as best as possible in the rush.
But we do not only have photos of the gas vans made by the Polish authorities
after the war (in the archive in Warsaw and in the Yad Vashem
Archives in Jerusamen [sic]), but according to my information there is a
gas van to this day in Konin (Poland) serving as a memorial to commemorate
the victims.”
REMARKS: The argument that there are no traces for the extermination
of human beings because the “Nazis” have destroyed them does not
solve the problem, yet instead exacerbates it. Instead of having to prove
only one claim – “gas vans for the extermination of human beings existed”
– Mathias Beer now finds himself in the situation of having to
prove two claims: “gas vans for the extermination of human beings existed”
and “all traces were destroyed.”
This leaves us with two pertinent bits of information given by Beer
in his response to my second question: There are photos of gas vans,
and most importantly: the Polish town of Konin possesses a former gas
van (which would mean that not all traces had been destroyed).
As to the photos, I have shown in [chapter 2.1.] that those taken by
the Polish investigative commission do show a trivial moving truck rather
than a gas van. The other photos ever shown in the media have no
probative value at all, as no source has ever been given for them. Hence
Beer’s claim is simply wrong.
Beer’s second assertion initiated further investigations, the results of
which I will disclose shortly.