The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 41
copy of the original, which, so she posits, should have remained with
the sender rather than ended up in Berlin. This assumption is based on
her hypothesis that the letter was written on very thin paper. Whether or
not this letter was written on thin carbon copy paper remains to be
demonstrated, as Mrs. Weckert had access only to copies of the original.
But even if so, this doesn’t prove that the original letter wasn’t
typed on such paper.
In fact, the file 501-PS as archived in the U.S. National Archives
contains two versions of this letter.
One, which I call version A, is a three page white on black photostat
of the alleged original. Since the photographic photostat process used in
those years to make copies of documents inverted black and white, the
original used to prepare this document must have been a normal black
on white document.
The other, version B, is a two page black on white copy full of typos,
some of which reveal the Anglo-Saxon background of the typist.
Instead of the signature the letter ends with a note “(Sgd),” i.e. the English
abbreviation for “signed.” Hence it is clear that this version was
typed by an Anglo-Saxon. Since it contains proper SS runes, it was obviously
written on a German official wartime typewriter. This version
also bears all the handwritten marks and words as version A, which are
very similar both in position and in style to those on version A – except
for Becker’s signature. All this is perfectly explicable, if one assumes
that this document is a retyped copy of version A, which the typist tried
to make appear as similar to version A as possible.
The file 501-PS of the U.S. National Archives contains another document
signed by Fred Niebergall, Chief of Document Control Branch of
the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Evidence Division, 32
prepared on 19 July 1948, in which he certifies that the “attached photostat
is a true and correct copy of the original.” Since photostats are negative
photographic reproductions of documents, this can only refer to
version A.
It seems that the black on white (positive) version from which this
photostat must have been taken is not part of the 501-PS file stored in
the U.S. National Archives, although the Archive itself at one point had
a black on white version of the first page of this document exhibited in
a showcase, which has been photographed, see version C. This version
32 This office handled the safekeeping and registration of all documents brought to Nuremberg
for evidentiary purposes and assembled them into document series.