The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

42 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
shows creased paper and a reinforcement around the filing holes, which
means that this is not a mere positive reproduction of version A. Since
its handwritten marks are identical with those on version A, it may be
assumed that this may be the original of page one.
Carlos Porter opines “that the white document [version B] is a first
draft for the black one [version A],” that is to say: version B was a draft,
which some more sophisticated document “producers” used as a template
to manufacture the “original” [version C], from which version A
was reproduced as a photostat. 33 There is no way right now to prove this
hypothesis.
It is a mystery why version B made it into the U.S. National Archive
in the first place, since it has no probative value, never received any official
endorsement, and was never used by any court of law to prove
anything.
So where is the positive original now, if the National Archives insist
they don’t have it? Porter tried to chase it down and came to this result
(ibid.):
“The National Archives in Washington […] claim that the original
documents are in The Hague. The Hague claims the original
documents are in the National Archives.
The Stadtarchiv Nürnberg and the Bundesarchiv Koblenz also
have no original documents, and both say the original documents
are in Washington.”
There is another version of the Becker document, version D, which
is a photostat made from a document which must have been almost
identical to version A. It was presented to Walther Rauff, who confirmed
its authenticity by writing a note on the left margin saying “I received
this letter in May 1942. 18 October 1945 Rauff” (Nuremberg
document 2348-PS). I say almost identical, because the photostat presented
to Rauff doesn’t have the handwritten paragraph marks as can be
found on versions A and C, which therefore must have been added onto
the “original” after the Rauff photostat copy (version D) had been
made, but before the preparation of the photostat found in the U.S. National
Archives (version A). The earlier version D presented to Rauff
also bears lower Nuremberg archival numbers (A092586 to A092588)
than version B (A090025, A090027, A090028; A090026 seems to have
been skipped; see on the lower part of each page in Appendix 2). This
33 www.cwporter.com/501ps.htm.