The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 43
in spite of the fact that version D had to make a long journey before it
could be registered in Nuremberg (Rauff was at that time incarcerated
in Italy, see chapter 3.5.2.).
The only thing that makes me suspicious about this is the length to
which the Nuremberg prosecution went to get Rauff to certify the authenticity
of this one document. To achieve this, they sent this one document
across war-torn Europe for the sake of obtaining a brief sentence
and signature on it plus a supportive yet rather terse affidavit. This
seems to have been quite an unusual procedure, which I have not heard
of for any other Nuremberg document. Apparently there has never been
an intention to have Rauff testify about this in Nuremberg, because in
that case they would have moved Rauff himself to Nuremberg rather
than the document to him.
All in all, there seem to be reasonable explanations for all the differences
in the extant versions. Hence I cannot find any formal reasons to
suspect a forgery in this case. This does of course not necessarily mean
that the document is genuine. Forging documents is easy, if all the original
stationery, office equipment, and a huge amount of original handwritings
and signatures are at one’s disposal, as was the case for the victors
occupying the German authorities’ offices after the German unconditional
surrender. The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes,
which I will therefore analyze next.
2.2.2.3. Translated Content
In contrast to the Just document, which will be analyzed in chapter
2.2.4., the Becker letter is not subdivided in numbered paragraphs. In
order to facilitate its analysis, Pierre Marais has numbered both each
paragraph and each sentence in his 1994 study, and I will apply this
method here too, as it will facilitate the subsequent step by step analysis
of this document’s content. This analysis follows Marais’ arguments to
a large degree.
I do not reproduce the official English translation of the Nuremberg
Tribunal here, because it is riddled with faulty translations which gloss
over the at times absurd contents of the German original.