The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

48 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
trucks transporting the executees manage to get there? What a logistic
mess! I may mention in passing that there is not a single witness statement
or court verdict claiming that any victims had to walk to the gas
van execution site (see chapter 3).
In addition, no reason is given why the executees became unsettled
when walking to their execution site and what would have been necessary
to prevent this.
– 9th sentence: This sentence is obscure, since it does not fit into the
context. In order to understand the second part of this sentence, it has to
be assumed that the executees had been gathered in a building or in a
fenced-in area. But would it not have been common, even inevitable
practice anyway to pick up those to be executed at a collection point?
– 10th and 12th sentence: It is ridiculous to claim that the mere
mounting of window shutters on the sides of the truck would have sufficed
to give it the looks of a trailer home. Besides, motorized, trucksize
trailer homes weren’t exactly a common commodity in Russia in
those years, to put it mildly, because in that era trailer homes consisted
of horse-drawn carriages! Hence, a truck thusly adorned inevitably
would have attracted attention instead of diverting it, all the more so as
a truck with window shutters, yet without any corresponding windows,
would have been a peculiar sight, indeed! Even the author of the letter
states shortly afterwards in the 12th sentence that “even camouflaged”
such a truck “cannot be kept secret in the long run,” which makes me
wonder why such puerile attempts at camouflage would have been undertaken
in the first place; after all, the letter’s author does not mention
an order to that effect.
In chapter 3 we will encounter a number of court verdicts claiming
that the gas vans were adorned (as alleged camouflage) with drawn-on
windows and even curtains, which was just as puerile and futile, attracting
attention instead of diverting it. The first such claim stems from a
1943 Soviet show trial (see p. 116), whose respective statements were
later parroted in several verdicts of the Munich district court which gave
a kind of rehashed performance of the 1943 Soviet show trial (pp. 116,
231, 233, 236). It may be conjectured that the author of the Becker letter
was inspired by this 1943 Soviet claim, although he changed the
theme from windows to shutters. If so, this would prove that the Becker
letter was written after the 1943 Soviet trial.
– 13th sentence: Taganrog at the Black Sea lies some 50 km west of
the Russia City Rostov on the river Don; it was occupied by German