The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 67
it suffices to have some elementary knowledge of the German language
in order to spot anomalies and errors in this document.
First of all there is the non-existing superlative “onliest” (“einzigste”)
used in the letterhead (although this is quite a common error in
German colloquial speech). Much stranger is the expression “for example”
used in the letter’s first sentence. As Ingrid Weckert pointed out
correctly (2003, p. 233):
“It makes no sense to begin a letter with ‘for example’. The term
‘for example’ has meaning only when something was described or
claimed in the foregoing, for which an example then follows. In this
particular case ‘for example’ cannot even refer to the ‘re.:’-line; the
‘re.:’-line speaks of technical modifications which are necessary, but
the text immediately states that no defects have occurred in the vehicles.
And that is not exactly an example to demonstrate the necessity
for technical modifications!”
Other than being a nonsensical initiation of a letter, the implication
of using “for example” in the first sentence is that the 97,000 processed
units are only one example among several. Yet the author leaves the
reader in the dark about what this “several” could have been.
It is interesting to note that Kogon et al. committed their own forgery
twice in their book by omitting these telltale words “for example”
altogether with no hint at the fact that they have omitted anything
(1993, pp. 55, 228).
Furthermore the word “Siphon” is misspelled with a “y” (which, by
the way, is one English way of spelling it); the word “weitgehendst”
should actually be “weitestgehend,” although this mistake has become
part of the German vernacular, hence could not cause suspicions on its
own.
The word “lamp window” (“Lampenfenster,” paragraph 6) is neither
part of the German language nor of technical lingo nor does it make
sense. It should be “Lampenglass” (lamp glass) or “Lampenschirm”
(lampshade).
The word “Syphonkrümmer” (siphon elbow pipe) is a pleonasm, as a
“Siphon” already refers to a U-shaped pipe, hence there is no need to
add “Krümmer” to it (literally: bender, meaning a bent pipe).
These first remarks raise the question whether the author of these
lines was a native German speaker and whether he was a technician. No
less justified is the question: who writes to whom here? The first line of
the letter seems to contain the abbreviation of the organization creating