The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

70 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
I will now scrutinize and comment on each of the demanded modifications.
1. Adding slits and flaps
The demand to have two slits of 10 cm × 1 cm added to the rear wall
of the cargo box so that excess gas can escape means that at the time the
memo was written no such slits existed and that the gas had no other
way of escaping – or else the slits would have been superfluous. Hence
the cargo boxes would have been sealed hermetically and the gas pressure
would have built up inside until the doors were opened; many
“witness testimonies” as well as the Becker document analyzed before
confirm this explicitly. Nonetheless these boxes are said to have gassed
almost 100,000 human beings. In my mind this is a radical impossibility.
Connecting an exhaust pipe to a closed cargo box would have resulted
in an immediate and rapid increase in gas pressure, which would ineluctably
have led to the cargo box buckling and eventually bursting (see
chapter 1.3.2.). That the cargo could have resisted the resulting high internal
pressure is extremely unlikely, but even if that had been the case,
then the engine would have died as soon as the counter pressure had
reached a certain pressure.
Considering these fact, how could it have been possible to gas even
a single person under the described circumstances? The reference to an
“explosion at Kulmhof” does not yield any answer either, for first of all
it says that it was a single case, and second it is said to have been
caused not by a flawed design but due to an operating error.
If, however, openings are added to the cargo box, the situation
changes instantly; the connecting hose can simply be attached to the exhaust
pipe, and in this case the cargo box functions as a giant muffler,
through which the exhaust gases flow.
The author of the memo specifies that the slits are to be equipped
with flaps “in order to allow for self-regulation of any potential excess
pressure.” Unless this is simply a case of clumsy wording, we are dealing
with an error in reasoning here. Of course it is the slits which prevent
an overpressure, not the flaps; quite to the contrary, the latter create
a minute overpressure already due to their weight and also because
they cover a certain part of the slits, depending on the degree to which
they are open. Considering that the amount of gas produced by the engine
is considerable, these flaps would indeed have to be constantly in