The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 79
All these documents bear the same file reference number of the
RSHA: “II D 3 a (9) Nr. 668/42.” Hence these documents were not
classified. These documents are reproduced in Appendix 4 with translations
and comments, where due.
There are two more documents in this file R 58/871, which have no
connection to these documents:
– Letter of the RSHA of 26 March 1942 to the Institute for Police
Technology (Institut für Kriminaltechnik) regarding a special van
for the Mauthausen camp.
– Note of the RSHA of 5 June 1942 (the Just document).
The first one in the list was probably accidentally filed in that folder
by mistake (or with malicious intent), whereas the last one is the Just
document, which bears a different reference number: “II D 3 a (9) Nr.
214/42 g. Rs.,” where “g. Rs.” indicates that the document is classified
as “secret state matter.”
The unsuspicious documents of file R 58/871 form a logical sequence
of correspondence between the RSHA and Gaubschat regarding
requested modifications to certain special vehicles, whose purpose is
the transport of some goods, without specifying the type of goods.
Nothing in them indicates that they deal with anything criminal. These
documents all have the same reference number, are not marked as secret,
have each sheet numbered (not the pages), and follow one another
chronologically. They deal with changes to be made exclusively to future,
that is, newly constructed “Sonderfahrzeuge,” the common German
term for special vehicles.
From the contents of these letters it can be derived with certainty
that those vans could not have been used for transporting living human
beings.
First of all, the height of the vans after their suggested conversion
would only have been 162.5 cm at most (5'4"), 50 which is inadequate for
transporting standing people. Next, it is stated that a minimum free
clearance between a potentially tipable floor and the ceiling would have
to have been a mere meter (3'4"), because otherwise the load would be
crushed. Hence this load, whatever it was, could not have been people,
some if not most of whom must have been expected to stand upright
even after their presumed death, if the van had been cram-packed with
people.
50 It might even have been lower, see my consideration on p. 86.