The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS 85
allow any excess pressure building up inside to escape while preventing
a free exchange of air.
In addition to Marais’ supportive points, I may add my own:
5) The technician at the Gaubschat Company who supervised the design
and construction of the cargo boxes ordered by the RSHA, a
certain M. Bauer, testified in 1961 that the RSHA employees Pradel
and Wentritt had told him during a visit that they would need the vehicles
in order to transport corpses caused by typhus. 53 Since Bauer
had to know what the load would be for which he had to build a cargo
box, it surely didn’t matter what the cause for the victims’ death
was. Hence I consider it likely that Pradel and Wentritt told Bauer
the truth about the cargo, but not necessarily about the reason for
their existence.
6) In the original version of his Nuremberg testimony, Otto Ohlendorf
consistently used the term “Totenwagen” = corpse vehicle (or wagon
for the dead). The “Toten” was later struck out and replaced by
“Gas” (IMT, vol. 31, p. 41; see chapter 3.5.3.). It may be assumed
that he did this either due to habit, as he used to call these vehicles
that way, or in order to somehow slip a message into his affidavit for
future readers.
7) No matter what the corpses’ origin was, the German authorities must
have had an interest in reducing the number of witnesses to a minimum,
as witnesses during wartime tend to spread all kinds of founded
and unfounded rumors. A speedy unloading mechanism reducing
the need for manual labor served that purpose.
These considerations are valid independent of the type of speedy unloading
mechanism requested and eventually realized.
The main objection against this hypothesis could be the height of the
angled gridwork of 30 to 40 cm is insufficient in order to ensure “that
the load does not fall over the last grate towards the back of the driver’s
cabin.” Although it is true that six corpses deposited per square meter
would form a higher pile, this is only the average density of the load.
The load usually is higher in the middle as well as particularly at the
rear of the cargo box – which would also have been conducive to a
speedy unloading – so that one may assume that only up to two corpses
would have been lying on top of each other at the front end of the cargo
box. In that case the gridwork would have served its main purpose –
53 Testimony of M. Bauer, Gaubschat engineer, 21 March 1961, prosecution Hannover, ref.
2 Js 299/60; quoted acc. to Beer 1987, p. 410.