The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

90 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
– English: “Then the moment has come in which the Jewish officers
[…] get behind the no longer existing relatives”; the German expression
“dahinter kommen” (to find out about, to get to the bottom of)
cannot be used with a mere “hinter;” in addition the entire sentence
structure is wrong; correct is: “Dann ist der Augenblick gekommen,
in dem die […] jüdischen Offiziere […] dahinterkommen, daß die
Angehörigen nicht mehr vorhanden sind.” In the way used here this
expression has a spatial meaning: to get behind something or somebody.
– “das dürfte immerhin leicht zu Komplikationen führen” – English:
“that could after all easily lead to complications”; the “after all” here
makes neither sense in German nor in English.
– “Werden nun die Betreffenden entlassen […] nicht allzu lange” –
English: “When those affected [Jewish officers] are being released,
they would in the moment of arrival have their final freedom, but
like their racial comrades not for very long”: What is “in the moment
of arrival” supposed to mean? The arrival moment of their freedom?
If so, then this translates to: when freed, they are free at the moment
when they are free, but not for long…
Considering the bad usage of the German language, the question
arises whether this was Turner’s normal style. Friedlander/Milton have
reproduced two more of Turner’s letters. 56 Both letters exhibit a perfectly
normal usage of the German language. Although Turner had at times
the tendency to write complex phrases, they are grammatically correct,
consistent, and make sense, quite in contrast to the letter at issue here.
2.2.7.3. Spelling and Punctuation
Most German words requiring an “ß” are misspelled with an “ss”
(wrong: dass, weiss, erschiessen, Grüssen), although a few are spelled
properly. Commas are set erratically, and spaces between words and periods,
commas, hyphens, and quotation marks are inconsistent. “Canada”
is spelled the English way, not as the German “Kanada.”
The other two letters mentioned above do not show these erratic patterns.
The first one (to Richard Hildebrandt from 17 October 1941) was
apparently typed on a machine not possessing any “ß,” whereas the second
one (a duplicate of a letter to Himmler from 1 March 1942, typed
56 1992, part 1, pp. 356-362 (NO-5810); vol. 11/2, pp. 282f. (NO-3404); for references to
numerous other Turner documents similar in style see Browning 2004, pp. 521f., notes
106, 117f., 132; Browning 1986.