The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

96 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
have required a chemist, but rather a mechanic, and if the exhaust gasses
of such a vehicle had been used for the murder as claimed, this procedure
would not have been any more dangerous for the operators than
any other usual tail pipe (in contrast to a producer gas generator, for instance).
I posit instead that these devices were disinfestation chambers for
the following reasons:
a) They were to be set up next to living shelters for deported Jews,
so these Jews were meant to be kept alive, also by means of fighting insect-born
diseases. This is in keeping with the necessity to maintain
high hygienic standards in crowed living conditions (cf. Crowell 2000,
p. 65).
b) In late 1940 the chief chemist of the German company distributing
Zyklon B described a new disinfestation chamber system using
this insecticide. This “apparatus” was subsequently produced centrally
in large numbers and shipped and installed throughout Germany and the
occupied territories to fight insect-borne diseases (Peters/Wüstinger
1940). Wartime restrictions on iron allotments, however, precluded that
sufficient numbers of the device could be produced.
c) Instead of using a premanufactured delousing apparatus, a makeshift
Zyklon B delousing chamber could easily be built on the spot, as
was done in many concentration camps, although such makeshift solutions
were “not without danger,” indeed.
It has also been argued that this document may actually be a forgery.
But since these “gassing apparatus” are not an object of this study, I
will not address the issue further.