The Gas Vans: A Critical Investigation - Holocaust Handbooks

98 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ, THE GAS VANS
“The standard vehicle types were known as S-types, whereas the
A-types had all-wheel drive, while being identical in every other respect.”
John Milsom’s 1975 documentation German Military Transport of
World War II contains several illustrations apparently stemming from a
secret contemporary German document with the title Bildermappe. Eingeführte
Waffen und Geräte (Picture Folder. Introduced Weapons and
Devices). Interestingly, some of the vehicles listed were used for poison
gas detection and to decontaminate people, clothes, and gas masks using
hot water, steam, and hot air. They were designed to be used in case
of gas warfare, but fortunately were never used. These vehicles had cargo
boxes which could be sealed hermetically and which looked rather
peculiar. This may have contributed to the creation of the story about
gas vans – in spite of the vehicle’s purely sanitary function. Illustrations
of some of these vehicles can be found in Appendix 8.
Another important aspect is disinfestation, that is: the killing of vermin,
such as fleas and lice. Fleas and lice carry human pathogens which
can cause severe illnesses, such as typhus and plague. Typhus and
plague epidemics, not weapons, have always been the primary killers
during wars, caused by the deterioration and collapse of hygienic conditions.
Fighting epidemics therefore means fighting the insects spreading
the disease. While Germany fought the war in the east, the issue of disease
control was always present. Disinfesting – or in the vernacular: delousing
– the soldiers’ cloth and equipment was important, but since the
soldiers had to constantly move, so did the disinfestation units.
Even Germany’s enemies reported about these units, for instance the
British Times of 30 Dec. 1941, p. 3 (cf. Rudolf 2010, p. 258):
“SPREAD OF TYPHUS IN EAST EUROPE
‘MENACING CONDITIONS’
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
STOCKHOLM, DEC. 29
German references to typhus, or merely to ‘epidemics,’ in Poland,
the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and particularly in Lithuania,
are becoming ever more frequent, but few details are allowed to
pass through the censorship to give an idea whether its prevalence is
really so serious and so widespread as the precautions suggest. The