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“The Jews buried in a little wood near Kulmhof”: Documenting Cremation at Chełmno

August 27, 2016, 10:40 am
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In his brochure Chełmno: A German Camp in History and Propaganda, Carlo Mattogno declared (p.83):
Not a single document exists on the alleged Chełmno crematoria

Unfortunately for “the world’s premier revisionist scholar”, this assertion is false.


 The existence of a document describing the use of gas vans at Chełmno in explicit detail - the so-called Just memo for Walter Rauff of 5 June 1942 - has long tormented Holocaust deniers, who have consistently dismissed the document as a forgery. In a forthcoming installment of his series refuting ‘Revisionist’ claims about gas vans, Hans will rebut these arguments, which convince no one other than deniers. Mattogno has consoled himself further by claiming that documentation regarding the first extermination camp established by the Third Reich for the purpose of murdering Jews is “almost nonexistent” (Chełmno, p.7). Yet this claim, too, is not really true, because mainstream scholars have unearthed a series of documents regarding Kulmhof (the German name for Chełmno) and the SS-Sonderkommando that operated there. Mattogno just didn’t think to look in books about the context for Chełmno - at studies of the Łódź ghetto [1] or at studies of the persecution and murder of Jews in the Warthegau[2], or to spot all the documents about Chełmno cited in the books on the camp.


Two source collections in particular provide us with a variety of clues, traces as well as explicit documents regarding Chełmno. The first is the archive of the Nazi ghetto administration authority directed by Hans Biebow. The records of the Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt are split between the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and the Łódź state archive (Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi), they run to many hundreds of thousands of pages. Especially important are the financial records of payments and receipts to Sonderkonto 12 300, a bank account used by the Warthegau authorities to administer the costs as well as profits accruing from the deportations of Jews across the region, and to exploit Jewish forced labour outside the Łódź ghetto. [3] The second is far smaller, but in many respects more intriguing: a file of the phonetapping and intelligence service Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt, monitoring conversations and phone calls made to and from the Łódź ghetto adminstration and sometimes also the Jewish council. [4]

Both collections were used extensively by the leading German historians of the persecution and murder of the Jews of the Łódź ghetto and the Warthegau, Michael Alberti and Peter Klein, in their books published respectively in 2006 and 2009, yet the documents we highlight below were either not cited or were not quoted in full by these scholars. Shmuel Krakowski also cited several documents from the Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt file in his book on Chełmno, originally published in Hebrew in 2001[5], but evidently overlooked the most interesting find we are publishing below. Patrick Montague used neither collection in his 2011 study of Chełmno, but the “new” documents both corroborate his findings and are corroborated by them. [6] Montague’s exhaustive exploration of the very thorough 1945 investigation of Chełmno by the Polish prosecutor Władysław Bednarz[7] enabled him to write the most detailed account of the camp we have so far; a revised edition of his book could easily incorporate these sources.

As Michael Alberti and Peter Klein have shown, the records of Sonderkonto 12 300 prove numerous connections between Biebow’s Łódź ghetto administration and SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof. [8] The account was set up in February 1942 at the behest of the Reich governor’s office in Poznan (Reichstatthalter Posen) in order to administer the costs of the deportation of Jews from across the Warthegau, by offsetting the costs of the deportations against the revenue from plunder and the exploitation of forced labour. [9] Unlike in the Government-General, where the SS credited stolen cash and valuables to its own accounts, whether seized during ghetto clearances or robbed at Bełzec, Sobibór or Treblinka[10], the SS and police handed over cash and valuables to the local civil authorities during ghetto clearances in the Warthegau, and the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof likewise handed over considerable quantities of cash: 1,954,539.58 RM along with foreign currency and gold coins. [11] A further 1,076,689.44 RM and $11,719 were cashed in to the account from the property-sorting depot at Pabianice. [12] On the other hand, Sonderkonto 12 300 was also used to pay out cash supplements to the pay of SS and Police officials serving at Chełmno: during 1942, a total of 680,000 RM in cash was paid out, starting on 28 February 1942 with 50,000RM. [13]

While regular salaries, costs and expenses for SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof evidently came out of the SS budget, the establishment of Sonderkonto 12 300 allowed the SS to offset at least some costs onto this account. Chloride of lime was in use at Chełmno from January 1942, as the escaped prisoner Shlomo Winer, better known under his pseudonym of ‘Szlamek’, noted in his account of the mass murders at the camp written down in early 1942. [14] It was sprinkled on the mass graves to combat the smell and was also evidently used in trucks and railway waggons as a cleaning agent. The Sonderkonto 12 300 records show repeated and substantial deliveries of chloride of lime, billed to ‘Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S’. [15] This was the same annotation to be found on payments to and from Sonderkommando Kulmhof. Many dozens of tons of chloride of lime went to ‘Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S’[16], while invoices show other recipients received chloride of lime for their purposes.

By the summer of 1942, however, the SS at Chełmno no longer needed to use chloride of lime to mask the smell of decomposing corpses. They began to experiment with the burning of the corpses from the mass graves. As Roberto Mühlenkamp has previously outlined on this blog, the burning of bodies was at first carried out in lined pits that in at least some cases used metal grates. While some witnesses such as the forester Heinz May do not mention metal grates[17], this suggests either that early experiments did not use grates or that the witnesses did not get close enough to observe the grates. The SS-Sonderkommando member Fritz Ismer, who was ordered to Chełmno on 8 January 1942[18], just in time to observe the murder of the Roma from the so-called ‘Gypsy camp’ in the  Łódź ghetto[19], described grates in his 1961 interrogation. [20]

Deliveries of both very large quantities of cement along with iron girders or iron beams (Eisenträger, a Google images search illustrates quite well what is meant by this term) and railway rails are repeatedly documented for the summer of 1942; the precise delivery dates are not always clear from the invoices, so clarifying the exact dates on which the cremation experiments began is not possible. But we do know from the Sonderkonto 12 300 records that 1500kg of cement was invoiced on 25 June 1942[21], and another 1500kg of cement on July 7, 1942[22]. Some deliveries we can date more precisely – on 25 June 1942, 6,448kg of iron beams and railway rails[23] were delivered, while on 9 July 1942, 40 iron beams of between 5.25 and 6m in length were delivered to ‘Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S’, the bill arriving only on 18 September 1942. [24] On 21 July 1942, 5000kg of cement arrived. [25]

The dates of delivery for the iron beams and railway rails – 25 June and 9 July 1942 – may well therefore clarify the start of cremation in pits using grates. The forester Heinz May was an especially early visitor to Chełmno, as he had been ordered to supply firewood to the SS-Sonderkommando. Early, smaller-scale experiments were also more likely to escape the attention of local residents. This was not, however, the case with what was evidently the beginning of large-scale mass cremation. Stanislaw Rubach, a resident of the forest of Kośielec,in between the nearby town Koło and Chełmno, recorded in his diarylike contemporary notes on 11 August 1942 that ‘from mid-July the crematorium was active’. [26] Other witnesses concur on mid-July as the start of mass cremation. [27].

A start date for mass cremation at Chełmno in mid-July 1942 helps make sense of the well-known enquiry sent on 16 July 1942 from Friedrich Wilhelm Ribbe of the Łódź ghetto administration to the Łódź ‘eldest’ Chaim Rumkowski regarding whether a bone mill, either engine-powered or hand-cranked, could be found inside the Łódź ghetto. [28] Since this document was published by Arthur Eisenbach in 1946 in a collection of documents on the Łódź ghetto and tends to be cited from this edition, Mattogno huffily declared that this source “is recorded only in Eisenbach’s transcript, without even an archival reference. No one has ever seen the original document” (Chełmno, p.80). Yet Mattogno hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to look for the original, which could well be found in the Jewish Historical Institute collection of Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt records, as it is not included in the Sonderkonto 12 300 files, and many other sources published in Eisenbach’s document edition are certainly in the Jewish Historical Institute.

The answer to Ribbe’s enquiry was evidently negative, since on 1 March 1943, Biebow, the head of the Łódź ghetto administration corresponded with the Łódź Gestapo regarding the return of a ball mill, a ‘purchase for the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof’ made from the company of Schriever & Co in Hannover. [29] The ball mill ordered from Schriever & Co is also mentioned in the report on the business trip to made on 16 September 1942 by Rudolf Höss, Franz Hössler and Walter Dejaco from Auschwitz to inspect a ‘special installation’ (Sonderanlage):[30]
Unter Bezugnahme auf die Besprechung des SS-Staf. Blobel mit der Firma Schriever u. Co., Hannover, Bürgermeister Finkstr., soll die dort reservierte, bereits in beiseitegestellte Kugelmühle für Substanzen für das KL. Auschwitz zur Lieferung gelangen.   
With reference to the discussion of SS-Staf. Blobel with the firm Schriever & Co., Hannover, Bürgermeister Finkstr., the reserved ball mill for substances which has already been reserved is to be delivered to the Auschwitz concentration camp.


Correspondence in the Sonderkonto 12 300 files confirms this delivery, albeit with a possible diversion from Auschwitz to Lublin, as the firm’s bank, the Dresdner Bank branch in Hannover, wrote to the Łódź ghetto administration in early 1943 to say: [31] 
Wir kommen zurück auf Ihr Schreiben vom 7. Dezember  v.Js., mit dem Sie uns mitteilten, dass die Kugelmühle der Kommandantur des Konzentrationslager in Auschwitz übersandt wurde. Wie wir nunmehr von dem Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD für den Distrikt Lublin, Lublin, hören, ist die Maschine wieder an Sie zurückgegeben.  
We return to your letter of 7 December of the previous year, in which you informed us that the ball mill was sent to the commandantura of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. As we now hear from the Commander of the Security Police and SD for the Lublin District, Lublin, the machine has once again been returned to you.


Multiple witnesses report the use of a ball-mill at Chełmno. [32] They describe a heavy machine weighing five and a half tons that was powered by a generator or compressor. Noises from the mill were heard by Polish residents living nearby. The generator or compressor was possibly operated incorrectly, as the firm of Dr Kiesgo & Co in Cologne complained in early 1943 about the damage done to two out of three compressors returned in exchange for a new compressor in December 1942; the compressors had been run without being oiled. [33]

Whether or not the compressors returned by the Łódź ghetto administration had in fact been damaged from being used incorrectly at Chełmno – this is only a suggestive possibility – the use of a ball mill at Chełmno to crush bones, and the presence of SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, the director of ‘Aktion 1005, at the camp, must both be regarded as historical certainties.

Mattogno, needless to say, disagrees, yelping loudly about how the documents cited above don’t prove that the ‘special installation’ visited by Höss, Hössler and Dejaco was actually at Chełmno, and asserting that “the alleged activity of Blobel at Chełmno is not confirmed by any document” (Chełmno, p.76) but only by the testimonies of Höss and Dejaco. One wonders whether Mattogno even reads his own books, as in his documents appendix (Chełmno, p.157), he reproduces a facsimile of a letter from Blobel to the Łódź ghetto administration from November 1942 regarding the purchase of a diesel motor “for the purposes of Sonderkommando Kulmhof”. [34] So Blobel was involved not only in the ordering of a diesel motor for SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof but was involved in discussions about transferring a ball mill to Auschwitz; the Łódź ghetto administration corresponded with the Łódź Gestapo about a ball mill in 1943 that was a ‘purchase for the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof’. And Mattogno thinks Blobel’s involvement with Chełmno isn’t documented? The ever-decreasing probability of Blobel’s mysterious non-involvement in the cremation experiments testified to by Höss, Dejaco, Ismer and other witnesses and Mattogno’s ever-increasing desperation brings to mind this well-known Biblical saying:
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24)

Like so many other feeble explanations advanced by “the world’s premier revisionist”, Mattogno’s attempt to explain away the presence of a ball-mill at Chełmno by hypothesising that it was “used to grind down nonflammable materials” (The Extermination Camps of Aktion Reinhard, p.1346) falls foul of the fallacy of possible proof. Just because something might have been the case doesn’t prove it in the slightest, nor does speculation trump eyewitness testimony. The use of the ball mill bought “for the SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof” to grind bones from the mass cremations of Jewish victims is attested to by multiple eyewitness sources. The use of the ball mill to crush waste materials is attested to by nobody. Ergo, Mattogno’s assertion fails.

Following the visit by Höss, Hössler and Dejaco to meet with Blobel and inspect the original pit and grate system of cremation at Chełmno, the camp went over to a new system involving actual crematoria with chimneys. [35] The dating of this change can be supported by  a contemporary document – the notes of Stanislaw Rubach, in which he recorded on September 26, 1942 that the crematorium at ‘Ladorudz’ – the section of wood in which the Chełmno ‘forest camp’ was located – “used 60,000 fireclay bricks from Freudenreich”. [36] The firm of Freudenreich was based in Koło; there was therefore no need for the SS to order bricks via the Łódź ghetto administration. And indeed, so far no sign of an invoice for the fireclay bricks can be found in the Sonderkonto 12 300 records.

What can, however, be confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt is that the corpses of Jews were burned in ‘specially constructed furnaces’ (eigens gefertigten Öfen) at Chełmno. This confirmation comes from a memorandum of the Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt reporting on how it learned of the purpose of Chełmno in 1943, after the first closure of the camp. While this document was cited a whole decade ago in Michael Alberti’s excellent study of the persecution and murder of the Jews of the Warthegau[37], Alberti did not quote from the source, which is now reproduced in full, for what may well be the first time: [38]



Wie durch NL 7299 vom 25.3.43. bereits berichtet wurde, ist das Lager Kulmhof Post Eichstädt Kreis Warthbrücken, in das hauptsächlich nicht arbeitseinsatzfähige Juden aus dem Warthegau, insbesondere aus dem Litzmannstädter Getto seiner Zeit laufend überführt wurden, zum 1.4.43. aufgelöst worden. Aus zuverlässiger Quelle wurde der Forschungsstelle nun bekannt, dass die dortigen Wachmannschaften der Polizei nachträglich die in einem Wäldchen bei Kulmhof begrabenen Juden wiederexhumieren und diese in eigens gefertigten Öfen verbrennen mussten. – Nach Gewährung eines längeren Erholungsurlaubes wurden diese Schutzmannschaften zum Fronteinsatz abkommandiert. Wie jetzt verlautet, werden diese Kräfte nunmehr wieder herausgezogen, um in Graz für einen gleichartigen Einsatz im Südosten ausgerüstet zu werden.   
As was already reported in NL 7299 of 25/3/43, the camp Kulmhof, Post Eichstädt, County Warthbrücken, to which mainly Jews unfit for work from the Warthegau, in particular from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, were at that time regularly transferred, was closed on 1/4/43. From a reliable source, the Forschungststelle has now learned that the police guards there later re-exhumed the Jews buried in a little wood near Kulmhof and had to burn them in specially constructed furnaces. After being granted a lengthy leave, these guards were assigned to frontline duty. As is now reported, these forces have as of now been withdrawn in order to be equipped in Graz for a similar deployment in the South-East.


Three days later, the Forschungsstelle noted that this report and another report that is now lost had come from confidential sources, but that they had received indirect confirmation from another official, who also noted that the BBC had made broadcasts on the subject of Chełmno: [39]


Die durch die MzA’s Litzmannstadt Nr. 405 und 406 übermittelten Informationen wurden der Forschungsstelle durch den Angestellten Riehl bekannt, dem sie vertraulich mitgeteilt wurden.Diese Informationen waren Gegenstand einer Rücksprache bei der hiesigen Stapostelle. Die in MzA Nr. 406 gemachten Angaben wurden gesprächsweise durch RR. Dr. Rosse indirekt bestätigt. Von Dr. Rosse wurde noch erwähnt, dass der britische Rundfunk sich mit Kulmhof befasst habe.   
The information provided by the MzA's Litzmannstadt Nr. 405 and 406 was made known to the Forschungsstelle by the employee Riehl, who was informed of them in confidence.This information has been the subject of consultation with the Stapostelle here. The information contained in MzA no. 406 were indirectly confirmed through conversation by RR. Dr. Rosse. It was noted by Dr. Rosse that the British radio has dealt with Kulmhof.


The first report’s use of ‘eigens gefertigten Öfen’ confirms and is in turn corroborated by Rubach’s diary-notes – the crematoria of Chełmno were constructed locally, without any known assistance from a specialist firm of crematorium oven manufacturers like Topf & Sons of Erfurt. This explains why we lack further documents which might offer more details on their exact construction or operation. While such sources would be no doubt very interesting, sometimes it’s necessary to recognise that the traces left by the past are inevitably incomplete. This still does not change the fact that cremation at Chełmno is now “documented” in a contemporary official Nazi source. [40]

The reliability of the Forschungsstelle report is confirmed by external evidence. As the report states, the staff of the camp were to be transferred to the ‘South-East’, i.e. the Balkans. With the closing of  Chełmno, 85 members of SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof under its commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Bothmann were ordered to be transferred to the Waffen-SS‘Prinz Eugen’ Division fighting Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia. [41] Before they departed, Himmler asked the head of the RSHA Ernst Kaltenbrunner to remind the men of the need for secrecy:
Der Reichsführer SS bittet Sie, die Männer vor ihrem Einsatz noch einmal zusammenzunehmen und sie eindringlich zu verpflichten, unter die Zeit ihres Sonderkommandos einen Strich zu setzen und auch nicht andeutungsweise davon zu reden.  
The Reichsfuhrer SS asks you to gather the men together again before their deployment and to oblige them insistently to put a line under the period of their Sonderkommando and not to speak of it even in passing.


The two memoranda of the Forschungsstelle are just as interesting for what they do not say as for what they do say. The fact that British radio had broadcast news of Chełmno does not prompt the report-writer to make a knee-jerk invocation of the magic words ‘atrocity propaganda’. Instead, the second report confirms the letter from Himmler’s Personal Staff to Kaltenbrunner by emphasising the confidentiality and secrecy of the contents of the first report. Similarly, the first report states that ‘mainly Jews unfit for work” from the Warthegau and Łódź ghetto were “transferred” (überführt) to Chełmno. Both the memos of the Forschungsstelle from 1942[42] as well as the records of the Łódź ghetto administration[43] repeatedly identify the deportees as ‘unfit for work’. No mention is made in the Forschungsstelle reports or in the Łódź ghetto administration records of Chełmno as a ‘transit camp’; indeed, during one conversation recorded by the Forschungsstelle between the civil administration and the Łódź Gestapo[44], it was stated that “the Jews unfit for work will go into the so-called supply camp”, an obvious euphemism that unfortunately for Mattogno and his sidekicks, was apparently located nowhere near the occupied Soviet territories.

Much else remains to be presented and discussed from the archival collections we’ve explored regarding Chełmno, the Łódź ghetto and the Warthegau; stay tuned for further blog posts from HC contributors on this subject. For now, think of our old customer Carlo Mattogno and how stupid he looks making yet another ignorant assertion that 'no documents' exist on yet another aspect of the Holocaust.




[1] Helene Sinnreich, The supply and distribution of food to the Łódź ghetto: a case study in Nazi Jewish policy, 1939-1945. PhD, Brandeis University, 2004; Andrzej Strzelecki, Deportacja Żydow z getta łódzkiego do KL Auschwitz i ich zagłada. Oswiecim, 2004 (translated to English in 2006); Andrea Löw, Juden im Getto Litzmannstadt: Lebensbedingungen, Selbstwahrnehmung, Verhalten. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006; Isaiah Trunk, Lodz Ghetto: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007 (Yiddish original: 1962); Sascha Feuchert et al (eds), Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007, 5 volumes; Gordon J. Horwitz, Ghettostadt: Łódź and the making of a Nazi city. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008; Peter Klein, Die ‘Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt’ 1940-1944: Eine Dienststelle im Spannungsfeld von Kommunalbürokratie und staatlicher Verfolgungspolitik. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2009.
[2] Anna Ziołkowska, Obozy pracy przymusowej dla Żydów w Wielkopolsce w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej (1941–1943). Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, 2005; Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006
[3] We digitally copied the Sonderkonto 12 300 files from the Łódź archive Gettoverwaltung collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (where they are held under RG-15.127M) last year; this collection is now substantially uploaded to the Polish digital archive, complementing the previously digitised records of the Łódź ghetto council (Przełożony Starszeństwa Żydów w Getcie Łódzkim) also held at the Łódź state archive. We discovered literally last night, around 1am in the morning that the Gettoverwaltung collection has been put online.
[4] This, too, is now digitised and has been uploaded to Yad Vashem’s document collection website under O.51/13, from where it can be downloaded as two PDF files (large files!). Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt was an agency under the ultimate control of Hermann Göring. Copies of other reports by Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt are evidently filed in the records of the Regierungspräsident Litzmannstadt held in Polish archives, using the same number sequence as is visible from the Yad Vashem-archived file. As the reports indicate, the memoranda were shared with the Łódź Gestapo as well as different parts of the local bureaucracy, depending on the sensitivity of the issues overheard on the phone.
[5] Shmuel Ḳraḳowsḳi, Das Todeslager Chełmno/Kulmhof : der Beginn der "Endlösung". Göttingen : Wallstein, 2007, translated as Chełmno: a small village in Europe: the first Nazi extermination camp. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009 (Hebrew original 2001).
[6] Patrick Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust. The History of Hitler’s First Death Camp. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011
[7] Held at Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (hereafter AIPN) GK 165/271; a digital copy of the entire investigation is in our possession.
[8] Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, pp.452-458 and earlier; Klein, Gettoverwaltung, pp.479-506.
[9] 027/2/Ri/Po, Aktennotiz! 70/42 betr.: Besprechung mit Herrn Oberreg.Rat Dr. Häusler und Herrn Oberreg.Rat Dr. Windmüller, von Posen, APŁ 39/221/29232, p.196
[10] See Globocnik’s final economic report for Aktion Reinhard in Nuremberg document 4024-PS, and compare with the Katzmann report (L-18). Both regional studies of different districts in the Government-General as well as the work of Ingo Loose make it clear that Globocnik’s figures include cash and valuables plundered by the SSPFs in the districts as well as at the Aktion Reinard camps. Ingo Loose, Kredite für NS-Verbrechen: Die deutschen Kreditinstitute in Polen und die Ausraubung der polnischen und jüdischen Bevölkerung 1939–1945. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007.
[11] Klein, Gettoverwaltung, pp.495-7; cf Der Reichsstatthalter im Warthegau I/13 A.Z. 022/150, Evakuierungsaktion, Überschüsse des Sonderkommandos Kulmhof, 28.4.1942, APŁ 39/221/29665, p.150.
[12] On Pabianice see Klein, Gettoverwaltung, pp.489-495.
[13] Stadtsparkasse Litzmannstadt, Scheck Nr. 74.428-2, 28.2.1942, APŁ 39/221/29664 unpag.
[14] Ewa Wiatr, Barbara Engelking, Alina Skibińska (eds), Archiwum Ringelbluma: Konspiracyjne Archiwum Getta Warszawy. 13, Ostatnim etapem przesiedlenia jest śmierć: Pomiechówek, Chełmno nad Nerem, Treblinka. Warsaw: Wydawn. Naukowe PWN, 2013, p.108  (Ring I/413: “Od piątku zaczęto polewać groby chlorkiem, gdyż czulo się silny odór rozkładających się ciał”); translated in Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, p.110 (16.1.1942: “Beginning on Friday, we started to pour chloride on the graves because of the strong odor from the decomposing bodies.”)
[15] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 010335, 28.5.42, APŁ 221/29666, p.68 – 10,360kg of chloride of lime costing 1,445.20 RM.
[16] For an example, see Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 010980, 7.7.1942, APŁ 221/29668, p.105 – 1740kg of chloride of lime.
[17] H.May, “Die grosse Luege”. Der Nationalsozialismus, wie ihn das deutsche Volk nicht kennt. Ein Erlebnisbericht, III. Kapitel: Der grosse Judenmord, (1945), pp.34-44, here p.41, YVA M.21/477. This file is currently not online at Yad Vashem’s digital archive, but was copied by one of the HC team on a recent trip to Yad Vashem. An English translation of May's memoir is available in Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak (ed.), Chełmno witnesses speak. Konin: Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom in Warsaw/District Museum in Konin, 2004
[18] Vermerk, Litzmannstadt, den 6. Januar 1942, gez. Krumey, YVA O.53/102, p.235 (= AIPN UWZ/L 205, p.21R). This file is currently not online at Yad Vashem’s digital archive, but was copied by one of the HC team on a recent trip to Yad Vashem.
[19] Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, p.66. Documents therefore confirm Ismer’s testimony  regarding when he arrived at Chełmno, and fit with the time-frame of the liquidation of the ‘Gypsy Camp’ in the Łódź ghetto.
[20] Vernehmung Fritz Ismer, 1.8.1961, Berlin, Bundesarchiv (hereafter BArch) B 162/1332, pp. 73-80, here p.75.
[21] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 010865, 25.6.42, APŁ 221/29667, p.287
[22] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 010979, 7.7.1942, APŁ 221/29668, p.106.  In addition, 13,000kg of chloride of lime was delivered.
[23] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 011690, 11.8.42, APŁ 221/29668, p.36
[24] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 012085, 18.9.1942, APŁ 221/29671, p.297
[25] Getto-Verwaltung an die Geheime Staatspolizei Litzmannstadt S, Rechnung No. 011689, 11.8.42, APŁ 221/29668, p.35
[26] Protokół przesłuchania swiadka Stanislaw Rubach, 28.12.1945, introducing  and transcribing contemporary diary-note nr 3 with comment dated 11.8.1942, AIPN GK 165/271, t.8, p.767
[27] Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, p.115
[28] Published in transcribed form in Artur Eisenbach (ed), Dokumenty i materialy do dziejow okupacji niemieckiej w Polsce. Bd 3: Getto łodzkie. Warsaw, Łódź, Krakow, 1946, p.279. This document collection is now available online.
[29] Transcribed in Eisenbach (ed), Getto łodzkie, p.279.
[30] Reisebericht über die Dienstfahrt nach Litzmannstadt, Auschwitz, den 17. September 1942, gez. SS-Ustuf. (F) Dejaco, RGVA 500-1-336, p.69. As hard as it may be for Mattogno or his fluffers to comprehend, we have our own scans of the Zentralbauleitung collection.
[31] Dresdner Bank Filiale Hannover an Staatspolizeileitstelle Litzmannstadt z.Hd.v.Herrn Reg.Rat. SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Bradfisch oder Vertreter im Amt, Betr.: Zession Schriever & Co, Hannover, über RM 7.550,--, 4.2.1943, APŁ 221/2674, p.85. The bank’s letter inadvertently demoted Bradfisch by omitting the ‘Ober’ from Sturmbannführer.
[32] Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, pp.117-8
[33] Dr. Kiesgo & Co, Bericht ueber den Befund der am 17.12.42 zurueckgelieferten Kompressoren, Koeln, den 8.4.43, APŁ 221/29676, p.162; see also  Zusammenstellung der Ablade- und Reparaturstuden fuer 2 Kompressoren, 8.4.43, ibid, p.159, and other correspondence in this part of the file.
[34] SS-Standartenführer Blobel, z.Zt. Stapoleitstelle Litzmannstadt, Betr.: Lieferung der Firma Motoren-Heyne, Leipzig C 1, Für Zwecke des Sonderkommandos Kulmhof, 3.2.1943, APŁ 221/29674, p.56; cf Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, p.432 n.332, citing the same document from ZStL, Dok.-Slg. Polen 316, fol.357. Mattogno’s source is a facsimile of the document published in Tatjana Berenstein  et al (eds), Faschismus - Getto - Massenmord. Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Frankfurt am Main, 1961, p.282.
[35] Montague, Chełmno and the Holocaust, pp.115-6.
[36] Protokół przesłuchania swiadka Stanislaw Rubach, 28.12.1945, introducing  and transcribing contemporary diary-note nr 5 of 26.9.1942,AIPN GK 165/271, t.8, p.767: “‘Na krematorium w Ladorudzeu uzyto 60 000 cegly szamotowej od Freudenreicha”.
[37] Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, p.432 note 331
[38] Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt, MzA Nr. 406, Betr.: Zur Auflösung des Judenlagers Kulmhof, 22.6.1943, YVA O.51/13, p.260
[39] MzA Litzmannstadt Nr. 407, Betr.: MzA Nr. 10690, Vorg.: MzA Litzmannstadt Nr. 405 und 406, 25.6.1943, YVA O.51/13, p.259. MzA Nr. 405 is apparently lost.
[40] Now that the original flat assertion has been falsified, we anticipate much moving of goalposts by Mattogno and his fluffers.
[41] Der Reichsführer-SS Persönlicher Stab Tgb. Nr. 39/110/43g an SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Kaltenbrunner, 29.3.1943, BArch B 162/601 unpag.
[42] For example, Meldung zu Auswertefragen Nr. 244, Betr.: Litzmannstädter Getto, 16.1.1942, YVA O.51/13, p.221: ‘nach der am 16.1. beginnenden Aussiedlung von 10 000 arbeitsunfähigen Juden – es handele sich hierbei um ganze Familien’.
[43] For example, in the title of a Warthegau-wide decree regarding the disposal of Jewish property. See Der Amtskommissar des Amtsbezirks Sluzewo, Betr.: Evakuierung der nichtarbeitsfähigen Juden, Erfassung von Vermögenswerten, Bezug: Verfügung des Herrn Reichsstatthalters vom 1.5.42 – I/13 022-150 g, 18.5.1942, APŁ 221/29667, p.238
[44] Meldung zu Auswertefragen Nr. 284/42, Betr. Getto Litzmannstadt, 22.4.42, YVA O.51/13, p.319: “Die nicht arbeitsfähigen Juden kämen in sogennante Versorgungslager”.


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German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 6: Forgery Allegation

September 3, 2016, 8:37 am
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German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance
Part 2: Location
Part 6: Forgery Allegation

The Mogilev homicidal gassing footage discussed in the previous parts has been subjected to doubts about its authenticity. Interestingly, these were not limited to the usual suspects, but included a German public prosecutor investigating Nazi atrocities and Holocaust Museum staff. In any case, the suspicion that the footage was faked by the Allies is unsubstantiated in the light of the available evidence.

A German Public Prosecutor

The West-German investigators obtained image stills of the gassing scene in Mogilev and used them in their investigations and interrogations in the 1960s. Concerns about the authenticity of the gassing footage were expressed by the Stuttgart public prosecutor Rolf Sichting, who tried to track down the perpetrators of the scene. Seemingly tired by the fruitless search for owner of the vehicles shown in the photographs, Sichting noted on 27 December 1961:
In the meantime, doubts came to my mind if the images are real or possibly staged or the result of a photo montage. The tactical signs are not known to any of the relevant inquiry offices. Also, the numbers appear hand-drawn. It would have made more sense to lead the the gas hoses on the shortest way into the room in question by placing the vehicle with its rear to the wall.
(BArch B162/4340, p. 11)

In retrospect, Sichting’s reasons were not particular thrilling. The investigators had already learned that the tactical signs were simply chosen by the local unit leader. The vehicles were placed perpendicular to the building according to eyewitnesses, but they may have been moved in parallel to the wall in order to have a good shot for the footage. This kind of staging by the Germans themselves is irrelevant for the wider context.

If West-German investigators were still concerned about the authenticity of the images - there is no indication for such in the files - , this should have been vanished at latest in December 1962 when the license plate of the truck showed up on a list of vehicles of the police battalion company assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in 1942 (see Part 3: Responsibility (I)).

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

According to the on/off Holocaust denier or semi-denier David Cole, the US Nuremberg trial movie Nuremberg: Lessons for Today, which disappeared from the scene after its release in Germany in 1948, was rediscovered by him in 1994 in the US National Archives and called to the attention of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM):
I became convinced that the footage was genuine, and I wrote to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. I exchanged a series of faxes with their film archives director, Raye Farr. I wouldn’t speak with her over the phone, for fear that my incredibly unique voice might tip her off that I was Cole (Cole’s “death” was still fairly recent at that point). In several faxes, Farr told me that the experts she spoke with believed the “gassing” footage was a Soviet fake, staged to use against the Germans at the Nuremberg Trial.
(Cole, Republican Party Animal, p. 99)

We do not have to take Cole’s word for it, since his story that the USHMM staff used to have doubts on the footage’s authenticity is confirmed by the following two articles of 2005 (pointed out by a Holocaust denier in our comment section here): 
Raye Farr, director of the Holocaust Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, says that the Schulberg films have provided the basic material for generations of documentaries about the war. Scholars, she says, still pore over the films, still question what they find in them. Using documents in the possession of Sandra Schulberg, they now know that a scene showing a gassing in Belarus is one of the few authentic depictions of the Nazis' first experiments with this new form of murder.
"It's been in there all along but we didn't know what it was and we didn't know if it is authentic," she says. Now they do.
(Philip Kennicott, Art of Justice: The Filmmakers At Nuremberg, 29 November 2005, Washington Post)
Another rarely seen piece of film - distressing in the extreme - was shown to us during a research trip to the USHMM. The film purported to show an early gas van in operation. There was a certain amount of debate over this, and the questions were raised: 'was this a post-war reconstruction?'; 'what exactly was its provenance?'1 Our caption made it clear that its provenance was uncertain, but it provided a unique visual record of the steps taken towards industrial killing.

1. The film is purported to have been shot in Mogilev, Belarus. One historian at the IWM [Imperial War Museum] who is suspicious as to the authenticity of the film suggests it may have been 'mocked up' or assembled after the war by the East German state-sponsored film company DEFA (Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft).
(Haggith et al., Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film an Television in 1933, p. 25)

The doubts expressed by the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the British Imperial War Museum until 2005/2006 could be understood to some extent if they knew next to nothing about the footage and its historical context. The issue was certainly poorly researched by the Museum’s staff. As a matter of fact, some essential information was already available at the time, if one just looked for it.

The provenance of the footage was mentioned in 1953 by the Historian Gerald Reitlinger in his standard work on the Holocaust:
Wirth may, however, have played a lesser part in the evolution of engine-gassing. As a Kriminalkommissar he was a subordinate of Arthur Nebe, who was commissioned by Himmler during his visit to Minsk in July or August 1941, to find a humane way of dealing with mass executions...This story of von dem Bach-Zelewski's finds some confirmation in the discovery in 1949 in Nebe's former Berlin apartment of an amateur film, showing a gas chamber operated by the exhausts of a car and a lorry.[20]
...
[20] Letter to the author and photographs from Mr. Joseph Zigman, Information Services Division, Office of the US High Commissioner, Germany.
(Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 130 & 603)

The positive identification of the truck as vehicle used by the police battalion assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev in discussed in Mathias Beer's article on German gas vans from 1987 (Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1987, 3, p. 408; English translation here).

The provenance revealed by Reitlinger is confirmed by the letter of Stuart Schulberg to Rudolph Goldschmidt of 18 June 1947 (summarized as "footage found in your house depicts gas chamber, vital evidence", partly quoted in Sandra Schulberg, Filmmakers for the Prosecution: The Making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, p. 21). According to the Washington Post article above, it must have been the find of this document in 2005 or earlier, which made Raye Farr dismissing her suspicion and accept the footage "as one of the few authentic depictions of the Nazis' first experiments with this new form of murder".

Holocaust Denial

In 2013, Klaus Schwensen published an article in the Holocaust denial journal "Inconvenient History" dealing with the gassing footage in some detail. He is not a full blown denier, but more like a semi-denier. He does accept the German Euthanasia with carbon monoxide gas as well as the experimental gassing carried out by Albert Widmann in Mogilev, subjects that will be fought tooth and nail by most Revisionists. They will, however, be likely eager to accept his claim that the Mogilev gassing footage is a Soviet forgery.

Legality
Since the pictures were taken at close range, the photographer must have been authorized to document the scene. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that taking pictures of a secret operation was strictly forbidden.
(Schwensen, The Three Photographs of an Alleged Gas Van)

Even if it were true - for the sake of argument - that it was forbidden to take pictures of secret operations, this would only mean that somebody did not care too much about such regulation. It is far-fetched to suppose that German paramilitary and military personnel would have never or barely done so in the East. Numerous private, compromising photographs found among German soldiers attest the opposite, e.g. shown here German soldiers posing next to corpses (from Reifarth & Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Die Kamera der Henker):




It is further absurd to presume that taking official pictures of secret operations was always strictly forbidden. To the contrary, it is obvious that there had to be one leader, who could authorize taking pictures of any operation. The only question is how far this had to go up in a specific case, to a commando leader, group leader, Heydrich or Himmler.

For example, the SS and police were given permission to take pictures of executions for official reasons. In Himmler's order to the Higher SS and Police Leaders of 12 November 1941 (Národní archiv sg.109-8/6, p.42, online at badatelna.eu), he approved taking pictures in the case this is "officially ordered" and that film and copies are stored in the archive of the corresponding office. The details on how to proceed in such case are written down in a follow up regulation of Heydrich to the SS and police offices of 16 April 1942 (Národní archiv sg.109-8/6, p.36, online at badatelna.eu). According to this, "pictures of executions for official reasons have normally to be ordered by the leaders of the Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos". Hence, an authorization on the level of the commando leaders was sufficient to take photographs of executions.

The Mogilev test gassing was not only attended by the commando leader Otto Bradfisch but also by his superior, the group leader Arthur Nebe. It is entirely possible that the documentation of the gassing Nebe had to report to Himmler/Heydrich was considered sufficiently approved according to the practice at the time.

So while shooting the film could have been easily legal, this was hardly the case anymore when Nebe stored it at his home. Here we go: Nebe did something illegal. So what? He was executed in March 1945 for his involvement in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler. Keeping footage of gassing at home was chicken feed compared to treason.

Professionalism

According to Schwensen, the stills are the "work of professionals" and were taken in the evening or at night with "professional lighting". Schwensen does not explain why the lighting cannot be the result of a low standing sun, though. Anyway, even if there was artificial lighting involved here, nothing speaks against the assumption that Einsatzkommando 8 employed floodlight at the site if the sun was already down. In this context, it is interesting to note that Nebe had experience with filming according to his staff member Andreas von Amburger:
"As already mentioned, Nebe liked to film..."
(interrogation of von Amburger of 27 December 1945, BArch B162/21555, p. 1330).

Discovery
"It is all but certain that the Gestapo thoroughly searched his house after the events of 20 July 1944, and they would surely have found and confiscated the film, had Nebe indeed kept it at home."
(Schwensen, The Three Photographs of an Alleged Gas Van) 

Nebe was not a clear suspect for some time after the 20 July 1944 plot. According to the account of Bernhard Wehner, head of the RSHA office V B 1 and initially in charge of the search for Nebe after he disappeared, Himmler still expressed the possibility that Nebe may have been just insane (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 30 March 1950). The first team that looked for Nebe consisted exclusively of men of his own Criminal Police. The Gestapo men took the lead more and more as the involvement of Nebe and the Criminal Police became more likely. The latter had little interest in finding Nebe and many Gestapo men were likewise old colleagues of him. Wehner recollects that the Gestapo man leading the manhunt "did nothing" himself to find Nebe and that none of the officials of the Criminal Police "showed any desire to seriously find their boss" (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 13 April 1950). Wehner suggests that the police would have "forgotten" about Nebe if he did not ask for attention with another fake suicide attempt (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 30 March 1950).

According to Wehner, the housing of Nebe's wife in Joachimsthal was "mildly" searched by the Criminal Police and later "harsher" by the Gestapo (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 6 April 1950). Based on eyewitness accounts obtained after the war, Wehner reconstructs that how in November 1944 the Gestapo searched Nebe's actual whereabouts in Motzen (after the Criminal Police had no success earlier). The house search was done "superficially" and "listlessly" within 15 minutes and the garden with Nebe's  hide-out was not even looked at (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 13 April 1950). So much on the Gestapo's "thorough search" in the case.

Given the circumstances, it is certainly possible that Nebe's house was not thoroughly searched. There is no indication that the police or the Gestapo confiscated anything from Nebe's house or waded through his private stuff. Or that they were bothered about Nebe's film archive. Or were interested in some shots from his time in the East unrelated to the 20 July 1944 plot. And last but not least, it is not even clear if the film roll with the Mogilev scenes was just standing on the shelve or if it had been hidden by Nebe - in which case it is rather all but certain that the superficial and listless Gestapo would not have find it, even if they looked for something like this, whereas Goldschmidt could have stumbled across the hideout, for example, during renovation work of his new house.

Testimony

As pointed out in the previous part, the KTI/RKPA members Albert Widmann, Hans Schmidt and Alfred Bauer, who carried out the experimental gassing in Mogilev together with Nebe's staff and Einsatzkommando 8, did not recognize the stills of the footage as "their" test run. Schwensen checked out Widmann's and Schmidt's interrogations of 18 April 1962 (cited from Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg) and 4 May 1962 (cited from BArch B162/1604) respectively. He missed that Bauer had initiated the chorus on 9 December 1961 (in BArch B162/4340). Schwensen argues that Widmann and Schmidt's testimonies give the "final blow to this photograph". While the testimonies raise doubts that the test gassing is shown in the footage, they are far from enough for proving this.

The KTI/RKPA witnesses did provide contradictory and uncertain descriptions themselves, which should be taken into account when judging their observational accuracy and ability to match the footage with memory.
For example, on the very same page cited by Schwensen, Schmidt also stated that he does not know anymore if the building was made of wood or stone nor did he remember the second introduction port and hose described by Widmann (interrogation of Schmidt of 4 May 1962, B162/1604, p. 496). Evidently, Schmidt did not have a photographic memory of the scene more than 20 years after the event.
Widmann was arguably more confident in his testimony, which does not rule out that he might have had a slip of memory on more than one occasion. For instance, he may have confused the inside view through the glass window into the gas chamber with the outside view when he recalled that the "bricked window looked terrible...next to the white plastered building wall" (interrogation of Widmann 8 April 1962, BArch, B162/1604, p. 493).

Alternatives

And then there is yet another explanation for the dissonance between the testimonies and the footage. There had been way more than just one homicidal gassing in the Mogilev area. In fact, the majority of inmates in the central Mogilev asylum, where the footage was taken, was killed with engine exhaust in September/October 1941 (see Part 5: Responsibility (III), something Schwensen obviously did not know, although he could have read about it in Winkler et al., Krieg und Psychiatrie 1914-1950, 2010, p. 93, cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 648. So even if Widmann’s experimental gassing is not identical to the footage, the next nearest explanation would be that it shows the main gassing in the Mogilev asylum (with Widmann's test gassing then being a separate action). There is no need to resort to a forgery claim, which comes along with a weird conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy Theory I

Instead of snapshots of a German atrocity, Schwensen’s considers the footage as a Soviet "fake" by the Extraordinary State Commission"to fabricate propaganda material against the ‘fascists’". There is no evidence whatsoever to support this hypothesis nor does it make any sense.

The Soviets learned about the gassings in the Mogilev asylum from its Russian doctors and through them, Schwensen writes, "must have known some details, but overlooked others". However, the footage includes details of the experimental gassing according to Widmann et al., which were lacking in the testimony of the former asylum staff: the use of a cabriolet Adler car and a truck for the gassing and the transport of the mentally ill with a horse-drawn cart. The Russian doctor Aleksandr Stepanov did not identify the kind of vehicles employed (interrogation of A. Stepanov of 20 July 1944, in Istoriya mogilyovskogo evrejstva. Dokumenty i lyudi, book 2, part 2 (2nd. edn.), 2010, p. 194). So by chance the Soviet film crew is supposed to have picked exactly the right vehicles (the Adler, a police truck and horse-drawn cart) for the scene. Lucky guys!

The next problem, why? "To fabricate propaganda material against the 'fascists'", says Schwensen. But why a Mogilev asylum gassing? Among all German atrocities the Soviets came across upon their advance into German occupied territories and during their investigations, the Euthanasia killing of mentally ill people by setting them to "sleep" with engine exhaust in an Belorussian town was one of the least suitable to exploit for propagandistic purposes. The Soviets supposedly went all the way to fake German atrocities on film on an original site, but instead of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Maly Trostinez, Babi Jar, Charkov & Krasnodar etc. pp., all they come up is the local gassing of mentally ill people in Mogilev in collaboration with Russian asylum staff! 

On top of that, the footage would have been staged in one of the least suitable ways for their propaganda purposes. Instead of Germans, we see Russian asylum staff helping the victims from the horse-drawn cart to the gas chamber. Instead of mistreating and beaten the victims, they are cared for and helped down and wrapped into a blanket. Instead of being threatened to death, we see calm Russian asylum staff. Instead of grim German fascists threatening the asylum staff, a relaxed German soldier stands in the background acting more like a bystander than a perpetrator. Instead of terrified victims, they smile and greet the camera man. All of this makes no sense from a Soviet propagandist point of view and already refutes the notion that the footage has been fabricated by the Soviets. The scenes were shot pretty much how it was done by the Germans - or at least how German propaganda would have liked to display how it was done.

Next problem, after placing so much care in the fabrication of the footage even going back and reconstructing the original gassing site in Mogilev, what do the Soviets do with such trophy and precious propaganda material? It was not submitted as evidence at the Nuremberg trials. In May 1947, the Soviets released their own movie on the Nuremberg trial Sud narodov. But it does not feature the Mogilev gassing scenes. Not that it makes any more sense that the Soviets would have "faked" the footage as late as mid 1947 instead of during or right after the war, but even if - for the sake of argument - they were suddenly hit by the idea to fake an Euthanasia gassing after their release of Sud narodov, there was nothing that prevented them from using this propaganda film by themselves instead of donating it to some Rudolf Goldschmidt.

Conspiracy Theory II

A variant of the forgery allegation has been proposed by a Holocaust denier in the comments of this blog (see here). According to him, Rudolf Goldschmidt, who acquired Nebe’s former house, got the idea to fake some atrocity footage he would "find" there and paid some Soviet movie-makers to do so. Just as with the Schwensen story above, this one is not supported by any evidence and is made up from scratch. Moreover, the theory does not make much sense. It is implausible that Goldschmidt would have spent a small fortune on the research, the travel, the actors (including emaciated people as mentally ill), the props (like the Adler cabriolet with license plate registered to the Security Police - see Andreas Herzfeld, Handbuch Deutsche Kfz-Kennzeichen, Band 1, p. 252, cf. online here -  and the truck with proper license plate assigned to Einsatzkommando 8), the permissions - for none of which there is any evidence that they were launched, done, acquired, obtained - just because the new owner of Nebe house "came up with the idea" to fabricate some footage, which did not even contain any exaggerated, propagandistic element. Or that they had to shoot the footage at the original historical site in Mogilev instead of simply using more readily available options, including shooting on set. Or that some Western guy, even with some ties to the Soviets, could just pay for a film to be made at a Nazi atrocity site in the Soviet Union in Stalin's time and would even be allowed to tamper with it.

This variant of the theory that the footage was faked by Westerners avoids the issue as to why it had not been used by the Soviets. However, if the Soviet authorities were not even involved in the forgery, it just raises the next unresolved issue, how Goldschmidt was even aware of the Mogilev gassing and how it was conducted according to the Soviet investigations. But he even had to go beyond what the Soviets learnt from the asylum staff in 1944. Where from did he know about the Adler? About the truck? About the license plate of a truck employed for Einsatzkommando 8 in 1941/42?

The use of an Adler car for the homicidal gassing in Mogilev was first mentioned by the Einsatzgruppe B staff member Andreas von Amburger (interrogation of von Amburger of 27 December 1945, BArch B162/21555, p. 1329). However, his hearsay account does not mention that a second vehicle was employed. So if Goldschmidt scripted the scene based on von Amburger's testimony (which Goldschmidt obtained how again?), there would be no truck connected to a second gas port in the wall. Howsoever we put it, there are no sources known to be available at the time that allowed to reconstruct the scene as it was later pictured by Widmann et al.

Conclusion

Not knowing the provenance and full range of evidence, some public prosecutor in West-Germany and staff of the USHMM and the IWM used to have concerns about the authenticity of the footage. With all the facts laid down, they are as unsubstantiated these days. Except to Holocaust deniers and their affiliates of course, who continue to advance an implausible allegation with unfounded arguments not backed up by any evidence.

There are good reasons to regard the Mogilev gassing footage as authentic German material. The footage was reportedly found in the former house of Arthur Nebe. Nebe was the head of Einsatzgruppe B with its headquarter in Smolensk and Einsatzkommando 8 stationed in Mogilev. The footage was shot at the central Mogilev asylum, which was indeed cleared in 1941 according to contemporary documents. The scenes and setup are very similar to what is known from testimonial evidence how the gassing of mentally ill people with engine exhaust were carried out in general and specifically at this place. The truck with its license plate POL 51628 shown on the gassing scene belonged to the police battalion assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev. The Adler cabriolet with the license plate POL 28545 was registered to the Security Police. Nebe is known to have "liked to film" (interrogation of von Amburger cited above) and was present for the first gassing. The action is displayed how it was likely carried out by the Germans or at least how they preferred it to look like.

The only issue here is that Widmann, Bauer and Schmidt did not recognize the stills as the first test gassing. The contradiction can be resolved either by considering them to have been wrong or by supposing that the test gassing and the large scale gassing of the central asylum in Mogilev were separate in time and place and that the footage captured the latter one.
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More evidence converges on the homicidal Auschwitz gas van

September 7, 2016, 2:20 pm
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In my 2006 article "How the convergence of evidence works: the gas van of Auschwitz" I illustrated the convergence of evidence principle on an example of the Auschwitz gas van.

Long story made short: Auschwitz resistance messages mentioned a gas van operating in Auschwitz in late 1944, mentioning its registration number; several witnesses after the war mentioned gas vans operating in Auschwitz; finally, I discovered that the same registration number was mentioned in a 1942 Einsatzgruppe B report as belonging to a "Gaswagen". Thus all the evidence converged to the conclusion that a homicidal gas van was operating in Auschwitz for smaller execution actions, and while separate pieces of evidence might not be deemed sufficient on their own to reach such a conclusion, these pieces of evidence taken together mutually reinforced and corroborated each other, like pieces of a puzzle.

Deniers did respond in their own way by trying to obfuscate the issue and largely ignoring the arguments I had made in my article. Their attempts at erasing the evidence will be examined in  detail by Hans in later posts. Meanwhile I wish to report on a new find of mine that makes the deniers' task of falsifying history even more difficult and reinforces the convergence of evidence principle once again.


During the investigation of the Auschwitz car pool (Fahrbereitschaft) personnel, Karl Hirschmann (camp number 116818), a former scribe and storekeeper in the tools and spare parts warehouse of the so-called Prague hall (Prager Halle, Praga-Halle) which belonged to the Fahrbereitschaft, made the following claim as a part of a larger statement made in Vienna (02.04.1963; BArch B162/2825, Bl.169ff):
In the camp Auschwitz there were also several box-type vans [Kastenkraftwagen], so-called gassing vans [Vergasungswagen], that were also brought to the Prague hall for repairs and cleaning. One gassing van always stood before the Prague hall with the other trucks in the yard. I don't know on what occasion these gassing vans were used. It was told that inmates were gassed during the ride. During my stay there a gassing van arrived in the Prague hall at least once per week for cleaning. In the last year before the dissolution of the camp it happened often. The box of the van was stained with excrements and blood. We also found teeth and earlobes. On the floor of the box a connecting piece was installed (diameter about 10 cm) that in the box interior was covered with a perforated metal plate. From the exhaust pipe led a flexible metal hose, which could be screwed on the above-mentioned connecting piece.
Once again, a testimony that is hardly sufficient to establish facts on its own actually becomes a significant piece of evidence when observed not in isolation, but together with other evidence. Consider the following points:
  • George Goiny-Grabowski, the Fahrbereitschaft's head scribe, who also was in a perfect position to know such things, confirmed the existence of gas vans too (without, however, providing the kind of technical details that Hirschmann did). His statement has been quoted in the article above (it can also be found in BArch B162/2835, Bl. 160ff., 25.09.1963, Adelaide).
  • There existed various gas van modifications, however here is the one that matches Hirschmann's, from a 30.03.1963 judgment in the Chelmno case (LG Bonn 30.03.1963, JuNSV Lfd.Nr.594b, Bd.XXI, S.277):
    These gas vans were massive gray-painted trucks, foreign-manufactured, with a closed box body, which was separated from the driver's cabin and was about 2 meters wide, 2 meters high and 4 meters long. The interior was lined with galvanized iron. On the floor lay two wooden grates, under which in the first period there was an opening in the car floor, which was covered with a perforated steel plate, and later two tubes with small holes. To this opening or pipes a hose was connected under the car floor, which had a tapered tip. The hose end could be inserted into the exhaust pipe and firmly screwed with a union nut.
    The difference here is where the hose was attached firmly, and where it could be screwed on - on the exhaust pipe or inside. It is possible that in this modification the hose was actually connected with union nuts on both ends (that would certainly have been helpful when replacing a defective hose). Whether or not this was the case, even if it was a minor slip of memory, that wouldn't diminish the testimony's value.  One detail in Hirschmann's testimony that is not mentioned in the judgment, but is also confirmed by other testimonies, is that the hose was a flexible metal hose.
Moreover, both Hirschmann's and Goiny-Grabowski's statemens were unprompted. Curiously enough the Frankfurt investigators were not interested in the gas van aspect. While the members of the Fahrbereitschaft were asked about other aspects of these two witnesses' testimonies, as far as I could establish they were never interrogated about the gas vans (see esp. BArch B162/2715, 2825-2831, 2837).
    In the end, Hirschmann's descriptions confirm that witnesses did not simply confuse a wood gas generator truck (Holzgaswagen) with a homicidal gas van, as some deniers claim.
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    Mattogno's waffling on the Zigeunerlager gassing

    September 9, 2016, 10:38 am
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    In his article "Gypsy Holocaust? The Gypsies under the National Socialist Regime" Carlo Mattogno tried to respond to our criticisms in the posting "Correction Corner #4: Auschwitz Museum and the number of Gypsy victims". I say "our", because the key argument in the critique belongs to Nick Terry. To recap:


    - Danuta Czech based her number of Roma gassed on 2/3.8.44 on the male labor deployment reports, assuming for some reason that they contained the stats both for male and female Roma in the so-called "Gypsy camp" (further: Zigeunerlager).

    - After I shared some documents with Auschwitz statistics with Nick, he pointed out that one batch of the documents actually contained the reports on the numbers of Roma females in the Zigeunerlager.

    - These documents showed that Czech's number of 2897 Roma gassed in Auschwitz on 2/3.8.44 is based on a fundamental misreading of the documents. Unfortunately, this absolutely incorrect number is still cited by most mainstream sources when talking about this mass gassing.

    - In his initial article "The "Gassing" of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944" Mattogno based his argument against the historicity of the gassing on Czech's data. Refutation of Czech was therefore automatically a refutation of Mattogno.

    - In his initial attempt Mattogno badly misread another of Czech's claims and accused her of a basic arithmetic mistake. I have shown that Mattogno's interpretation of Czech's words was mistaken.

    - I tentatively concluded that most probably up to 3613 Roma could have been gassed on that night (assuming that yet another of Czech's assumptions was wrong - as it seems to be).

    In his new article Mattogno concedes his misreading of Czech:
    Since, therefore, Danuta Czech considers the 1,408 transferred Gypsies as forming part of these 1,500 sent to Auschwitz, according to her logic, they should not be subtracted from the 2,898 Gypsies presumed gassed, as I had done in the first draft of this article.69 Apart from this rather unimportant point, this alleged fact in no way influences the structure of my argument.
    While it is true that his larger argument was not affected, this incident shows Mattogno's carelessness, possibly caused by a "hostile" reading of Czech. Czech may have been wrong (and I tentatively assume that she was wrong on this issue), but Mattogno added his own mistake on top of hers.

     Anyway, that matter cleared up, what about Mattogno's main argument? Mattogno writes now:
    Danuta Czech claimed to have documentarily proven the gassing of 2,897 Gypsy men and women based on the Arbeitseinsatz reports (labor deployment reports) from the male camp at Birkenau; for my part, I have limited myself to showing that her interpretation is documentarily unjustified. The discovery of the Stärkemeldung reports from the female sector of the camp only confirms my refutation.
    I'm afraid Mattogno is trying to pull a fast one here. He wants to pretend he was merely refuting Czech's interpretation. However back then he wrote at the end of his original piece, which was called simply "The "Gassing" of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944" and not "Czech's interpretation of ... etc.":
    Consequently, we can be certain that the story about the gassing of the gypsy-camp is not grounded in historical fact.
    Note that he doesn't say "Czech's interpretation is not grounded in historical fact". Neither does he say "grounded in documentary evidence" (historical facts are not necessary established on the basis of "documentary" evidence in Mattogno's sense). Since there is evidence, even if it may not be documentary, it means that he dismisses the whole"story", and that - merely on the basis of Czech's faulty interpretation. But refuting Czech is just that - it doesn't refute the gassing itself (as has been shown). Therefore Mattogno went outside of what was allowed by evidence. In other words, he was plain wrong and he was shown by us to have been plain wrong.

    In this light Mattogno's claim that the "discovery of the Stärkemeldung reports from the female sector of the camp only confirms [his] refutation" is simply laughable bluster. Mattogno tried to show on the basis of Czech's reconstruction that there were simply not enough Roma in the camp to be gassed (otherwise his conclusion is groundless). Czech's reconstruction was shown to be wrong, the pool of the Roma available for gassing at the time was expanded very considerably by the new published Stärkemeldung,  In what way then does the report "confirm" his "refutation"? No, it absolutely debunks it.

    Mattogno goes on:
    On the other hand, while it is true that I perforce based my findings on the manpower of the male Gypsy camp, I did not neglect the women’s camp at all. In fact, I mentioned the Gypsy women’s transport which departed Birkenau on 1 August 1944 and reached Ravensbrück concentration camp on 3 August. The number of camp inmates is unknown, and it is not even known whether there were other Gypsy transports to other camps. But there is nothing to indicate that all 3,422 of the Gypsy women in the female section of BIIe Camp were not transported to other camps on 31 July 1944. Upon what documentary basis can one assert that all or any of them were gassed?
    If one argues that there is documentary evidence for this gassing, one would indeed have to provide it, but not having this evidence doesn't mean that there aren't other kinds of evidence that historians routinely use. Whether or not Mattogno accepts other kinds of evidence rather than documents is neither here, nor there. He does not set the rules of history-writing. The question is rather the reverse: is there any evidence, documentary or otherwise, that the gassing did not take place as described? No, there isn't.
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    Trump Junior Promotes 9/11 Truther Alex Jones on 9/11 Anniversary

    September 11, 2016, 8:02 am
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    Alex Jones is a 9/11 "truther" (see here). He is the figure pictured second from right in the image below. Donald J. Trump Junior says he is "honored to be grouped with" the men in this picture.
    A friend sent me this. Apparently I made the cut as one of the Deplorables😂😂😂 All kidding aside I am honored to be grouped with the hard working men and women of this great nation that have supported @realdonaldtrump and know that he can fix the mess created by politicians in Washington. He's fighting for you and won't ever quit. Thanks for your trust!

    Source:
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    From the vocabulary of Aktion 1005

    September 11, 2016, 1:41 pm
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    With time the members of Aktion 1005, whose task was destroying the traces of the Nazi crimes by incinerating corpses from mass graves, developed their own slang to denote their activities. Some of the terms became sort of official, as we will see. Since the issue of the Nazi code words crops up from time to time in denial-related discussions, I decided to gather what I could about several terms most often used by the corpse-burning brigades.

    Baustelle (construction site): a site where corpses exhumed from mass graves were incinerated.

    Sources: E. Leuthold, SK 1005b, BArch B162/3536, Bl. 215, 26.11.63, "when one construction site [Baustelle] had been in operation for a longer time, the inmates were regularly shot after a certain period of about 14 days", op.cit., 3548, Bl. 82, 09.05.67, "in the language use back then the work places for corpse incineration were called "construction sites [Baustellen]"; F. Hollinderbäumer, op.cit., 3538, Bl. 71, 17.02.65 - was in Riga for guarding the "so-called construction sites [Baustellen]"; H. Kappen, SK 1005b, op.cit., 3549, Bl. 57, 11.07.67, "the work sites for corpse incineration were called "construction sites [Baustellen]" back then"; F. Löbbert, SK 1005b, op.cit., Bl. 117,  18.08.67, incineration sites "were called construction sites [Baustellen] by us", also Bl. 118.

    Figuren (figures, chess pieces): individual corpses in the mass graves; also sometimes used for Jewish forced laborers who had to dig out and incinerate the corpses.

    Sources: Jewish forced laborer Yuliy Farber's statement about Ponary contained in a 14.08.1944 special message of NKGB SSSR to NKVD SSSR in Tragediya Litvy, Evropa, 2006, s. 25, refers to "figury"/corpses many times; W. Schallock, leader of SK 1005 Janowska, BArch B162/27014, Bl. 28, 17.04.63, mentioned "figures [Figuren] (corpses)"; H. Kappen, SK1005b, op.cit., 3537, Bl. 216, 21.02.64, tells of a leader of SK 1005a who held a speech, in which he said: "What you see in this pit are not humans but "figures"[Figuren]. These figures are correspondingly the object of our task", also see Kappen, 11.07.67, op.cit., 3549, Bl. 54, 55; F. Behrens, SK 1005b,  op.cit., 3546, Bl.30, 07.07.65, "the graves were opened by a work crew that was called "figures [Figuren]" by the SD people"; Leon Weliczker-Wells, Jewish forced laborer in SK 1005 Janowska, The Death Brigade, 1978, p. 196 (as quoted here): "We build pyres of two thousand or more "figures," the name the Germans gave the bodies. They call us "figures," too. They say, for example: "Zehn Figuren heraustreten!" (Ten figures step out!)".

    Wetterberichte, Wettermeldungen (weather reports), Wolkenhöhe (cloud height), Niederschläge (precipitations), Wetterstationen (weather stations) - meteorology-related terms used to denote the burial sites and number of corpses in them, as well as reports about the numbers of burned corpses. The commandos were accordingly sometimes called Wetterkommandos (weather commandos). Possibly also the term Wasserstellen (water sites) was used to denote mass graves.

    Sources: F. Hegenscheidt, BdS 'Schwarzes Meer', 28.03.1944 radiogram to Chef der Sipo und des SD and Einsatzgruppe C Lemberg calling the areas of operation of SK 1005a and SK 1005b "precipitation areas"[Niederschlagsgebiete], BArch B162/3537, Bl. 183,  23.11.62, F.H. was aware of a "weather commando" [Wetterkommando] that had to clean up the results of the activities of Sonder- and Einsatzkommandos; E.Hansen, SK 7a member who defected to the Soviets, GARF f. 7021, op. 148, d. 35, ll. 42-53, 14.04.44, reported that "Wettermeldung" was a code word for the incineration of bodies of the people shot in '41-'43 - in his mind the word denoted the process itself, he describes in detail how he also took part in several such actions;  W.Piller, SK Legath, SK Bothmann, YVA O.53/12, pp.17ff., 19.05.45, belonged to a "weather commando [Wetterkommando]" headed by Hans Legath, which had to destroy mass graves which were called "weather stations [Wetterstationen]"; L.Wandel, head of Radom Gestapo, BArch B162/3534, Bl. 17, 23.07.45, was asked by KdS Radom about the purpose of a strictly secret telegram called weather report [Wetterbericht], it had to do with graves and actions of certain commandos, also says was a friend of Blobel and learned many details from him; E.Schulz, NO-3841, 20.12.45, in his capacity as Amtschef I des RSHA learned of Blobel's activity: "if I remember correctly, the code name for these mass graves was "water sites [Wasserstellen]""; H. Sohns, organizer of SK 1005a and SK 1005b, BArch B162/3543, Bl. 68, 05.06.62, testified that the number of corpses was coded as cloud height [Wolkenhöhe], op.cit., 3546, Bl. 140, 10.10.66, testified that the reports about exhumations were coded as weather reports [Wettermeldungen], the coding idea stemmed from himself; K. Nicolaus, SK 1005 under KdS Warschau Dr. Hahn, op.cit., Bl. 115, 12.11.63, "the corpses were described as precipitations [Niederschläge]", had to be reported to Dr. Hahn each 10-14 days, telex was then sent to RSHA where "the number of the eliminated corpses was given as an amount of precipitation [Niederschlagsmenge]"; M. Hanisch, SK 1005a, op.cit., 3537, Bl. 65, 13.10.64, reports that in the weather reports [Wetterberichte] the number of incinerated corpses was coded as the cloud height [Wolkenhöhe]; W.Meyer, radio center head at SK7b, cited in Jens Hoffmann, "Das kann man nicht erzählen". "Aktion 1005" - Wie die Nazis die Spuren ihrer Massenmorde in Osteuropa beseitigten, 2008, S. 158, 24.09.67, told how he began getting coded messages with the subject "Re: weather report, cloud height"["Betr. Wettermeldung, Wolkenhöhe"] with numbers and text, and he was angry about these seemingly useless messages because of the already existing work overload until the actual meaning of the messages (elimination of mass graves) was explained to him.
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    Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans

    September 17, 2016, 8:20 am
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    The operation and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 March 1942 explicitly mentions four "Gaswagen" (gas vans) in the group's motor pool. The report, which was published in the 90s, corroborates earlier evidence such as the testimony of the gas vans' drivers, and vice versa. This independent, mutual corroboration results in more powerful evidence on the reality of Germans homicidal gas vans.

    As starter and to provide some context, the activities of the group, which demanded the use gas vans, and the contribution of the group to the development of gas vans will be outlined. The main part looks at what the Einsatzgruppe B report stated on its gas vans and relates this to other sources. The final part addresses why the "Revisionist" Carlo Mattogno failed once again with his denial of German homicidal gas vans.

    The Historical Context of the Document

    Einsatzgruppe B

    On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the Einsatzgruppen advanced into the Soviet territory in the slipstream of the Army Groups. The tasks of the Einsatzgruppen were summed up in Heydrich's briefing of the Higher SS and Police Leaders in the East of 2 July 1941 as manhunt, intelligence and executions (Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 44 f.) The executions comprised the targets communist politicians, functionaries of the communist party and state, Jews in party and state position. This was a well defined and limited group of people, which can be expected to have been mostly evacuated upon the Soviet retreat anyway. Indeed, the number of killed people among these groups are almost negligible within the overall death toll of the Einsatzgruppen.

    But Heydrich added another category of targets, which were to become the main victims: "other radical elements". Ill-defined and vague as it was formulated and open for interpretation, it gave the Einsatzgruppen the license to physically exterminate anything considered necessary and useful for the Nazi agenda. It meant not only the killing of insurgents, political dissidents, opposition and criminals without any trial whatsoever but also the liquidation of beggars, gypsies, so called racially inferior people, mentally ill and - most of all - the Jews.

    The Einsatzgruppe B followed the Army Group Centre into Soviet territory. Its Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos advanced via Brest, Wilna, Bialystok and Minsk deep into White Ruthenia and reached the Russian city Smolensk. The first killings were carried out in Wilna among "Jewish communist party functionaries" (activity report USSR no. 11 of 3 July 1941, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I, p. 70), but the shootings were quickly extended to Jewish "intelligentsia", "political activists" and "wealthy Jews" (activity report USSR no.17 of 9 July 1941, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I, p. 98). 321 Jews were killed between 3rd and 8th July 1941 in Wilna. Yet, this was only a first sign and warning shot of what was to come about for the Eastern European Jews. The Einsatzkommando 9 ordered 150 local police men "to take part in the liquidation of the Jews" and "about 500 Jews and other saboteurs are liquidated every day". The group further reported that "1050 Jews were liquidated" and "more are continuously brought to execution every day" in the detention camp for civilians in Minsk (activity report USSR no. 21 of 13 July 1941, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I, 113 f.).

    The first 100% quota of killed Jews was officialy reported on 23 September 1941 for Lahoysk. The Einsatzkommando 9 and members of the SS division Das Reich "executed" 920 Jews and the report concluded that the "place can be now called free of Jews" (activity report USSR no. 92 of 23 September 1941, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I, p. 546). The chief of Einsatzgruppe B Arthur Nebe only won the third place of this challenge though, as Einsatzgruppe A and D reported the extermination of all Jews in whole areas already in the earlier activity reports of 19 and 20 September 1941 (activity reports USSR no. 88 & 89, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I, p. 494 & 511; however, according to Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 2012, p. 569 f. relying mostly on testimonial evidence, entire Jewish communities were liquidated already since late August 1941 by units of Einsatzgruppe B). Other places shot free or nearly free of Jews by units of Einsatzgruppe B according the various activity reports USSR were Krupka (912 victims), Sholopenitsche (812), Mogilev (about 5000), Bobruisk (7079), Smalyavichy (1401), Vitebsk twice (about 3000 in October 1941 and 4090 in December 1941), Nevel (714), Janovichi (1025).

    In total, Einsatzgruppe B reported the killing of about 71,600 people between July and December 1941. Another 62,600 victims were added to the death toll until mid-December 1942. The accumulated, claimed body count of Einsatzgruppe B over time is shown in Figure 1.

    Figure 1: Accumulated killings reported by Einsatzgruppe B between 24 June 1941 - 31 March 1943. Figures from activity report no. 31 & 73 & 108 & 125 & 133 of 23 July & 4 September & 9 & 26 October & 14 November 1941 (reproduced in Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion I), operation and situation report of 1 March and 1 September 1942 (Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen II, p. 296 & 404), operation and situation report for 15 November to 15 December 1942 (BArch B162/21579, p. 94), operation and situation report for 1 to 31 March 1943 (Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen II, p. 574). The figure of 22 December 1941 was calculated from the sum of the summary total of 14 November 1941 and the individual killing actions further reported up to 22 December 1941.

    For 1941, the activity reports provide the killing reason for 59,877 victims of Einsatzgruppe B. The breakdown is depicted in Figure 2. The category "others" covers the execution of communist functionaries, NKVD agents & informers, supporters of partisans, saboteurs and criminals. Together with the category "partisans", it accounts for 5% of the victims of Einsatzgruppe B. It's exactly this group of people the Einsatzgruppen should have been limited to if they had no genocidal and democidal task. Yet, these made up only a fraction of their executions. The vast majority of victims (95%) were Jews, mentally ill people and so-called "racially inferior elements" ("rassisch vollkommen minderwertige Elemente") from army detention camps for civilians.

    Figure 2: Breakdown of the victims of 59,877 killings mentioned by Einsatzgruppe B in 1941.

    The Problem of Mass Shootings

    The mass killing by individual shootings of men, women and children, even though numerically quite effective, posed considerable strain on the shooting squads.

    The adjutant of Einsatzgruppe B Karl Schulz testified that "the nerves of the members of the shooting squads were subjected to tremendous strain" (interrogation of Schulz of 9 March 1959, BArch B 162/5066, p. 114). Erwin Cz. of the police reserve battalion 9, whose companies were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen up to December 1941, recalled that "my comrades and I - and I can easily say all comrades - were physically and mentally totally done after such action" (interrogation of 23 January 1962, BArch B 162/3275, p. 196).

    According to Albert Hartl, head of the RSHA office IV B on ideological enemies and "visitor" of Einsatzgruppe C, the group's head Max Thomas explained that people assigned to the shooting squads developed "the worst sadistic drives" or suffered from "hysterical crying" and "health breakdown" (interrogation of Hartl of 16 January 1957, BArch B 162/1254, p. 986). Georg Bi. of the police reserve battalion 9 remembered a case when some "Sergeant Gan. got a nervous break down during the [two day lasting] execution" (interrogation of of 25 July 1965, BArch B 162/5654, p. 3547). As the police battalion was withdrawn from Russia in December 1941, its new commander Arthur Seidel noticed that "these people had experienced rough times" and that they "had to disable one man and sent them to an asylum after he made use of his duty pistol without any reason" (interrogation of Seidel of 12 December 1963, BArch, B 162/964, p. 1320).

    Figure 3.
    Von dem Bach-Zelewski himself suffered under a "nervous state of exhaustion" related to the "shooting of Jews supervised by himself and other heavy experiences in the East" according to a contemporary document from the Reichsarzt SS Ernst-Robert Grawitz (letter Grawitz to Himmler of 4 March 1942, Figure 3, from Bartoszewski, Erich von dem Bach, p. 97).


    Minsk, 15 August 1941

    On 15 August 1941, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had the following appointment in the morning according to his diary:
    "Attending an execution of partisans and Jews near Minsk"  
    (Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, p. 195)

    The people to be shot were summoned to the execution site by members of the first platoon of the 2nd company of the police reserve battalion 9, which also carried out the execution together with members of Einsatzkomando 8. The battalion's platoon leader Paul Dinter described the shooting as following:
    "120 - 150 prisoners from the Minsk prison were brought in the morning by our men...mostly Jews....When Himmler arrived, the first group of about 15 men was already in the pit. The delinquents laid down in the pit with their face down. I had allocated the execution squad so that each two men were shooting on a delinquent. When Himmler came with his entourage, Dr. Bradfisch reported to him and the shooting was immediately started. Two pits had been prepared. At one pit the Jews were shot by my platoon, at the other pit the Security Service was shooting. The pits were at 30 m distance. Himmler and his entourage stayed in between to closely observe the shooting. When I gave the firing command, Himmler was right next to me. After the first volley, Himmler directly approached me and looked into the pit. He observed that one was still alive. He told me: "Lieutenant, shoot him!" I received a carbine and gave this man a coup de grâce. Himmler stayed next to me."
    (interrogation of Dinter of 8 January 1963, BArch B 162/5033, p. 1103 ff.; )

    In the post-war narrative of Himmler's adjutant Karl Wolff, "a piece of brain splashed onto [Himmler's] coat", who was "disgusted..threw up" and "seemed to sway a bit" (interrogation of Wolff of 13 February 1962, BArch B 162/5027, p. 14, see also Karl Wolff on Himmler's Visit to Minsk). This incident has been not confirmed by anybody else who had been at the scene. While the Higher SS and Police leader of Russia-Center Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski stated that Himmler was "pale", he also testified that "the reading that Himmler cried or threw up is false" (interrogation of von dem Bach-Zelewski of 19 December 1962, BArch B 162/5033, p. 1079).

    In any case, Himmler's physiological reaction could not have been too strong as he was still able to give a speech to the members of Einsatzkommando 8 after the shooting. His impressions and/or the wish of SS leaders made Himmler to justify and take responsibility for the mass killing of people, mostly Jews for no legal reason and without any trial. Both von dem Bach-Zelewski and the Einsatzkommando 8 leader Otto Bradfisch claimed they pushed Himmler into this (von dem Bach-Zelewski's account quoted in Aufbau, 23 August 1946, p. 2 and interrogation of Bradfisch of 9 June 1958, BArch B 162/5029, p.11).

    The essence of Himmler's speech is summarised in the trial judgement against Karl Wolff based on seven witnesses:
    "Himmler declared after the shootings that the hard struggle that the German people had to undertake made harsh measures such as this imperative. The Jews were the bearers of world Bolshevism and they must therefore be destroyed. He and Hitler had assumed responsibility for this before the court of history. The task was difficult, but it had to be carried out."
    (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Band, vol. 20, p. 436, English translation from Richard J. Evans, David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition)

    In their post-war testimonies, Wolff and von dem Bach-Zelewskis explained away the execution that it concerned only convicted partisans and their helpers. In reality, it had been just another mass killing of people picked up as supposed "radical elements", an extremely broad term set by the Nazi ideology. As the police platoon leader in charge of the shooting noticed:
    "It is incomprehensible to me how anybody, who has experienced the execution at the time, could get the idea that this was a military execution of criminals."
    (interrogation of Dinter of 8 January 1963, BArch B 162/5033, p. 1107).

    After the show killing, Himmler visited a transit camp for Soviet POWs, took lunch and then a drive through the Jewish ghetto in Minsk. The next station of the trip reads as follows:
    "Visiting the asylum"
    (Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, p. 195)

    This "sightseeing tour of a small insane-asylum, near Minsk" was also mentioned by von dem Bach-Zelewski in 1945/46 way before Himmler's diary was available. He further stated that the visit was followed by a talk between Himmler, Nebe, Wolff and himself, where "Himmler orders Nebe to 'free' the insanes from their suffering" and "to make use of a more human method of killing" than the shooting in the morning putting too much strain on the execution squad. Nebe was supposed to try explosives (handwritten manuscript of von dem Bach-Zelewski, NARA Record Group 238, M1270/1/111, p. 42, English translation from p. 36; Wolff's presence is mentioned in Aufbau, 23 August 1946, p. 2).
     
    Von dem Bach-Zelewski's testimony is the only direct source on this conversation and so it should be taken carefully. But the order to liquidate the asylum is plausible given the Euthanasia in the Third Reich and the fact that Nebe's Einsatzgruppe B reported the killing of 632 mentally ill in Minsk about sevens weeks later. The subsequent events, which will be described in the following, support the essence of von dem Bach-Zelewski's account that Himmler ordered to kill mentally ill in the area with supposedly more human methods of killing.

    Enhanced Killing Method for the East

    The day after the show execution with Himmler, von dem Bach-Zelewski cabled to the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Warthegau Wilhelm Koppe, who had previously carried out the gassing of mentally ill in Soldau, to get a demonstration of the "procedure" applied by the SS-Sonderkommando Lange (Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 1999, p. 648, also Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, p. 195). This procedure concerned the killing of mentally ill people as suggested by Koppe's later request of early October 1941 "to sent Sonderkommando Lange with suitable repair [recte: apparatus] for the clearing of three of their asylums near Novgorod" (Gassing of Mental Patients by Sonderkommando Lange in Novgorod). Whereas in the German Altreich mentally ill people were killed in stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas bottles, the Sonderkommando Lange operating in annexed Polish territory mounted the carbon monoxide bottles on a trailer attached to truck, whose cargo box served as gas chamber (see Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, English translation here).

    There is no evidence that Sonderkommando Lange actually managed to demonstrate their mobile gas chamber in Minsk. Instead, Nebe went forward to carry out some new killing methods. Nebe was not only in charge of Einsatzgruppe B, but also head of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA) in Berlin (RSHA office V), to which also the Criminal Technical Institute (KTI) of the Security Police belonged. The institute had already assisted in implementing the Euthanasia gassings with carbon monoxide bottles.

    In September 1941, Nebe called his specialist on explosives and toxicology Albrecht Widmann from the KTI to Minsk and Mogilev for the killing of mentally ill people with explosives and engine exhaust because "he could not demand from his men to shoot incurable mentally ill" (interrogation of Widmann of 11 January 1960, BArch B 162/5066, p. 130). The dating September 1941 follows from the testimony of Widmann (interrogation of 27 January 1960, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ZS3120, p. 11) and his laboratory assistant Hans Schmidt (interrogation of 6 April 1960, BArch B 162/4338, p. 215, cf. Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord, p. 369) as well as the strength of the Mogilev asylum of "910 persons" on 3 September 1941 (cited in Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 2012, p. 649) and the Einsatzgruppen report of 9 October 1941 that "in Minsk and Mogilew 632 and 836  mentally ill people were specially treated" (activity report USSR no. 108 of 9 October 1941, Angrick et al, Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion, p. 663).

    The KTI staff (Albrecht Widmann  & Hans Schmidt) and two RKPA drivers (Alfred Bauer & Noack) left Berlin to Belorussia to implement the homicidal gassing of mentally ill with engine exhaust in Mogilev (see German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 4: Responsibility (II)). The asylum earlier visited by Himmler near Minsk (Novinki) was likewise liquidated in September 1941 using engine exhaust (examination of Akimova of 18 November 1946, quoted in Aly, Aussonderung und Tod, p. 88 f.). Nebe also attributed this killing  in Minsk to his group in the above cited activity report USSR no. 108. It is, however, not known so far who was the "chemist" mentioned by Akimova on the scene, whether Widmann or yet somebody else (Gerlach suggests it may have been the KTI chemist Heinrich Hoffmann, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 649).

    The KTI/RKPA team also carried out Nebe's idea of killing with explosives and blew up a bunker with mentally ill in Minsk. It succeeded only in a second attempt and the result was a mess to clean up (interrogation of Albert Widmann of 11 January 1960, BArch B 162/5066, p. 130ff.; interrogation of Hans Schmidt of 6 April 1960, BArch B 162/4338, p. 215 ff.; interrogation of Alfred Bauer of  17 March 1960, BArch B 162/4338, p. 141 ff.; interrogation of Wilhelm Jaschke of 5 April 1960, BArch B 162/4338, p. 209 f.; interrogation of Paul Dinter of 8 January 1963, BArch B 162/5033, p. 1108; interrogation of Andreas von Amburger of 27 December 1945, BArch B 162/21555 p. 1327). 

    One may wonder why Nebe tried such rather crude method. He may have genuinely considered it as an option. The explosion brings immediate death if done properly. Nebe was familiar with explosives: he was an officer of an engineering battalion in World War 1 (see Nebe's curriculum vitae, quoted in Rathert, Verbrechen und Verschwörung, p. 18) and led the investigations into the assassination attempt on Hitler of 8 November 1939 with explosives by Johann Georg Elser. More speculative is whether Nebe actually tried to test an assassination attempt under the disguise of the Euthanasia. Note that in 1943, there had been another killing action with explosives near Minsk. After the removal of mass graves at the extermination site Maly Trostinez, members of the so called Sonderkommando 1005 blew up their working prisoners, which had been locked up in a bunker (interrogation of Adolf Rübe of 7 September 1959, BArch B 162/1325, p. 55f.).

    In any case, the killings in Mogilev and Minsk in September 1941 showed Nebe that the "killing with exhaust gas is to be preferred" (interrogation of Widmann of 11 January 1960, BArch B162/5066, p. 130 ff.). So far, the actions were limited to mentally ill people in asylums, which made up only a small fraction of the victims of Einsatzgruppe B. The bulk of the killing - Jewish families - was still carried out by bullets for some time.

    Prototype Gas Van with Engine Exhaust

    For the decentralised mass shootings in the huge Russian territory, the most suitable killing method to replace mass shootings was considered the use of mobile gas chambers with engine exhaust. This technique merged the mobility of the gas vans of Sonderkommando Lange using carbon monoxide bottles with the readily available exhaust gas from gasoline engines.

    In collaboration with the KTI, the RSHA motor pool department constructed with the help of the Gaubschat company in Berlin homicidal gas vans operating with engine exhaust. The exhaust of a truck (possibly an Opel Blitz) was to be pumped into the cargo box mounted on its chassis. The vehicle was brought to the KTI, where the carbon monoxide concentration which developed in the cargo box was measured. The first test gassing on human beings was performed on Russian POWs in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (interrogation of Theodor Leidig of 6 February 1959, BArch B 162/5066, p. 106 ff., interrogation of Helmut Hoffmann of 13 October 1958, BArch B 162/5066, p. 88f., interrogation of Hans Schmidt of 11 December 1958 [only on gas analysis], BArch B 162/1602, p. 21, cf.  Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden).

    There is no evidence that the killing in Minsk ordered by Himmler was originally meant as test run for homicidal gas vans employing engine exhaust. Von dem Bach's activity to get Sonderkommando Lange with its carbon monoxide bottles to Minsk suggests that this was not an issue yet by August 1941. However, it stands to reason that Nebe's killings in the Minsk and Mogilev asylums in September 1941 were also related to the development of the gas vans operating with engine exhaust, because 

    a) they employed the same murder technique 

    b) both the gassings in Mogilev and Minsk and the development of the homicidal gas vans were carried out by the Criminal Technical Institute of the RSHA 

    c) the gas van prototype was likely constructed and tested after the asylum gassings. Hoffmann and Leidig dated tests on the prototype gas van to Winter 1941/1942. Taking a temperature drop close to zero as beginning of "Winter", the tests had to be taken place in or after late October 1941 (see e.g. temperatures here).

    d) Nebe's staff member Andreas von Amburger testified that "based on these experiments, the so called gas vans were subsequently produced" (interrogation of 27 December 1945, BArch B162/21555, p. 1329)

    First Series of Gas Vans of Einsatzgruppe B

    After the tests at the KTI and in Sachsenhausen turned out as successful, further gas vans based on 3 tons Diamond T (possibly also on French/other American) chassis were constructed and distributed among the Einsatzgruppen and Sonderkommando Chelmno at the end of 1941, mainly for the extermination of the Jews.
     
    Two Diamond T gas vans were sent to Riga to Einsatzgruppe A in December 1941 and passed on to Minsk in Spring 1942. They were operated by the gas van drivers Karl Gebel and Erich Gnewuch. Another gas van driven by Wilhelm Findeisen was delivered to Einsatzgruppe C in Kiev in November/December 1941. A fourth gas van was supposedly employed by Einsatzgruppe D since December 1941 (according to Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Band XL, Verfahren 816, p. 287, cf. Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, p. 413; it is unclear from the judgement on what evidence the dating is based on; however, according to Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Einsatzgruppe D, the first gas van was used by Einsatzgruppe D since spring 1942). Two gas vans ended up in Chelmno in December 1941. Mathias Beer has designated these six vehicles as the first series of gas vans. The figure seems to be confirmed by the head of the technical department of the RSHA Walther Rauff ("In so far as I can recall I only supplied 5 or 6", affidavit Rauff of 19 October 1945, 2348-PS; this would have omitted the big Saurer series of gas vans though, see below).

    However, such distribution of the first gas vans among the Einsatzgruppen is insofar odd as they would have been only supplied to Einsatzgruppe A, C and D, but not to Einsatzgruppe B. Despite the fact that Nebe was head of Einsatzgruppe B until November 1941 (then replaced by Erich Naumann) and also in charge of the RSHA department contributing to the gas van prototype, none of the first series of gas vans, which were supposed to decrease the strain on the killing squads, was dispatched to his former group if this were true. There are several sources not known to Beer at the time, which raise doubts on this representation.

    On 13 December 1941, around the time the first series of gas vans were delivered to the Einsatzgruppen and Sonderkommando Chelmno, Nebe cabled to his successor Naumann that "[t]wo of the special vehicles we dealt with in our last discussion will be deployed in course of the following week to the Einsatzgruppe" (document 2 here). Although "special vehicles" could apply to other types of vehicles as well (see Operation and Situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 14 July 1941, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgrupen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 58 f.; it summarises sanitary vehicles, radio car, mobile workshop as special vehicles), it was also a common term for homicidal gas vans in the correspondence (see letter from Walther Rauff to KTI of 26 March 1942, RHSA office II D 3 a memo of 27 April 1942, telex from Emanuel Schäfer to Friedrich Pradel of 9 June 1942).
     
    Indeed, the existence of two gas vans of the first series is documented in the Einsatzgruppe B motor pool for early 1942. The groups activity and situation report of 1 March 1942 summarises the fleet of vehicles and includes two smaller gas vans operating for Einsatzkommando 8 (Figure 4):
    Figure 4.
    "Both smaller gas vans will be sent to SK 7a and SK 7b after the completion the operation at EK 8."





    (activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 March 1942, cf. Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen II, p. 293)

    The gas vans were assigned to the Einsatzgruppe before 16 February 1942, since they are not mentioned among the new additions in the reporting period. It stands to reason that these "two smaller gas vans" are identical to the two "special vehicles" Nebe promised Naumann on 13 December 1941.

    This interpretation is somewhat supported by the testimony of the gas van driver Gebel. According to him, he and Gwenuch were not alone with their gas vans on the way to Einsatzgruppe A in Riga, but there had been 3-4 "vehicles of this kind" (interrogation of Gebel of 23 October 1962, BArch B162 / 5068, p. 624). Hence, it's conceivable that a convoy of three to four gas vans was splitted among Einsatzgruppe A and the neighbouring Einsatzgruppe B. In case there had been only three gas vans, two were first assigned to Einsatzgruppe B (including either Gebel or Gwenuch), while one of those was later forwarded to the BdS Minsk.

    In the later judgement against the RSHA motor pool members Pradel and Wentritt of 1966, Gebel is cited as having said the other two gas vans were based on Saurer chassis (which made up the second much bigger series of gas vans), which would contradict that these had been smaller gas vans from the first series. However, Gebel made no mention of this in his above cited earlier interrogation. In fact, he stated that the other vehicles (including Gwenuch's) were "a bit larger" than his own, whereas both his and Gwenuch's vehicle had to be much smaller than the Saurer. Furthermore, the judgement pretty much screwed other related facts - based on the misleading testimony of Friedrich Pradel, head of the Security Police motor pool department - and claimed e.g. that already the first gas van prototype with engine exhaust was a Saurer.

    According to the Einsatzgruppe B report, the two smaller gas vans ended up in the motor pool of Einsatzkommando 8 and were supposed to be passed on to Sonderkommando 7a & b after finishing their task. This is confirmed by the gas van driver Johann Haßler, who remembered that he had to transfer a small gas van he identified as Diamond T chassis to Sonderkommando 7b some time after his arrival in Smolensk in February 1942:
    "Before I resettled to Briansk, where Einsatzkommando 7b was located at the time, a closed box vehicle was given to me together with a document. I had to transfer this vehicle to Einsatzkommando 7b in Briansk. I cannot remember anymore, if I already knew in Smolensk that it was a gas van or only later in Briansk...It was a Diamond van with a capacity of 25 persons."
    (interrogation of Hassler of 12 September 1962, BArch B 162/5068, p. 639f.)

    According to Hassler, the gas van was employed in 1942 in Baranovichi and Minsk on Jews deported by train and in Orel on partisans as well as in October 1943 on prisoners carrying out the destruction of mass grave sites ("Enterdungsaktion") in Barysaw. Another driver of Sonderkommando 7b confirmed that Hassler took over and drove a 3 ton gas van for Sonderkommando 7b (interrogation of Heinrich Mü. 27 March 1962, BArch B162/18154, p. 44; he remembered the chassis of the gas van as a "Chevrolette").

    Second Series of Gas Vans of Einsatzgruppe B

    In 1942, the motor pool department of the Security Police obtained several France made Saurer 4.5 - 5 tons chassis with gasoline engines from a Wehrmacht vehicle park for a second series of gas vans. The Einsatzgruppe B was equipped with two of such bigger gas vans since late February 1942 (in addition to the two "smaller gas vans"), which are also mentioned in the above cited activity and situation report of the group. The new vehicles obtained in the period 16 to 28 February 1942 are listed with make, license plate and the unit to which they were assigned. The fleet was extended by ten cars and two Saurer "gas vans":
    "The gas vans, which arrived in Smolensk on 23 February 1942, were allocated as follows:

    EK 8: Truck Saurer Pol 71462
    EK 9: Truck Saurer Pol 71457

    Both vehicles arrived damaged in Smolensk and were given to the Einsatzkommandos after fixing of the damage."
    (activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 March 1942, Figure 4, cf. Deutsche Besatzungsherrschaft in der UdSSR 1941-1945. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen II, p. 293)

    The transfer of the two Saurer gas vans from Berlin to Smolensk in February 1942 is corroborated by the testimonies of the gas van drivers Johann Haßler and Josef Wendl (interrogation of Wendl of 12 February 1969 YVA TR.10/1118, vol. 1, p. 40ff.; interrogation of Haßler of 26 September 1966, BArch, B162/18154, p. 56f.). Each vehicle was provided with two drivers. The gas vans assigned to Einsatzkommando 9 and 8 - Saurer Pol 71457 and 71462 according to the Einsatzgruppe B report - were driven by Heinrich Miller(?)/Haßler and Wendl/Richard (2nd name unknown), respectively.

    According to Wendl, both gas vans crashed into each other before Warsaw, later the brake of his gas van was frozen and damaged near Brest-Litowsk (interrogation of Wendl of 12 February 1969 YVA TR.10/1118, vol. 1, p. 40ff.). This was a typical defect of the Saurer gas vans as confirmed in the letter from August Becker to Walther Rauff of 16 May 1942 (see also Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Becker Letter). The damage of the vehicles is consistent to the Einsatzgruppe B report, which noted that both gas vans had to undergo repairs upon their arrival in Smolensk.

    Haßler, the co-driver of the Saurer assigned to Einsatzkommando 9 (Saurer Pol 71457), recollected the trip as following:
    "It was in January or February 1942 that I received marching orders to Berlin...We were four drivers, who received marching orders to Smolensk. Two closed trucks of the make Saurer were given to us. Each vehicle was provided with a driver and co-driver...We drove with the two trucks from Berlin to Smolensk. As far as I remember, we went via Posen, Warsaw, Minsk, Orscha to Smolensk....At the beginning, I did not know it was a gas van. I only learnt this on the trip from Berlin to Smolensk from the drivers...I know that that one of Saurer vehicles came to EK9 and the other to EK8."
    (interrogation of Haßler of 26 September 1966, BArch, B162/18154, p. 56f.; Haßler recognised Heinz Schlechte as the driver of his gas van when photographs were shown to him; this is contradicted by his earlier testimony that the driver's name was Heinrich Miller; the first name Heinrich is also confirmed by Wendl)

    It is noteworthy that the activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 March 1942 confirming the testimonies was not known and available to West-German investigators, who interrogated the drivers of the gas vans. The report is never mentioned or hinted to in the files nor is it included in the collection of activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B obtained by the West-German from the Soviets (see BArch B 162/21579). In fact, the report was only supplied to East-German investigators, presumably after March 1969, to assist in their case against the former Einsatzkommando 8 member Georg Frentzel (see also Grundmann, Georg Frentzel, p. 50). The report became available in the West by the opening of Russian and East-German archives after the breakdown of the Soviet Union.

    Wendl drove the gas van with the license plate Pol 71462 for Einsatzkommando 8 until September 1943. He was  temporarily replaced by Heinz Schlechte during his holidays in Summer 1942. The gas van was employed for the killing of Jews in Baranovice/Minsk and the clearing of the Security Service prison in Mogilev (on the former, interrogation of Wendl of 10 March 1964, YVA TR.10/1118, vol. 1, p. 11f.; on the latter, examination of Walter Fi. of 30 September 1968, YVA TR.10/1118/7b, p. 402 ff; examination of Hans Br. of October 1968, YVA TR.10/1118/7a, p. 87 ff; interrogation of Willy Kr. of 16 August 1962, BArch B 162/3298, p. 290;  interrogation of Otto Bu. of  15 June 1962, BArch B 162/3298, p. 222; interrogation of Karl Kä. of 30 August 1960, BArch B 162/3297, p. 45; examination of Karl Strohammer of October 1968, YVA TR.10/118/7a, p. 149f.; interrogation of Hans Hasse of 10 January 1963, YVA TR.10/1118/5, p. 271; examination of Adolf Prieb of October 1968, YVA TR.10/1118/7b, p. 249; interrogation of Hermann Bo. of 8 May 1968, BArch B 162/17033, p. 3 ff.; examination of Günther St. of 17 September 1968; YVA TR.10/1118/7b, p. 286).

    In September 1944, the gas van was stationed with the so called Sonderkommando Ruryk from Lithuania in Maczki, about 30 km north of Auschwitz concentration camp, according to Auschwitz resistance reports. It was driven by some Oberwachmeister Arndt and was also employed to execute convicts of the Kattowitz drum head court-martial (secret message of September 1944, reproduced in How the convergence of evidence works: the gas van of Auschwitz; secret message of 21 September 1944, Nathan Blumental, Dokumenty i Materialy, vol. 1, p. 121). According to Sergey's most recent finding the gas van was brought to the so called Praga-Halle of the Auschwitz motor pool for maintenance (see More evidence converges on the homicidal Auschwitz gas van).


    Revisionist Arguments

    Carlo Mattogno first commented on the document in his Chelmno book (cited via Christian Gerlach's Failure of Plans for an SS Extermination Camp in Mogilëv, Belorussia)  and elaborated his argument in Schiffbruch (English: Inside the Gas Chambers), to which Mattogno also refers in Christian Gerlach and the "Extermination Camp" at Mogilev and  The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt".

    Inside the Gas Chambers is Mattogno's response to Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas (book presentation and review in German), which also featured Sergey's finding that the Saurer gas van of Einsatzkommando 8 operated near Auschwitz in 1944. Notice this pointless and bizarre review of Mattogno's book by some denier Ezra MacVie, who did not even read the study being attacked ("I have not perused the work...that our maestro demolishes in Inside the Gas Chambers"). Let's see how "our maestro" performed here:
    "This document proves in no way that the 'Einsatzgruppen' employed 'gas vans' for homicidal purposes. In fact, all Saurer trucks had diesel engines, the exhaust gases of which were totally unsuitable for murder, a fact now even acknowledged by orthodox historians, as we have seen earlier."
    (Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 113)

    The Saurer = Diesel canard has been exhaustively refuted in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans. Part I: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant (update). Quite on the contrary, many Saurer trucks were equipped with gasoline engines, which were totally suitable for murder.

    "The word 'Gaswagen,' in the sense of 'mobile homicidal gas chamber' was coined only after the Second World War by the victorious powers.
    (Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 113)

    The assertion is utterly refuted by the evidence. The contemporary use of the term Gaswagen (or its abbreviation G-Wagen) is shown by abundant testimonial evidence. Some are compiled in the following:



    Mattogno's predictable response to such damning evidence will be as usual that "a simple testimony...has no value at all" (e.g. as in The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt", p. 263). His straight rejection of any testimonial evidence is defying any historiographical practice and common sense. It's a simple treatment like that of Mattogno categorically rejecting a whole class of evidence without any comprehensible and founded justification whatsoever, which has no value at all.

    Mattogno is also wrong that the term homicidal Gaswagen "does not appear in any other wartime document and which began to circulate as a designation for homicidal vehicles using exhaust gases only after the war" (Chelmno, p. 16).

    Figure 5.
    In February 1944, a member of the German Security Service wrote a report for the Swiss intelligence, which includes a section on the Einsatzgruppen killings in the East and a description of the homicidal gas vans (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, E27#1000/721#9928-6*, p. 60, Figure 5, cf. Haas, Wenn man gewusst hätte, was sich drüben im Reich abspielt, p. 164; Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews, p. 83; Huonker, Roma Sinti Jenische, p. 136, who assigns the report to Paul Dickopf).

    The (hearsay) description captured the layout and operation of the gas vans well, except for its mention of a "tipping device" (although such was indeed considered and requested - see memo of 27 April 1942 on a "fast unloading device for the special vehicles", which explains why it was referred to here; the report has also exaggerated the gas van capacities by at least a factor of two). The insider of the German of the Security Service termed the gas vans as "Nebe'sche Gaswagen". Nebe played indeed a major role in the developement of the gas vans via his gassing experiment in Mogilev and Minsk and the involvement of the Criminal Technical Institute (see previous part).

    In short, the term Gaswagen was clearly used by the Germans during the war to describe their mobile gas chambers. Mattogno's assertion that the term was coined after the war by the Allies is merely derived from his faith that there had been no Germans homicidal gas vans, so that the term Gaswagen in a homicidal sense had to be necessarily coined by "victorious powers". Of course, since both Mattogno and his Holocaust denier buddy Alvarez have utterly failed to explain and rebut the overwhelming evidence on German homicidal gas vans, including contemporary German documents, the claim is historically unfounded.

    "Earlier, a 'Gaswagen' had simply been an abbreviation for 'Holzgaswagen' (a vehicle using gas from the gasification of wood)"
     (Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 113).

    Actually, the term Gaswagen used to have several meanings:
    • abbreviation for Holzgaswagen (producer gas vehicle); note that Mattogno did not do his homework to provide even a single example for such, so let's do the job for him:
      "Wenn der Gaswagen mit dem Dieselwagen konkurrieren will, darf der Holzpreis nicht über 2,5 Pf. je 1 kg liegen."
      (Brennstoff-Chemie: Zeitschrift für Chemie und chemische Technologie der Brenstoffe und ihrer Veredlungsprodukte, Band 14, 1933, p. 315)

    • abbreviation for Gastransportwagen (vehicle for transporting gas), e.g.
      "Um die Kosten für die Rohrleitungen zu sparen, wurde den Abnehmern Flaschengas geliefert ('Portativ-Gas'); Frankfurter Gaswagen fuhren bis nach Wiesbaden."
      Technikgeschichte: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und Industrie, Band 25, 1936, p. 152

    • homicidal gas van, see above.

    • antiquated: any vehicle with an internal combustion engine (Küster, Personen- und Lasten-Dampfwagen, 1908, p. 36)

    The interpretation of the Gaswagen in the Einsatzgruppe B report as producer gas vehicle can be ruled out on several grounds.

    First of all, there is no evidence that Einsatzgruppe B used any producer gas vehicles in 1942. There is no Holzgaswagen reference among the contemporary German documents as well numerous testimonies of group members and related witnesses in the files (BArch B162/4338 - 4340, 2265, 3339, 3608-3610, 30896, 3275, 3297, 26742, 2264, 3314, 3315, 3298, 1817), including that highly relevant ones of the motor pool heads Johannes Mö. (Einsatzgruppe B staff), Heinrich Mü. (Sonderkommando 7b), Hermann Bo. (Einsatzkommano 8) and  Ernst Else (police battalion attached to Einsatzkommando 8).

    Secondly, there is no reason why the Einsatzgruppen should have employed inferior performing producer gas vehicles in 1942 at all. According to Eckermann, Fahren mit Holz, p. 126, the conversion to producer gas meant "reduced perfomance, poorer effeciency, cumbersome handling, higher maintenance and new supply provisions". The decree of Reich Minister for Weapons, Munitions, and Armaments Albert Speer on the conversion of trucks on non-liquid fuels of 24 September 1942 excluded the fire fighters and authorities receiving special contigents of fuel, and so were therefore also certainly the police forces (Kroll, Der Gasgenerator, 1943, p. 131).

    The Einsatzgruppe B received their gasoline largely from the army and even had their own tank trucks to supply its commandos. In January 1943, the group complained they received "only amounts of 200-400 Liters" of gasoline since several tank wagons failed to appear (operation and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B on the period 16 to 31 January 1943, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 508). The report did not mention any producer gas vehicles to be used instead but remarked that "the use of vehicles is only possible in the most urgent cases". In the report for March 1943, the group discussed the supply and reserve of gasoline/Diesel, but did not mention any producer gas vehicles or its fuel supply either (operation and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B on the period 1 to 31 March 1943, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 553). This also supports that there had been no producer gas vehicles in the group.

    Thirdly, the Einsatzgruppen report does not break down the vehicles into their type of fuel used but into the type of vehicles. Any supposed producer gas trucks were likely to be listed in the category LKWs (trucks) instead of making up a new category, see breakdown for Einsatzkommando 8:
    "35 cars, 3 trucks, 1 ambulance, 1 gas van"
    (activity and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 March 1942, Deutsche Besatzungsherrschaft in der UdSSR 1941-1945. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen II, p. 294)

    This was also realized by Alvarez, who refuted his denier colleague on this point:
    "It is possible that these trucks were equipped with wood gas generators. However, in this case the term “gas van” is unlikely to refer to them potentially having such a gas generator, as the report appears to list the vehicles not by fuel source but rather by general vehicle type."
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 93)

    Mattogno entirely ignored this critique despite that Alvarez' book is cited on the very same page in Inside the Gas Chambers and in the same paragraph in his Inconvenient History article!

    Fourthly, the gas vans were obviously performing some special task. The report mentions that the smaller gas vans were carrying out an "operation at EK 8" and then were supposed to be equally distributed among the commandos (in contrast to this, it would have made more sense to cluster producer gas vehicles within one motor pool to concentrate maintenance and fuel supply).

    Since the term Gaswagen was a functional description of their purpose, these vehicles were meant to apply or transport some sort of gas. Since the main task of the Einsatzgruppen was to liquidate people as shown out in the first part of this post, it is most reasonable to conclude that these vehicles were used to kill people with poison gas, as is also corroborated by numerous testimonial evidence.

    Another piece of evidence supporting the homicidal nature of the Saurer Gaswagen can be found in the set of telexes in Nuremberg evidence PS-501 (see Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes). According to the documents, a "special vehicle Saurer" with the license plate Pol 71463 was supposed to be sent to Minsk with "exhaust hoses" to carry out the "special treatment" of Jews. The license plate was registered right after the "Gaswagen...Saurer Pol 71462" of Einsatzkommando 8 and close to the "Gaswagen...Saurer Pol 71457" of Einsatzkommando 9 suggesting that there had been a batch registration of Saurer gas vans. Indeed, there was a whole series of Saurer gas vans is also confirmed by other RSHA correspondence according to which 20 "special vehicle bodies" for Saurer chassis had been constructed. The "special vehicles", whose "empty space also needs to be filled with CO" and which were to be equipped with a "fast unloading device", could be replaced by the use of "steel bottles with carbon monoxide or respectively other remedies" (memo of 23 June 1942; memo from Just of 5 June 1942; letter from Rauff to the Gaubschat company of 30 April 1942; letter from Rauff to the Criminal Technical Institute of 26 March 1942). The contemporary German documents mutually corroborate that they are talking about homicidal gas vans.

    Mattogno also asserts that "in all likelihood" the Gaswagen POL 71462, which turned up near Auschwitz in 1944, is actually identical to a producer gas vehicle used by the central construction office Auschwitz at least since September 1942 (Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 113f.). Only Mattogno knows where this "likelihood" comes from; certainly not from the facts. Quite the opposite, it is completely unlikely that a vehicle just assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev on 23 February 1942 would pop up four months later 1000 km westwards at some entirely different authority not even part of the RHSA, the central construction office Auschwitz motor pool. There is no evidence connecting the producer gas vehicle by the central construction office Auschwitz in 1942 to Einsatzgruppe B's former gas van, which was only spotted in Auschwitz in 1944 anyway. In fact, according to the driver Josef Wendl and his motor pool head Hermann Bo., the vehicle stayed in Mogilev until mid 1943.

    This blunder gets right away accompanied by an internal contradiction in the same book, even on the very same page. Mattogno cites an Auschwitz document of 6 September 1944, according to which a producer gas truck was supplied to the central construction office, and claims that this was the Saurer Gaswagen from Einsatzkommando 8. In The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt", p. 263, he explains that this is to be understood as that "the Saurer truck with the number plate POL 71462...was later sent to Auschwitz at the beginning of September 1944". So which one is it? Either the Gaswagen operated in Auschwitz in September 1942 or was it sent to Auschwitz "at the beginning of September 1944". Mattogno does not seem to mind throwing around two contradictionary theories both not backed up by any evidence. As said, there is absolutely nothing that links the Saurer Gaswagen Pol 71462 to the producer gas vehicle in the motor pool of the central construction office Auschwitz.

    The gas van was assigned to the so called Sonderkommando/Einsatzkommando Ruryk in Lithuania, which was stationed  "on the sandy soil near Maczki" after its retreat from the East (resistance report of 21 September 1944, from Nathan Blumental, Dokumenty i Materialy 1, 1946, p. 121, cf. Filip Friedman, To jest Oswieciem!, 1945, p. 70 f.). The vehicle was used "to execute civilians convicted by the so-called Polizei-Sondergericht", the drumhead court-martial of the Gestapo Kattowitz (How the convergence of evidence works: the gas van of Auschwitz). Mattogno thinks "it would have spoken volumes about the local SS men’s intelligence, had they added such a vehicle to the many killing methods allegedly already practiced in that 'extermination camp'" (Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 115). However, already in 1945 Filip Friedman (cited above) provided a plausible explanation for the use of the gas van, which was available anyway: the Germans considered it more suitable for killing small groups of a dozen to 30 people without attracting anyone's attention. It says volumes about Mattogno's intelligence that he could not figure this out for himself.

    Figure 6.
    The nature of the Gaswagen as producer gas vehicle can be also ruled out on another ground. As Mattogno himself points out, "the structure of a generator vehicle differed greatly from an ordinary truck" (see also Figure 6, from Eckermann, Fahren mit Holz, p. 182). Yet, precisely the highly visible producer gas generator mounted behind the driver's cabin on such vehicles is completely absent from the resistance reports and witness accounts (12). Already for this reason the Gaswagen Pol 71462 was clearly not a producer gas truck.

     Conclusion

    The Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing units mostly engaged in decimating and eliminating the Jewish population in 1941/1942. According to a contemporary German document, Einsatzgruppe B operated four "Gaswagen" (gas vans) since March 1942 to perform their tasks. The license plates and make of the two larger "Saurer Gaswagen" fit to that of another "Saurer special vehicle", which had carried out the "special treatment" of people using "exhaust hoses" in Serbia according to another, independent set of documents. The dispatch and operation of homicidal gas vans among Einsatzgruppe B is independently corroborated by numerous testimonial evidence. Furthermore, one of the Saurer gas vans was independently identified as gas van in September 1944 near Auschwitz.

    Mattogno's arguments that the Gaswagen could not have been homicidal gas vans because Saurer - making up two of the four vehicles - were always Diesel and because the term Gaswagen as homicidal gas van was coined only after the war are both demonstrable false. His own explanation that the Gaswagen were producer gas trucks is implausible and not supported by any evidence.
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    How Faurisson made a fool of himself right at the start of his denial career.

    September 21, 2016, 12:55 pm
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    In 1975 the good old Prof. Faurisson sent this letter (quoted by Thion) to Historama:
    I would like to point out an error and an omission on pages 87 and 88 of your July 1975 issue.

    Error: the Nacht und Nebel Erlass is of December 7 and not December 12, 1941. It is true, to the best of my knowledge, that the text of this ordinance has not been found, and that what is always quoted, as was the case in the big Nuremberg trial, is the text of December 12, which uses it as a reference.

    Omission: more serious, at least for anyone who does not like to confuse history with propaganda or journalism: Nacht und Nebel is an invented explanation of the initials N.N. commonly used in the German administration (and Italian, too) to designate either genuine or imposed anonymity. In the first case, it means Nomen Nescio (unknown name), in the second, it means Nomen Notetur (censured name). The French equivalent would be Inconnu, or X, or sans autre renseigement. Reference: Deutsches Woerterbuch de Jakob Grimm et Wilhelm Grimm, 1889, entry N.

    The book by Walter Goerlitz on Keitel, translated by R. Moreigne (Fayard, 1963) says on p. 247, without further explanation, that the translation of N.N. by Nuit et Brouillard (night and Fog) is only customary.

    Don't you think, like me, that it is important to review some customs and get to the truth by going back to the sources? We all make mistakes, and very often, but don't you think that, from rectification to rectification, Historama could appear as a magazine that, unlike others, is in search of the truth?
    First of all, that the "text of this ordinance has not been found" is pure nonsense, it is contained, among other places, in PS-1733. But that's just the beginning of the madness.

    That "Night and Fog" is an "invented explanation" would have been news to many, many witnesses, including Keitel himself, who used the designation without any second thought (see his and Jodl's affidavit designated as doc. Keitel-13 in IMT, vol. XL, pp.385ff.; for further witnesses see the Judges' Trial).

    And Faurisson could not even use the usual "they were coerced into saying this" canard because, frankly, nobody cared whether NN was decoded as Nacht und Nebel or anything else - it was not the name that was incriminating.

    But let's forget about witnesses for a second: all that Faurisson had to do was open the Nuremberg document volumes to see that his claim does not hold water. For example:

    IMT, vol. XXXV, pp. 162ff., document 569-D:
    CIRCULARS FROM THE REICH LEADER SS, INSPECTOR OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND THE SS ECONOMIC ADMINISTRATIVE MAIN OFFICE RESPECTIVELY, TO THE COMMANDERS OF VARIOUS CONCENTRATION CAMPS, OCTOBER 1941 TO FEBRUARY 1944, CONCERNING SOVIET PRISONERS OF WAR AND "NIGHT AND FOG" ("NACHT UND NEBEL") PRISONERS...
    [...] 
    Oranienburg,den 22.Februar 1944.
    [...]
    B e t r i f f t : Verfolgung von Straftaten gegen das Reich oder die Besatzungsmacht in den besetzten Gebieten (Nacht-und Nebelerlaß).
    [...]
    Oranienburg,den 22.Februar 1944.
    [...]
    B e t r i f f t : Verfolgung von Straftaten gegen das Reich oder die Besatzungsmacht in den besetzten Gebieten (Nacht-und Nebelerlaß).
    [...]
    4.) Die Sterbeurkunden sind durch die lagereigenen Standesämter auszustellen und dem Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Paris mit dem Hinweis zu übersenden, daß es sich um verstorbene Nacht- und Nebelhäftlinge handelt.
    Ibid., pp. 510ff., doc. 767-D:
    DISCUSSION BY VARIOUS DEPARTMENTAL REPRESENTATIVES. SEPTEMBER 1944, CONCERNING THE TREATMENT OF NON-GERMAN CIVILIANS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES IMPRISONED BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF THE "TERROR AND SABOTAGE" ORDER (EXHIBIT GB-303)
    [...]
    An der Besprechung 9.9. habe ich informationshalber teilgenommen. WR stellte nach der Feststellung, daß der „Nacht- und Nebel-Erlass" nach dem Terror- und Sabotage-Erlass gegenstandslos geworden ist, den anliegenden Entwurf Nr. 009169/44 gKds — WR (1/3) Nr. 79/44 gkds — vom September 1944 zur Besprechung.
    [...]
    Der Vertreter des Auswärtigen Amtes wies darauf hin, daß auch Angehörige neutraler Länder versehentlich oder mit Vorbedacht z.B. bei Mittäterschaft) „vernebelt" worden sind, die nach dem zu Grunde liegenden Erlass nicht hätten vernebelt werden dürfen.
    IMT, vol. XXXIX, pp.8ff., doc. 1238-RF:
    Auf Grund der Vorschlages des BdS hat SS-Brif. Oberg bei seinem am 9.11. beim Reichsführer-SS stattgefundenen Vortrag diesen auf die Zweckmäßigkeit der Festnahme von Personen aus der französischen Intelligenz angesprochen. Reichsführer-SS ist einverstanden, daß besonders deutschfeindliche Personen aus diesen Kreisen die Beziehungen zur USA oder England haben auf Grund „Nacht und Nebel"- oder „Donar"-Erlasses festgenommen und als Geiseln (Amerika gegenüber) aufbewahrt werden. 

    To preempt the weak and lazy excuse that I know is coming: no, one can't claim that the publishers merely expanded the NN abbreviation. First of all, the burden of proof is on those who claim this. If Faurisson had such a suspicion, he had to find the images of the original documents to test it. Mere unsubstantiated "doubt" automatically leaves him on the losing side.

    Second, the claim does not pass the smell test: the publishers of the documents tried to represent and describe every feature of the documents, including all markings (see the illustration). They cared about each letter. According to the editor S. Paul. A. Joosten, "Documents are printed in full, unless otherwise stated, and care has been taken to make their reproduction as faithful as possible; grammatical, orthographical, typing and other errors in the original have not been corrected" (editor's note in IMT, vol. XXVI). Indeed, in the post-war summary sheet that was mistakenly bundled with PS-501 we see the word "FAHRYEUG", a result of re-typing on an English keyboard, and exactly this mistake was faithfully reproduced in IMT, vol. XXVI, p.107. It is thus inconceivable for the editors to have "expanded" abbreviations into whole words.

    Third, we see the use of the verb "vernebeln", derived from the name of the decree.

    There were, of course, further documents available to Faurisson if only he had bothered to do some real archival research instead of armchair pontificating. Some of them are listed in the article by Lothar Gruchmann ""Nacht- und Nebel"-Justiz. Die Mitwirkung deutscher Strafgerichte an der Bekämpfung des Widerstandes in den besetzten westeuropäischen Ländern 1942-1944", Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1981, Heft 3. (Just to preempt another silly defense: yes, it's from 1981, but the sources are obviously from before 1975.) Here are several quotes from the article (the archival references are in the article, the direct citations from the original documents are in italics):
    Nachdem das OKW den Vorschlägen Thieracks zugestimmt hatte, lud das Justizministerium nunmehr das Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) zu einer Besprechung ein, die am 12. Oktober stattfand. Man kam überein, der Anregung der Wehrmachtrechtsabteilung hinsichtlich Beschuldigter, gegen die keine Anklage erhoben werden konnte, nicht zu folgen. Vielmehr sollte „der Polizei die Entscheidung überlassen bleiben, ob sie die Entlassung des Beschuldigten in die besetzten Gebiete für unbedenklich hält". Wie diese Entscheidung aussah, wurde jedoch ebenfalls gleich vermerkt: „Verwahrung durch die Polizei auf Kriegsdauer unter ,Vernebelung'" 
    [...] 
    Nach dieser Vorklärung mit dem OKW und dem RSHA wurden der Präsident des Volksgerichtshofs - Freisler -, der Oberreichsanwalt beim Volksgerichtshof und die Generalstaatsanwälte in Hamm, Kiel, Köln und beim Kammergericht Berlin für den 16. Oktober 1942 ins Reichsjustizministerium eingeladen. [...] An dieses Versprechen anknüpfend stellte er rügend fest, „daß seinerzeit aus Gründen außerhalb der Justiz der Ausdruck, der der erwähnten Einladung in Klammern beigefügt ist, ausdrücklich untersagt worden" sei; damit meinte er die Bezeichnung „Nacht- und Nebelsachen", die das Ministerium in seinem Einladungsschreiben verwendet hatte.

    [...] 
    Crohne nahm die gebotene Gelegenheit wahr, mit Freislers persönlichem Referenten das von Freisler in seinem Brief an Thierack angesprochene Verbot der Bezeichnung „Nacht- und Nebelsachen" zu erörtern. Freislers Vertreter erklärte, daß dieses Verbot seines Wissens von Keitel stamme. Obgleich sowohl die Militär- wie auch die Polizeibehörden bei den jüngst im Ministerium stattgefundenen Besprechungen diese Bezeichnung freimütig angewendet hatten, kam man überein, „künftig nur den Ausdruck ,NN-Sachen' zu gebrauchen"
    [This, by the way, is a crucial set of documents on this issue since it shows that the designation "Nacht und Nebel" was seen by some as embarrassing and should have been replaced with "NN" everywhere according to some opinions. ~SR] 
    [...] 
    Gegen diese Entscheidung ging jedoch am 4. Januar 1944 ein Protestschreiben des Leiters der Abteilung IV (Gestapo) im RSHA, SS-Obergruppenführer Müller, ein. Es habe ohnehin schon „große Mühe gekostet", schrieb Müller, die Transporte nach Köln und die Unterbringung der NN-Gefangenen bis zur Übernahme durch die Kölner Justizbehörden zu organisieren. Die verfügte Neuregelung stelle ihn nunmehr „vor kaum zu überwindende Schwierigkeiten":
    „Abgesehen davon, daß der Transportweg von Paris nach Breslau etwa doppelt so lang wie nach Köln ist, sehe ich keine Möglichkeit, in tragbarer Entfernung von Breslau eine geeignete Unterbringungsmöglichkeit für die Nacht- und Nebelhäftlinge zu beschaffen. Es wird sich nicht umgehen lassen, daß hierdurch die regelmäßigen Transporte der Nacht- und Nebelhäftlinge unter Umständen für längere Zeit ins Stocken geraten. Dieser Zustand ist mit Rücksicht auf die Notwendigkeit, die Häftlinge so schnell wie möglich aus dem französischen Raum abzuziehen, nicht tragbar. Es kommt noch hinzu, daß es bei der besonderen Geheimhaltungsbedürftigkeit der Nacht- und Nebelfälle durchaus unerwünscht ist, den Kreis der mit den Fällen betrauten Dienststellen fortgesetzt zu erweitern. Ich kann nicht umhin, mein Bedauern darüber auszudrücken, daß ich auch diesmal wieder nicht vorher beteiligt worden bin." 
    [...] 
    [...] Ministerialrat Dr. Hülle von der Wehrmachtrechtsabteilung an den NN-Referenten im Reichsjustizministerium Dr. v. Ammon am 23. Juni 1943 [...]:
    "[...] Der Führererlass selbst sagt nichts über eine Aburteilung in Deutschland; sie war zunächst auch nicht beabsichtigt. Das Geheime Staatspolizeiamt soll der Auffassung zuneigen, der ,Nacht- und Nebel-Erlass' habe den Strafanspruch des Staates aufgehoben [!]; das trifft für die gegenwärtige Fassung der Durchführungsverordnung sicher nicht zu. [...]"
    [...] 
    Im Mai 1943 teilte ein Kriegsgerichtsrat der Wehrmachtrechtsabteilung dem NN-Referenten im Justizministerium v. Ammon mit, auf einem Lehrgang für Wehrmachtrichter habe SS-Obersturmführer Huppenkothen vom Reichssicherheitshauptamt geäußert, „der sogenannte Nacht- und Nebelerlaß bedeute praktisch einen Verzicht auf die Durchsetzung des Strafanspruchs im Interesse einer schlagkräftigen Bekämpfung der Straftaten gegen das Reich".
    Well, this should be enough to make the point. While "NN" certainly "benefited" from coinciding with "nomen nescio", in this particular context it was an abbreviation of "Nacht und Nebel", this fact was well documented and well-known in the Nazi circles.

    It should be noted that Faurisson's lazy "doubt" was totally unnecessary - to repeat, it's not the name that was incriminating, it's the policy. And yet he still insisted on this without ever having done research to support his claim, in the process exposing himself as a mere cranky loon who doesn't have the first idea about literary analysis.

    And today he still finds followers, like the brainless neo-Nazi authors of Metapedia, who in their article about the 07.12.41 decree parrot the "nomen nescio" explanation, claiming that "Night and Fog" is a post-war invention. They even link to Gruchmann's article, apparently without ever having read it.

    This small episode shows once again that the so-called "revisionism" is merely irrational denial at any cost.
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report

    September 23, 2016, 11:30 pm
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans
    Part VIII: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report
    Part IX: The Just Memo (in preparation)

    The Einsatzgruppe B report of 1 March 1942 on its gas vans has been already discussed elsewhere, including a rebuttal of denier Mattogno on this source. The following post will look at what his fellow denier Alvarez has written on the subject.

    Alvarez' treatment report can be found in The Gas Vans, p. 92ff. As Mattogno, he plays the dovetailed Diesel = Saurer card to discard a homicidal interpretation of Gaswagen. The argument is well known as a complete fraud by now (see Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant).

    He contradicts Mattogno's explanation of the Gaswagen as designation of a truck running on producer gas, because "the term 'gas van' is unlikely to refer to them potentially having such a gas generator, as the report appears to list the vehicles not by fuel source but rather by general vehicle type". Yet, this does not prevent him to keep it as one of "three options left" to him to explain the document. Mattogno's producer gas hypothesis is thoroughly refuted in Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on the Gas Vans.

    The second explanation for Alvarez is that the Gaswagen were "disinfestation vans". He cites no evidence that such term was ever used for disinfestation vehicles. But more importantly, there is no evidence that any delousing action was carried out among Einsatzgruppe B in 1942. Such activity is not mentioned in Einsatzgruppe B report in question, which also features a section on the health of the group members, where such activity should be expected to get mentioned. It is even contradicted as the report points out that the "state of health can be described as normal". In fact, typhus was only an issue for the group in 1943 (operational and situation report of Einsatzgruppe B of 1 April 1943, Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 549). There is further no testimonial evidence for any delousing van among Einsatzgruppe B and no group member tried to explain away homicidal gas vans with actual delousing vans that were around. To the contrary, the Gaswagen have been clearly identified as homicidal gas vans to kill people.

    Alvarez' third explanation is - as usual - that the Einsatzgruppe B report is a forgery, because "this document was discovered in the 1990s among the papers of the Staatssicherheit, which was Communist East Germany’s secret service until 1990...[and] isn’t exactly a trustworthy source" but were "infamous for their lies and forgeries". Actually, the document stems from Russian State Military Archive (RGVA, 500-1-770, citation from Angrick et al., Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II, p. 303) and was only copied to the East Germans in course of their investigations against Einsatzgruppe B member Georg Frentzel in the 70s. As far as I know, there is not a single demonstrated case that a forged document was placed into the German files in the Russian State Military Archive. The document is consistent to other situation and operation reports of the Einsatzgruppen and its content on the Gaswagen is heavily corroborated by independent testimonial evidence (see also Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on the Gas Vans). The document is furthermore not explicit enough and of too limited scope to even rationalize a motive for a supposed forgery. Therefore, this hypothesis is unfounded and false, too.

    What is entirely missing in Alvarez' contextless "analysis" is what the Einsatzgruppen were actually doing, and so what would be most likely the purpose of the Gaswagen. And driving around with inferior performing producer gas cars hoping "that it does not take 15 minutes again" to start-up the vehicle in the morning (Eckermann, Fahren mit Holz, p. 127) and carrying out delousings was none of them. As pointed out here, the main executive task of Einsatzgruppe B in the period in question was the killing of people. Given the expected and documented strain on the execution squads upon shooting innocent men, women and children, it is already the most likely explanation that any Gaswagen (unless proven otherwise) in operation among the Einsatzgruppen would be simply be a homicidal gas van assisting in the killing of people. This is even more so since other explanations such as producer gas or desinfection/desinfestation vehicles can be ruled out based on the absence of any positive evidence.

    It is pointless from Alvarez when he writes that "the text does not prove in any manner that this car was used for homicidal purposes". The test does not say the Gaswagen was used for killing people, but seen in the Einsatzgruppen context it is prima facie the most plausible interpretation. It is further proven to be historically correct by taking into account the testimonies of the gas van drivers and other commando members of Einsatzgruppe B, see again Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on the Gas Vans.
    "Here the reader needs to keep in mind that there exist literally thousands of documents by the Einsatzgruppen listing in cruel detail, among other things, when they executed whom and why. But gassings are not mentioned once...."
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 93)

    First of all, only a fraction of the documents produced by the Einsatzgruppen have survived. Alvarez claim that "thousands of documents" are available sounds exaggerated. Secondly, many of the documents are actually from the year 1941 - before the gas vans were even operated by them. Thirdly, the use of gassing was heavily camouflaged in the records. For instance, the clearing of the asylums in Mogilev and Minsk was denoted as "shooting" and "special treatment" respectively in the available Einsatzgruppen records, however it is well known that most of the victims were killed with engine exhaust (see German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 5: Responsibility (III))  Therefore, it cannot be surprising that there not too many explicit gas vans references in incomplete/concealing records. By the way, aside this Einsatzgruppe B report, there is at least another explicit reference to a "G-Wagen" in the German documents, which will be featured in a forthcoming post.

    In conclusion, Alvarez cannot provide any reasonable, evidence based explanation for the "Gaswagen" among Einsatzgruppe B. He entirely ignored the historical context and evidence supporting a homicidal interpretation. His main reason against homicidal gas vans - that the Saurer trucks were always Diesel - has been proven as categorically false.
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    Scrapbookpages' owner on Mattogno

    September 24, 2016, 2:22 am
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    The Holocaust denial website "Scrapbookpages.com" is known for masking itself as a mainstream Holocaust/Nazi crimes website. This was less obvious about 10 years ago, when the owner of the website was dropping Holocaust denial hints here and there (like including the subtle references to the Leuchter report in the "title" HTML tag) and gathering all the usual stuff from the margins of the Nazi period history that the deniers are so fond of, presenting it in a deadpan manner designed to cause "doubt" among the less aware. Since then the "hints" on the website itself have become much more blatant, with the author sometimes openly linking to deniers' articles. So, more people have been noticing. The links to the website appear to have been mostly scrapped from Wikipedia (and that they had been there in the first place shows one of the main problems with wiki - seems like it's easy to fool an average editor).

    Anyway, Scrapbookpages has an official blog and here the author writes in a much more explicit, blatant and mocking manner. Just one example will suffice:
    I was no more than 6 years old when I first learned about the Gypsies. [The correct term for these people is Roma and Sinti.] The word Gypsy comes from a term that was made up for them because, traditionally, the Gypsies don’t work — they gyp people. 
    [Ehhhm, nope! ~ SR] 
    The Gypsies were also accused of stealing children; that’s why my mother warned me to beware of Gypsies.
    Years ago, when I went on a tour that was led by a Jewish tour guide, I was warned to wear my backpack in the front, so that Gypsy fingers would not find their way into my backpack.
    The poor innocent Gypsies were Holocausted by the Nazis, for no reason at all, the same as the Jews.
     This is her usual style.

    Anyway, there are loads and loads of stuff like this at her blog, some more, some less explicit. But what this pro-fascist clownessewrote about Mattogno has caught my eye:
    There has been some discussion in the comments section of my blog about this event. I thought that the famous Erntefest was a proven fact, but others have doubted it.
    I finally did a search to find out what Carlo Mattogno has to say about it. I consider Mattogno to be the foremost Holocaust revisionist and the most reliable Holocaust historian, because he seems to me to be completely unbiased. Not that other revisionists are biased, but Mattogno is noted for being completely unbiased.
    ROTFL!

    She goes on to quote another antisemitic"revisionist"liar, Jürgen Graf, who claims to have refuted (together with Mattogno) "the myth of the homicidal gas chambers as well as the legend of the mass shooting allegedly perpetrated in November 1943", to which the Scrapbookpages owner adds:
    If Mattogno refutes the “legend” of the mass shooting, that’s good enough for me.
    No further comment necessary.
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    The tree-hanging photo was not a fake after all...

    September 26, 2016, 1:04 pm
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    For years I thought that the famous tree-hanging photo from Buchenwald was a fake. That is, a propaganda photo (or a montage) that was specifically made in order to deceive.

    I based this on an article by Wolfgang Ayaß and Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar "Mit Argumenten gegen die Holocaust-Leugnung" in Polis №19, the relevant part of which was based on Herbert Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen - ein Bild geht um die Welt", in Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief, №68.



    According to these authors the photo was staged by DEFA. But as someone has pointed out, there is now a newer piece of research that establishes the actual origin of the photo. It's Holm Kirsten, "Das Fotoarchiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald", Archive in Thüringen, Tagungsband 2010, S.22ff. Kirsten writes that it has recently become possible to find out the name of the photographer - it was the former inmate Willem Hoogwerf from the Netherlands who made the photos with a camera that was a present from an American solider. This and a couple of other similar photos were made between 15 and 26 April 1945. The original description of the photo was found:
    Reconstruction of one of the "light punishments". The SS man was forced by the Americans to cooperate. Later the SS personnel were shot, exactly like in Dachau, Neuengamme, etc.
    The photo thus was not intended to deceive and was clearly marked as a reconstruction (which represented something that actually had happened). That later propagandists misused it, ignoring the original intent, does not make the original photo a fake, nor does the fact that it does not depict an authentic scene - it's no more fake than Schindler's List or Katyń.

    Some will say: well, what's the difference? The difference is intent.

    Obviously, deniers have been using it as an example of Allied fakery - and I can't blame them - but if they want to be honest, they should stop doing it now.

    Oh, who am I kidding.
    ↧

    2nd Update on Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant

    September 30, 2016, 2:21 pm
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans
    Part VIII: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report
    Part IX: The Just Memo (in preparation)

    Three further additions on gasoline engines in the Saurer or other gas vans showing that the "Diesel issue" is just irrelevant. 

    Zenon Rossa, car mechanic at the Kraft company in Kolo:
    "The engine was a 6-cylinder from the company Saurer, on gasoline [benzyne]."
    (interrogation of 15 June 1945, Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej GK 165/271, tom I, p. 43)

    Rudolf Sch., Einsatzkommando 11b:
    "The gas van was a 3.5 or 5 tons truck with a gasoline engine [Benzinmotor]."
    (interrogation of 23 July 1962, BArch, B162/1053, p. 1226)

    Friedrich Pr., head of the motor pool department of the Security Police:
    "The first vehicles were 5 Saurer from Hauptsturmführer Gast, the other 10 Saurer vehicles came from Baller...I still remember that Just once asked asked me what should happen with these vehicles. I replied that the vehicles are not suitable for service in Russia, at most they could be used in Germany; but this could pose problems, because these gasoline vehicles [Benzinfahrzeuge] had a volume of 5 liters."
    (interrogation of 26 September 1961, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/13, p. 4)
    ↧

    The Auschwitz Museum's instant factchecking of a "gas chamber survival" story

    October 5, 2016, 2:57 pm
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    The gas chamber survival stories seem to appear more often in the press lately. All such stories are a priori improbable, and thus require stronger evidence to accept them than an uncorroborated testimony.

    If it is claimed that the people were driven into some sort of a room, and simply left there, with a survivor speculating that the Nazis were out of gas or the chamber malfunctioned, then the people would have probably been gassed in another gas chamber or on the next day, not simply sent to work (especially in the light of the fact that it was, as a rule, Jews unable to work who were selected for the gas chambers).

    If the story is that the people were driven into a room and the gas was let in, but some person survived and was left alive, this is an even less probable variation. While certain accounts tell of a few individuals barely surviving the gassings, they were inevitably killed by the Nazis afterwards.

    The origin of the stories is not hard to explain. Confused, frightened people who had probably heard certain rumors are crowded into a shower room and expect the worst. Maybe something happens:  they're left there for the night or the water doesn't come from the showers and they interpret it as surviving a gas chamber - or somebody misinforms them afterwards that they had been in a gas chamber. And they believe it. It's an honestly misinterpreted experience. These people are not liars despite the fact that their testimony is not accurate.

    Sometimes false memory must be at play - like in the case of the stories where the gas was let in (sometimes in a way which we know was not actually used). Research shows that false memories are relatively easily constructed. It is no wonder that it would happen to some survivors under conditions of stress and uncertainty. Memories of the actual unpleasant experiences in unfamiliar shower rooms would combine in their heads with extraneous information (rumors, nightmares) to create memories of failed gassings, sometimes pretty vivid ones (if demonstrably inaccurate).

    (This, by the way, is different from the testimonies of  inmates who actually worked in the gas chambers. The unreliable witnesses we're discussing testify about momentous, one-off events. Whereas the actual witnesses from the Sonderkommando had to work there for months, in some cases years, and the chances of misinterpretation were nil.)

    Unfortunately journalists who print these stories are mostly doing it uncritically (self-selection might be at work - if you publish an old survivor's story, you usually don't do it to criticize it, so the articles that do get written and/or published are uncritical). Case in point is the latest such piece published on Oct. 4 on an Australian news site: "Miracle that saved girl from Auschwitz gas chamber":
    Yvonne’s hair was shaved and she was forced to strip naked.
    Yet Despite Mengele’s decision, Yvonne was ushered into what appeared to be a gas chamber, a simple room filled with what appeared to be shower heads.
    “We were forced to strip, our hair was shaven and then — to this day I’m still not really sure what was happened.
    “I had no idea what it was — I was in such a state of shock, I didn’t think anything. I was shaking with fear so much so that I was too afraid to even cry.”
    Locked in the room in darkness with naked strangers all around her, they waited. Afraid.
    Nothing happened.
    “The gas chamber must have malfunctioned,” she reasons.
    “In the morning we were marched out and then put to work.”
    There is of course nothing in this story to suggest it was a gas chamber rather than a normal shower room. Yvonne Engelmann is an honest but confused witness. Yet the author, Paul Ewart, simply accepts her interpretation without question. Certainly not what a responsible journalist (or a historian) should do.

    But this time something interesting happened: the Auschwitz Museum factchecked the article on the spot, on Twitter!



    And to his credit, Paul Ewart (or his editor) included this tweet in the article (although the text remained unchanged).

    If more such factchecking by authoritative institutions is forthcoming in the future, Holocaust deniers, who, like parasites, cling onto such stories, will have no ground to stand on.


    ↧
    ↧

    3rd Update on Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute

    October 7, 2016, 10:16 am
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans
    Part IX: The Just Memo (in preparation)

    It may appear like beating a dead horse when I'm still updating this post with further material refuting the already discredited Revisionist forgery hypothesis on the Rauff letter to the Criminal Technical Institute, but this is one is too good not to share it.

    Recall that the denier Alvarez claimed that
    "[f]ormally seen, almost everything about this letter is wrong:

    a) The name of the sending authority (RSHA) is not given.
    b) The name of the sending office is incomplete: Instead of “II D 3,” it
    only states “II D.”
    c) Giving initials of the author (Rf) and of the secretary (Hb) was not
    practiced on any of the other RSHA letters in this file
    ...
    g) The paragraph starting with “2.)” was typed (squeezed in over the
    “I.A.” line) after the paper had been removed from the machine, resulting
    in it being shifted and slightly rotated."
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 297f.)

    I have previously explained that a) and g) result from the document being a commented carbon copy of the letter, that b) suggests the document was directly authored in Rauff's office and provided an example from another RSHA office for the practice done in c).

    Here is a new source, which combines all these four items in one single document from Rauff's office. In particular, it demonstrates the practice to insert an internal copy of a letter into a typewriter again to add office internal comments:
    II D Rf/Hb. BNr. 227/42     Berlin den 20.Juni 1942.

    1.) Schreiben

    An das
    Referat I A 4 z.hd. von Sturmbannführer Br.
    im Hause


    Betrifft: SS-Untersturmführer-Planstelle für SS-Hauptscharführer Heinrich Ha.

    [...]

    2.) Wvl. mit Weiterem sp. 15.7.1942

    3.) Z.d.A.                                   [signature Rauff]
                                                      SS-Obersturmbannführer
    (letter of Rauff to Br. of 20 June 1942, BArch R58/788, p. 20, quoted from Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr. 10/13)

    Those lines in courier font represent office internal comments and are typed with thinner letters than the rest of the text, which shows that the paper had been inserted into a different typewriter after the creation of the copy. Note also that the clerk with the initials Hb is the same as in Rauff's letter to the Criminal Technical Institute. This clerk can be found also on several other documents from Rauff's office (BArch R58/863, p. 14, 15, 20, reproduced in Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr. 10/13)

    So once again, there is nothing formally "wrong" with the letter (or more precisely, its carbon copy for the files of the RSHA office II D) on "the special vans" and "steel bottles with carbon monoxide" corroborating the German homicidal gas vans, but it is on the contrary formally perfectly authentic.
    ↧

    Contemporary German Documents on Carbon Monoxide Gas and Bottles Employed for the Nazi Euthanasia

    October 9, 2016, 7:38 am
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    The following is a compilation of German documents on the existence, use, filling and delivery of carbon monoxide gas bottles in the context of the Nazi Euthanasia.

    1.) Film script for an Euthanasia documentary of 29 October 1942 by Hermann Schwenninger on "[i]n a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed to the effects of carbon monoxide gas".

    2.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 17 December 1943 on returning "carbon monoxide steel bottles".

    3.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 18 January 1944 on returning "carbon monoxide bottles".

    4.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police to Werner Blankenburg of Hitler's Chancellery of 5 February 1944 on sending superfluous "steel bottles" to the IG Farbenindustrie.

    5.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute to Werner Blankenburg of Hitler's Chancellery of 9 February 1944 on "bottles" from the IG Farbenindustrie.

    6.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 19 April 1944 on "15 fillings of bottles with CO".

    7.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Richard von Hegener of 19 April 1944 on "60 once-used seamless empty steel bottles for carbon monoxide".

    8.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 26 April 1944 on shipping "60 carbon monoxide bottles (used once)".

    9.) Telex from Albert Widmann to the Criminal Police Linz of 2? April 1944 informing Friedrich Lorent on "filling of 15 steel bottles in Ludwigshafen". 

    10.) Letter from Helmut Kallmeyer of the Criminal Technical Institute to the IG Farbenindustrie of 2 May 1944 on "filling of 15 bottles with carbon monoxide".

    11.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 20 May 1944 on "60 seamless steel bottles 40 liters content...for carbon monoxide".

    12) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 26 May 1944 on a letter from the IG Farbenindustrie on "60 used carbon monoxide steel bottles".

    13.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 9 December 1944 on "51 steel bottles for CO".

    14.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 11 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".

    15.) Letter from Albert Widmann to the IG Farbenindustrie of 18 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".

    16.) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 3 January 1945 on "51 steel bottles for CO announced".


    1.) Film script for an Euthanasia documentary of 29 October 1942 by Hermann Schwenninger on "[i]n a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed to the effects of carbon monoxide gas".↩

    DOCUMENT:

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Gasraum (Als Zwischenschnitte Aufdrehen des Hahns, Gasometer, Beobachtung durch den Arzt.)

    In einem hermetisch abgeschlossenen Raum wird dann der Patient der Einwirkung von Kohlenoxydgas ausgesetzt.

    Das einströmende Gas ist völlig geruchlos und beraubt den Kranken zunächst des Beurteilungsvermögens und dann des Bewußtseins. Vom Patienten gänzlich unbemerkt, ohne Qual und ohne Kampf tritt der erlösende Tod ein.

    TRANSLATION:

    Gas room (cuts to turning on of the valve, gasometer and observation by the doctor)

    In a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed to the effects of carbon monoxide gas.

    The incoming gas is completely odourless and initially robs the patient of their powers of judgement, and then their consciousness. Completely unknown by the patient, without pain and without struggle, the deliverance of death takes effect.

    (NARA T-1021, Record Group 242/338, Roll 12, p. 127; my transcription; translation based on Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues, p. 276)

    2.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 17 December 1943 on returning "carbon monoxide steel bottles".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION
    [...]

    Verp. Abr. Chem /St./M. 17.12.1943

    Betr. Leihbehälter/Kohlenoxyd-Stahlflaschen

    Trotz wiederholter Mahnung sind sie immer noch im Besitz von vor/umstehenden Behältern. Um die vorliegenden Aufträge ordnungsgemäß ausführen zu können, benötigen wir dringend unsere Verpackungen. Wir bitten sie daher um sofortige Rücksendung der Behälter an das Lieferwerk.

    [...]

    Heil Hitler! IG Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft Verpackungs-Abrechnungsstelle Chemikalien.

    [signature]

    Rest 7 Stück dv. Nr. vom 3.1.42

    Kriminaltechnisches
    Institut
    der Sicherheitspolizei

    Berlin C 2
    Werdersche Markt  

    TRANSLATION:
    [...]
    packaging invoicing chemicals  /St./M. 17.12.1943

    Re: Loaned container/carbon monoxide steel bottles


    Despite of repeated reminders, you are still in possession of the previously mentioned containers. In order to carry out the existing orders properly, we urgently need our packaging. We therefore ask you to return the containers immediately to the supplier.

    [...]

    Heil Hitler! IG Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft packaging invoicing chemicals

    [signature]

    Remaining 7 pieces of various numbers of 3 January 1942

    Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police

    Berlin C 2 Werdersche Markt  
    (Bundesarchiv [hereafter BArch] B162/822, p. 21; my translation)


    3.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 18 January 1944 on returning "carbon monoxide bottles".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    [...]
    Verp.-Abr.-Chem.    St./M.     18.1.1944

    Kohlenoxyd-Flaschen

    Nach unseren Aufzeichnungen stehen aus ihrem obigen  Verpackungskonto  noch

    5 Stahlflaschen Nr. 133,231,314,334 u. 360 aus Lieferung vom 3.1.42
    offen.

    Wir bitten sie für baldige Rücksendung dieser Flaschen an das Lieferwerk Ludwigshafen bemüht zu sein oder aber uns mitzuteilen, worauf das lange Ausbleiben dieser Behälter zurückzuführen ist und wann wir mit deren Rückgabe nunmehr rechnen könnne.

    Heil Hitler

    [signature]

    TRANSLATION:
    [...]
    packaging invoicing chemicals    St./M.     18.1.1944

    Carbon monoxide bottles

    According to our records 5 steel bottles No. 133,231,314,334 and 360 from the delivery of 3 January 1942 are still open on your above packaging account.

    We kindly ask you to return these bottles to Ludwigshafen, or to inform us about the reason for the the long absence of these containers and when we can expect them to be returned.

    Heil Hitler

    [signature]

    (BArch B162/822, p. 40; my translation)


    4.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police to Werner Blankenburg of  Hitler's Chancellery of 5 February 1944 on sending superfluous "steel bottles" to the IG Farbenindustrie.↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Berlin C 2, den 5.2.1944
    Werderscher Markt, Tel 16 43 11

    An
    SA-Oberführer Blankenburg

    Berlin W8 Vossstraße 5

    Anbei übersende ich eine Mahnung der I.G.Farben Industrie und bitte dafür Sorge zutragen dass die Flaschen zurückgesandt werden. Vielleicht könnne unsere eigenen Stahlflaschen der I.G: angeboten werden, da sie jetzt überflüssig sind.

    Heil Hitler !

    W
     
    TRANSLATION:
    Berlin C 2, 5 February 1944
    Werderscher Markt, Tel 16 43 11

    To
    SA-Oberführer Blankenburg

    Berlin W8
    Vossstraße 5

    Attached I send a reminder of the I.G.Farben Industrie and ask you to make sure that the bottles are returned.Perhaps our own steel bottles can be offered to the I.G., since they are now superfluous.

    Heil Hitler !

    W
    (BArch B162/822, p. 21; my translation)


    5.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute to Werner Blankenburg of  Hitler's Chancellery of 9 February 1944 on "bottles" from the IG Farbenindustrie.↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Berlin C 2, den 9.2.1944

    An

    SA-Oberführer
    Blankenburg
    Berlin W 8
    Voss-Straße

    Beiliegend übersenden wir ein Schreiben der IG-Farben Industrie mit der Bitte, das Weitere zu veranlassen und uns das Schreiben nach Möglichkeit wieder zurückzusenden. Existieren die Flaschen noch?

    W

    TRANSLATION:
    Berlin C 2, 9 February 1944

    To

    SA-Oberführer
    Blankenburg
    Berlin W 8
    Voss-Straße

    Enclosed we send a letter from the IG-Farbenindustrie with the request to arrange the further proceeding and send the letter back to us if possible. Do the bottles still exist?

    W
    (BArch B162/822, p. 22; my translation)


    6.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 19 April 1944 on "15 fillings of bottles with CO".↩

    TRANSCRPTION:
    Friedrich W. Lorent Berlin W 35, den 19 April 1944
                    Tiergartenstr. 4
                    Lt/He


    An das
    Kriminaltechnische Institut
    z.H. von Herrn Dr. Wittmann

    Sehr geehrter Herr Doktor!

    Ich benötige

        15 Flaschenfüllungen CO.

    Der Transport soll frühestens Ende nächste Woche erfolgen.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]

    TRANSLATION:
    Friedrich W. Lorent         Berlin W 35, 19 April 1944
                    Tiergartenstr. 4
                    Lt/He


    To the Criminal Technical Institute for the attention of Mr. Dr. Wittmann

    Dear Mr. Dr.!

    I need

    15 fillings of bottles with CO.

    The transport shall be carried out next week at the earliest.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 61; my translation)


    7.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Richard von Hegener of 19 April 1944 on "60 once-used seamless empty steel bottles for carbon monoxide".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:

    Friedrich W. Lorent              Berlin, den 19. April 1944
                        Lt/He

    Herrn von Hegener

    Ich bitte sie bei der IG-Farben folgendes anzustellen:

    60 einmal gebrauchte nahtlose leere Stahlflaschen für Kohlenoxyd, von je cca 40 L Rauminhalt ca 6 cbm Gas, hergestellt nach der DGV v. 1.1.36 in handelsüblicher Ausführung, für 150 Atm. Füll und 225 Atm. Probedruck, mit normalem Vierkantfuß, Halsring unnd normaler Glockenkappe, mit rotem Farbanstrich, Ventil, abgenommen durch T.Ü.V Saarbrücken mit Sammelattest, Lieferwerk Mannesmannröhrenwerke, Werk Buss a.d. Saar, per Stück 49.8 RM.

    Die I.G. Farben müssten sich sofort telegraphisch zu dem Problem äußern, da wir Anfang der nächsten Woche günstige Verlademöglichkeit haben nach Ludwigshafen durch eigenes Gerät.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]

    TRANSLATION:
    Friedrich W. Lorent              Berlin, 19. April 1944
                        Lt/He

    Mr. von Hegener

    I would like to ask you for the following:
    60 once-used seamless empty steel bottles for carbon monoxide, each of approx. 40 L volume approx. 6 cbm of gas, manufactured according to the DGV of 1 January [19]36 in a commercial version, for 150 atm. fill pressure and 225 atm. test pressure, with normal square-cut bottom, neck ring and normal bell cap, with red paint coat, valve, approved by T.Ü.V Saarbrucken with summary certificate, supplier Mannesmannröhrenwerke, factory Buss at the Saar, per piece 49.8 RM. 
    The I.G. Farben should immeadiately respond to the issue, since we have a good possibility to load them to Ludwigshafen with our own equipment next week.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 61; my translation)

    8.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 26 April 1944 on shipping "60 carbon monoxide bottles (used once)".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    An das Kriminaltechnische Institut
    der Sicherheitspolizei

    Berlin C 2
    Werdersche Markt     

    Betreff: Kohlenoxyd            26.4.1944

    Wir bestätigen das kürzlich mit ihrem sehr geehrten Herrn Dr. Widmann geführte Telefongespräch und danken ihnen für den uns erteilten Auftrag über 15 Flaschen Kohlenoxyd. Wir vereinbarten heute, das sie sich diese Flaschen von Ludwighafen abholen lasen und gleichzeitig 15 leere Flaschen zurückgeben.

    Ferner danken wir ihnen für ihr Angebot uns 60 Kohlenoxydflaschen (einmal gebraucht) für 40 l Inhalt zu übersenden, die ihnen von der Firma Mannesmann nach Vorschrift DGV v. 1.1.36 in handelsüblicher Qualität für 150 atü und 225 atü Probedruck hergestellt sind. Sie nannten uns einen Preis von RM 49.80 je Flasche, abzüglich 10-15% Nachlass auf den vorgenannten ursprünglichen Bezugspreis. Wir baten sie heute telefonisch, diese 60 Flaschen gleichzeitig in Ludwigshafen mit auszuliefern und dass wir diese Flaschen zum Stückpreis von RM 49,80 abzüglich 15% Nachlass übernehmen wollen. Wir bitten sie uns das Ursprungsattest für diese Kohlenoxydflaschen noch zur Verfügung zu stellen.

    Heil Hitler!<
    I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT VERKAUFSKONTOR CHEMIKALIEN

    [signature]

    + gaben Ihnen davon Kenntnis

    [incoming stamp]

    TRANSLATION:
    To the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police 

    Berlin C 2 Werdersche Markt     

    Re: Carbon monoxide      26 April 1944

    We confirm the recent telephone conversation with your dear Dr. Widmann and thank you for the order of 15 bottles of carbon monoxide given to us. We agreed today that you pick up these bottles from Ludwighafen and return 15 empty bottles at the same time. 

    Furthermore, we would like to thank you for your offer to send us 60 carbon monoxide bottles (used once) for 40 liters of content produced by the company Mannesmann according to the regulation DGV of 1 January 36 in commercial quality for 150 atü and 225 atü test pressure. You gave us us a price of RM 49.80 per bottle, minus 10-15% discount on the aforementioned original reference price. We asked you today by phone to deliver these 60 bottles at the same time in Ludwigshafen and that we want to acquire these bottles at the unit price of RM 49.80 minus 15% discount. We ask you to provide the certificate of provenance for these carbon monoxide bottles.

    Heil Hitler!
    I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT SALES OFFICE CHEMICAL

    [signature]

    + we informed you

    [incoming stamp]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 36; my translation)



    9.) Telex from Albert Widmann to the Criminal Police Linz of 2? April 1944 informing Friedrich Lorent on "filling of 15 steel bottles in Ludwigshafen".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    2?.4.44
    FS Nr. 5042

    Eilt sehr
    An die Kripostelle Linz
    zu Hd. des Herrn Leiters
    o.V.i.A.

    Wir bittten um Benachrichtigung von Gauinspektor Peterseil von der Gauleitung Linz, dass für Herrn Lorent nachstehendes FS zur Abholung bereitliege:

    "15 Stahlflaschen können in Ludwigshafen gefüllt werden. Die IG-Farbenindustrie erwirbt die angebotenen Stahlflaschen käuflich gegen Vorlage des Ursprungsattestes zum abgenommenen Preis von 49,80 RM abzüglich 15%. Das Werk Ludwigshafen ist verständigt dass die Flaschen dort abgegeben werden."

    Herr Lorent ist telefonisch zu erreichen unter Linz 24274

    Kriminaltechnisches Institut

    I.A.

    W

    Dr.Ing. Widmann

    TRANSLATION:
    2? April [19]44
    Telex no. 5042

    Very urgent
    To to Criminal Police Office Linz 
    for the attention of the chief 
    o.V.i.A.

    We ask our for notification of the Gauinspektor Peterseil from the Gauleitung Linz that the following telex for Mr. Lorent is ready to pick up:

    "15 steel bottles can be filled in Ludwigshafen. The IG Farbenindustrie acquires the offered steel bottles on presentation of the certificate of provenance at the accepted price of 49.80 RM minus 15%. The Ludwigshafen factory is informed that the bottles are delivered there."

    Mr. Lorent can be reached by phone at Linz 24274

    Criminal Technical Institute

    By order

    W

    Dr.Ing. Widmann
    (BArch B162/822, p. 37; my translation)


    10.) Letter from Helmut Kallmeyer of the Criminal Technical Institute to the IG Farbenindustrie of 2 May 1944 on "filling of 15 bottles with carbon monoxide".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Chemie                         2.5.        4

    An
     die IG-Farben



     Ludwighafen



            Wir bitten um die Füllung von 15 Flaschen mit Kohlenoxyd. Die Flaschen werden von uns gestellt.

                                            I.A.

                                            (Dr. Kallmeyer)        Js

    TRANSLATION:
    Chemistry            2 May [194]4

    To the IG-Farben
    Ludwighafen

    We request the filling of 15 bottles with carbon monoxide. The bottles will be provided by us.

    By order
    (Dr. Kallmeyer)

    Js
    (BArch B162/822, p. 38; my translation)


    11.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 20 May 1944 on "60 seamless steel bottles 40 liters content...for carbon monoxide".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    [...]
    60 Nahtlose Stahlflaschen 40 L Inhalt ...für Kohlenoyd, Probedruck 225 atü.

    53 Flaschen sind bereits geliefert. Wir bitten noch um Lieferung der restlichen 7 Stück
    [...] 

    TRANSLATION:
    [...]
    60 seamless steel bottles 40 liters content...for carbon monoxide, test pressure 22 atü.

    53 bottles have been already delivered. We ask for delivery of the remaining 7 pieces.
    [...]

    (BArch B162/822, p. 68; my translation)


    12.) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 26 May 1944 on a letter from the IG Farbenindustrie on "60 used carbon monoxide steel bottles".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
                26. Mai   4

    An
    Herrn W. Lorent
    Berlin
    Tiergartenstr. 4

    Anliegend übersenden wir ein Schreiben der IG Farbenindustrie zur weiteren Veranlassung

    I.A.
    W
    (Dr. Ing. Widmann)

    Betrifft: 60 gebr, Kohlenoxyd Stahlflaschen

    [letter of IG Farbenindustrie of 20 May 1944]

    TRANSLATION:
    26 May [194]4

    To
    Mr. W. Lorent
    Berlin
    Tiergartenstr. 4

    Enclosed we sent you a letter of the IG Farbenindustrie for further action.

    By order
    W
    (Dr. Ing. Widmann)

    Re: 60 used carbon monoxide steel bottles

    [letter of IG Farbenindustrie of 20 May 1944]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 63; my translation)


    13.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 9 December 1944 on "51 steel bottles for CO".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Friedrich W. Lorent         Linz Donau, den 9.Dezember 1944
                    Postfach 324/630

    Herrn Dr. Widmann
    Kriminaltechnisches Institut

    Berlin C.2.
    Werdersche Markt

    Lieber Herr Doktor!

    Mit Vermittlung der Kriminalpolizeistelle Linz bringe ich demnächst an die Adresse

    Kriminaltechnisches Institut
    zu Händen Herrn Dr. Widmann Berlin C2 Werder'sche Markt

    51 Stahlflaschen für CO zum Versand.

    Gleichzeitig teile ich ihnen mit, dass ich folgenden dringenden Bedarf habe:

    500 A. M 0,02

    Lieferung in Ampullen ist nicht erfoderlich, Lieferung kann in Substanz erfolgen.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]

    [incoming stamp]

    TRANSLATION:
    Friedrich W. Lorent         Linz Donau, 9 December 1944
                    Post office box 324/630

    Mr. Dr. Widmann
    Criminal Technical Institute
    Berlin C2.
    Werdersche Markt

    Dear Mr. Doktor!

    By mediation of the Criminal Police Office Linz I will soon submit 51 steel bottles for CO for dispatch to the address

    Criminal Technical Institute
    By the attention of Mr. Dr. Widmann Berlin C2 Werder'sche Markt

    At the same time I tell you that I have the following urgent need:

    500 a[mpules] m[orphine) 0.02

    Delivery in ampules is not necessary, delivery can take place as substance.

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]

    [incoming stamp]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 71; my translation)


    14.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 11 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Friedrich W Lorent     z.Zt. Linz/Donau, den 11.12.44
                    Postfach 324

    Herrn
    Dr. Widmann
    Kriminaltechnisches Insitut

    Berlin C.2.
    Werder'sche Markt

    Lieber Herr Doktor!

    Ich bitte sie, an die IG Farbenindustrie einen Brief folgenden Inhalts zu richten:

    Sie erhielten von uns 53 nahtlose Stahlflaschen 40 L gebraucht, mit Einprägung nach den Vorschriften des Technischen Überwachungsvereins für Kohlenoxyd, Probedruck 225 atü

    Die Ursprungspapiere haben sie inzwischen auch erhalten. Der vereinabrte Stückpreis beträgt

    RM 49.80 15 % Nachlass

    Ihre ursprüngliche Bestellung war in Übereinstimmung mit unserem Angebot auf 60 Stahlflaschen ausgestellt. Wir sind jedoch infolge von Fremdeinwirkung nicht mehr in der Lage ihnen die restlichen 7 Flaschen anzubieten und berechnen ihnen daher heute

    53 Stahlflaschen a RM 49.8 = RM 2639.40
    15% = 395.91
    RM 2.243.49

    2.243.49 RM

    Bitte überweisen sie diesen Betrag auf das Postcheckkonto Friedrich W. Lorent, Berlin Nr. 134708

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]

    TRANSLATION:
    Friedrich W Lorent     currently Linz/Donau, 11 December [19]44
                    Post office box 324

    Mr.
    Dr. Widmann
    Criminal Technical Institute

    Berlin C.2.
    Werder'sche Markt

    Dear Mr. Doktor!

    I ask you to sent a letter with the following content to the IG Farbenindustrie:

    You received from us 43 seamless steel bottles 40 liters used with imprinting according to the regulations of the Technical Inspection Agency for carbon monoxide test pressure 225 atü.

    You have also received the certificates of provenance in the mean time. The agreed price per piece amounts to

    RM 49.80 15 % discount

    Your original order was issued for 60 steel bottles in agreement with our quote. However, we are not able to provide you the remaining 7 bottles due to circumstances beyond our control and we therefore charge you now with

    53 steel bottles a RM 49.8 = RM 2639.40
    15% = 395.91
    RM 2.243.49

    2.243.49 RM

    Please transfer this amount to the postal cheque account Friedrich W. Lorent, Berlin Nr. 134708

    Heil Hitler!

    [signature]
    (BArch B162/822, p. 69; my translation)


    15.) Letter from Albert Widmann to the IG Farbenindustrie of 18 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Chemie   4     18 Dez.

    An die I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G.
    Einkaufsabteilung
    Ludwigshafen a. Rh

    Ihre Bestellung 633089 Gr.6/Mü/Sch/Anorg. Abt./Dr.Re/20.5.44
    Ffff.Lu 250.

    Sie erhielten von uns 53 nahtlose Stahlflaschen 40 L gebraucht, mit Einprägung nach den Vorschriften des Technischen Überwachungsvereings für Kohlenoxyd, Probedruck 225 atü

    Die Ursprungspapiere haben sie inzwischen auch erhalten. Der vereinabrte Stückpreis beträgt

    RM 49.80 15 % Nachlass

    Ihre ursprüngliche Bestellung war in Übereinstimmung mit unserem Angebot auf 60 Stahlflaschen ausgestellt. Wir sind jedoch infolge von Fremdeinwirkung nicht mehr in der Lage ihnen die restlichen 7 Flaschen anzubieten und berechnen ihnen daher heute

    53 Stahlflaschen a RM 49.8 = RM 2639.40
    15% = 395.91
    RM 2.243.49

    2.243.49 RM

    Bitte überweisen sie diesen Betrag auf das Postcheckkonto Friedrich W. Lorent, Berlin Nr. 134708

    W
    (Dr. Ing. Widmann)

    TRANSLATION:
    Chemistry     4       18 December [1944]

    To the I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G.
    Purchase Department
    Ludwigshafen a. Rh

    Your order 633089 Gr.6/Mü/Sch/Anorg. Abt./Dr.Re/20.5.44
    Ffff.Lu 250.

    You received from us 43 seamless steel bottles 40 liters used with imprinting according to the regulations of the Technical Inspection Agency for carbon monoxide test pressure 225 atü.

    You have also received the certificates of provenance in the mean time. The agreed price per piece amounts to

    RM 49.80 15 % discount

    Your original order was issued for 60 steel bottles in agreement with our quote. However, we are not able to provide you the remaining 7 bottles due to circumstances beyond our control and we therefore charge you now with

    53 steel bottles a RM 49.8 = RM 2639.40
    15% = 395.91
    RM 2.243.49

    2.243.49 RM

    Please transfer this amount to the postal cheque account Friedrich W. Lorent, Berlin Nr. 134708

    W
    (Dr. Ing. Widmann)
    (BArch B162/822, p. 67; my translation)


    16.) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 3 January 1945 on "51 steel bottles for CO announced".↩

    TRANSCRIPTION:
    Abt. Chemie u Physik
    Chemie   5            3. Januar   5

    Herrn Friedrich W. Lorent
    Linz Donau
    Postfach 324

    Beiliegend 10 g Morphicum hydrochloricum, die Substanz muss gelöst werden in 500 ccm Wasser, man erhält dann die übliche 2%ige Lösung.

    In getrennten Paketen senden wir ihnen 300 Ampullen Evipan-Natrium und 200 Ampullen Luminal. Die angekündigten 51 Stahlflaschen für CO sind bei uns noch nicht eingetroffen, wann kommen sie?

    Zum neuen Jahr alles Gute!

    Heil Hitler!
    W

    TRANSLATION:
    Department Chemistry and Physics

    Chemistry 5            3 January [194]5

    Mr. Friedrich W. Lorent
    Linz Donau
    Post office account 324

    Enclosed are 10 g Morphicum hydrochloricum, the substance has to be solved in 500 ccm water, one obtains the usual 2% solution.

    In different packets, we sent you 300 ampules Evipan-Natrium und 200 ampules Luminal. The 51 steel bottles for CO announced have not yet arrived, when will they come?

    A happy new year!

    Heil Hitler!
    W
    (BArch B162/822, p. 70; my translation)


    ↧
    Search

    Mattogno's Falsehoods on the Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute

    October 10, 2016, 11:16 pm
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    As shown in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute (update) (2nd update) (3rd update), Alvarez has performed the epic fail to claim that "formally seen, almost everything about this letter is wrong" on a clearly formally authentic document corroborating German homicidal gas vans. In his book Inside the Gas Chambers, Carlo Mattogno has hailed Alvarez' display of his complete ignorance and misunderstanding of RSHA documents as "critical analysis". He further did not want to miss the opportunity to contribute some of his own ignorance to the argument, so here we go.

    Bureaucratic Practises in the RSHA

    Mattogno argues that "the letter, based on its letterhead ('II D Rf/Hb'), would have come from Walter Rauff ('Rf')" but "[n]onetheless, at the bottom of the document we have Rauff’s signature, preceded by 'i.A.' (im Auftrag, by order)" (p. 146). Our "specialist in text analysis" has apparently fundamentally misunderstood the bureaucratic formalism of letters sent from the RSHA. As pointed out previously, Rauff's letter to the Criminal Technical Institute is a carbon copy from a letter typed on a stationery. How did this stationery look like in the RSHA? Did every head of an RSHA office had their own personalized sheets? 

    Figure 1.
    A standard sheet of writing paper from the RSHA is shown in Figure 1 (from Eichman trial exhibit T-37 88). The main feature is the heading "Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und SD" (the head of the security police and security service), i.e. any letters were going out under the name of Heydrich or later Kaltenbrunner. It is for this reason that Rauff - as subordinate of Heydrich - had to sign his letters with "by order", since he was formally writing on behalf of Heydrich. The letter to the Criminal Technical Institute got this detail perfectly right.

    Figure 2.

    In fact, if Mattogno had bothered to check out one of his own citations and opened Alvarez'book on p. 313 (Figure 2), he would find the internal copy of a letter of Rauff to the Gaubschat company of 30 April 1942, which is regarded as authentic by deniers. This letter was signed by Rauff "by order", too.

    Mattogno further insist that "[c]ontrary to normal practise, the typed name of the author of the letter is missing, as are his name [sic!] and rank". What is "normal practice" is certainly not defined by Mattogno, but by what contemporaries did at the time. And as can be seen from numerous other letters from the RSHA, it was absolutely a normal practise to sign documents without further typing name and rank, see IV C 1 to Reichstatthalter Wien of 16 October 1941, Heydrich to Security Police and Security Service offices of 25 January 1942, Heydrich to Schmitt of 25 January 1942, Eichmann to Auswärtige Amt of 25 September 1942 (Eichmann trial exhibit T-37 88), IV B 4 to Auswärtige Amt of 15 August 1944 (Eichmann trial exhibit T-37 87) etc. pp.

    Likewise unfounded is Mattogno's other claim that sending back the "procedure" (i.e. the written request from Mauthausen) to the Criminal Technical Institute "was not standard practice" (p. 147). On the contrary, in another letter to Hitler's Chancellery of 9 February 1944, the Criminal Technical Institute submitted the same request to sent back a forwarded letter they obtained from the IG Farbenindustrie (BArch B162/822, p. 22).

    Mattogno has clearly no clue what was standard practise in the RSHA and what was not. Just because he may claim to have studied thousands of documents from the central construction office Auschwitz, this does not qualify him as expert on the RSHA bureaucracy, which was used to different practises.

    Major Pradel

    On Friedrich Pradel, who is referred to as Major in Rauff's letter to the Criminal Technical Institute, Mattogno asserts that "Pradel was not a 'Major' in any way; his SS-rank of Hauptsturmführer corresponded to that of a captain" (p.146). Unfortunetely, Mattogno does not provide a source for the claim that Pradel was SS-Haupsturmführer at the time. Most likely, he read in Mathias Beer's classic article on the gas vans that Heydrich "approached SS-Obersturmführer Rauff, head of the group II D 3 (technical matters) early October [1941], whose department II D 3a (motor pool of the security police) was lead by SS-Hauptsturmführer Pradel". Beer was right that Pradel was SS-Hauptsturmführer in October 1941. However, in March 1942 when the letter to the Criminal Technical Institute was written, Pradel had been already promoted to Major and on 3 April 1942 he also received the equivalent SS rank SS-Sturmbannführer (NS Justiz und Verbrechen Band XXIII, Verfahren Nr. 632, p. 602). A letter from Pradel of 12 August 1943 designates him as SS-Sturmbannführer und Major der Schutzpolizei (BArch B162/601, p. 4).

    In the above quote, Beer incorrectly designated Rauff's group as II D 3, whereas it was actually II D. He used the proper term on three other occasions in the article. Now, Mattogno also mentions Rauff's group by its correct name at first, but writes a paragraph later that Rauff was "head of group II D 3 (Technical matters) of RSHA", just like Beer. He obviously relied on Beer on this and on Pradel's rank, yet without naming his source. This is insofar telling as "plagiarism" seems to be one of Mattogno's favourite smearing against the Holocaust Controversies White Paper refuting him on Aktion Reinhard.

    Writing Mistake

    When Rauff's letter stated that "I request that you initiate the acquisition of steel bottles with carbon monoxide or respectively other remedies for the implementation", it was overlooked by Rauff and his secretary to add a term of what is to be implemented (e.g. the "action). Mattogno declares that this "can only stem from an error in translation. It seems that the letter was drawn up in English and that on translation into German the English word “execution” was rendered as 'Durchführung' = implementation" (p. 147). 

    His argument that this forgery hypothesis were the only explanation for the mistake is utterly false. Let aside that this would hardly be the first German document with some writing error (like these inconspicuous letters of Harald Turner here), it can be also well understood how the term slipped out from the text due to some sort of inner self-censorship.

    It is moreover unlikely that a hypothetical forger, who would have prepared the document very carefully, would commit such a mistake on an extremely crucial point for him, whereas the mistake was something entirely irrelevant for Rauff. Apart from being not the only explanation, Mattogno's conspiracy theory not backed up by any evidence is also far inferior than assuming a simple mistake by Rauff or his secretary (cf. Occam's Razor). And already the odd but nevertheless perfectly authentic form of the document makes a forgery extremely unlikely. 

    Documentary Evidence on Carbon Monoxide Steel Bottles
    "The proposal to supply Mauthausen with 'steel bottles with carbon oxide or other auxiliary agents' (what agents?) is nothing but yet another attempt to produce a document using this infamous term which otherwise does not appear in any document."
     (Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, p. 148)

    Along the same line, his buddy Jürgen Graf wrote in the foreword to the book that "the allegations that the killings were carried out by means of carbon monoxide gas supplied in steel bottles – there is no documentary proof for this" (p. 11). If Mattogno and Graf had done some rudimentary research on the Euthanasia, they could have found out how dead wrong this is. 

    Ernst Klee's classic monograph on the Nazi Euthanasia first published in 1985 quotes two German documents from the T4 official Friedrich Lorent on the return of 51 carbon monoxide steel bottles to the IG Farbenindustrie (Klee, "Euthanasie" im NS-Staat, 2009 p. 445 f.). These documents have been also reproduced in the judgment against the two Euthanasia officials Hans-Joachim Becker and Friedrich Lorent published in 2005. Two further letters from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of 1943 and 1944 on carbon monoxide bottles are cited in Kogon et al., Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, 1995, p. 307 (first edition from 1983). Yet another document represents the film script of a Nazi documentary according to which "the patients are subjected to the effect of carbon monoxide" after "opening of the valve". The document has been quoted - amongst others - in Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, 1987, p. 290, Götz Aly, Aktion T 4, 1989, p. 92, Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: 'Euthanasia' in Germany 1900 to 1945, 1995, p. 202.

    Mattogno was only aware of the citation from Kogon et al., but brushed it away with his absurd explanation that if those documents were proving CO supply to the Euthanasia they "would have published them right away" and that "the extremely late dates of these letters raises suspicions about their authenticity" (p. 46). It is telling how easy Mattogno suspects documents, he has never seen and does not know in context, as forgery as soon as they may challenge his denial. Of course, since historians can establish the Euthanasia gassing with carbon monoxide beyond reasonable doubt already from the testimonial evidence from the various Euthanasia trials, there was never any reason to publish the IG Farbenindustrie letters "right away". Mattogno projects his own obsessions to real historians, to whom such docs are just a historical detail not worth more than a mere footnote.

    To put the matter to rest, none less than 16 contemporary German documents on the existence, use, filling, delivery, return of carbon monoxide gas bottles in the context of the Nazi Euthanasia have been compiled here.

    The late dates 1943/44/45 of the 15 documents on the CO bottles is explained by two reasons. Most docs deal with empty bottles obtained and used much earlier - at least seven CO bottles had been delivered on 3 January 1942. However, on 19 April 1944 an Euthanasia official requested from the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police to obtain 15 filled CO bottles, which demonstrates that it was at least intended to continue carbon monoxide gassings as late as 1944.
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Just Memo

    October 16, 2016, 2:21 am
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans
    Part IX: The Just Memo

    The Document

    On 5 June 1942, the member of the Security Police motor pool Willy Just set up a memo for Walther Rauff, the head of RSHA department II D on Technical Matters, to "decide" on "technical modifications on the special vehicles in operation and under construction". The memo does not explicitly name the purpose of these "special vehicles", but the description is clear enough that it is talking about homicidal gas vans. It explains that about "97,000 have been processed with three vehicles in use" at one place, about "a rapid distribution of carbon monoxide" and that "the load pushes hard against the door" inside the vehicles. The memo also mentions that such vehicle was involved in an "explosion in Chelmno".

    Corroboration and Confirmation

    Chelmno Extermination Camp

    One day end of 1941, the commissioner of the Chelmno area (Amtskommissar) Konrad Schulz learnt from Chelmno residents that "a SS commando was here, inspected the palace and obtained information on the official buildings of the village”. Several days later, "some SS-Hauptsturmführer Lange showed up" and confiscated several buildings of the village (interrogation of Schulz of 27 April 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 217). The arrival and activity of the SS in Chelmno has been also reported by the German Chelmno residents Herbert Wa., Nelly Lö., Else Se. and Erhard Mi. (interrogation of Wa. of 23 March 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 199 ff.; interrogation of Lö. of 21 March 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 191 ff.; interrogation of Se. of 22 March 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 195 ff.; interrogation of Michelsohn of 18 April 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 210 ff.; also hearsay in interrogation of Adele Fr. of 16 April 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 207 ff.).

    According to these accounts of the local residents, the about 10 men strong SS commando was subsequently followed by a police commando. The so called palace of the village, which has been confiscated  by the SS, was screened from the outside views with a timber fence. After some time, numerous Jewish people were brought to the village by trucks and a narrow gauge railway and were forced to enter the palace. However, these people were not seen coming out again. The local teacher Mi. recalled that "I found it strange that so many people were brought into the palace, but could not find any explanation for this at first". The Chelmno residents observed the pattern that grey, closed trucks left the palace to a nearby forest guarded by the police after the arrival of a Jewish transport. According to Schulz, "it leaked to the residents that the Jewish people were killed with engine exhaust in the grey trucks and that the corpses were stacked in mass graves in the forest at Majdani".

    How did this look like from the perspective of the SS commando? The driver Walter Burmeister was one of the early members of the SS Sonderkommando in Chelmno. He gave the following account of their activity: 
    "One day in late Autumn 1941, I received the order from the State Police office Poznań for a trip with my vehicle with Hauptsturmführer Lange…to a small village called Chelmno… [where] a Sonderkommando would be formed….Also from Poznań came a Polish working detail of six or seven persons, who had been prisoners of Fort VII in Poznań. Shortly after our arrival in Chelmno came also a guard detail consisting of police men…Somewhat offside the village was the palace, which was connected to the road with a farm track…. The area was first fenced with a wire mesh fence, later a timber fence was erected…The Polish working detail constructed a fenced ramp at the palace…Before the first transports of people came to Chelmno, we had to sign a declaration that we will not speak about anything we hear and see, because it was a secret state affair. After the palace was equipped with the ramp, trucks with people arrived in Chelmno from Lodz. It were mostly Jews; in one case it were Gypsies, in another case only children. After the people left the trucks, a speech was given to them…The people were told that they had to take a bath, that their clothes have to be desinfected…After the people had undressed, they were ordered to go into the basement of the palace, through a corridor to the ramp and from there into the gas vans….[gassing description reproduced below]...the vehicle was driven to the forest camp. The corpses were unloaded and buried in mass graves…"
    (interrogation of Burmeister of 24 January 1961, BArch B162/3246, p. 150, my translation)

    The killing of Jews with homicidal gas vans in 1942 and their burial in mass graves in the forest camp are further corroborated by two other SS men as well as seventeen police men:


    One of the Polish prisoners brought from Fort VII in Poznań to Chelmno, as Burmeister mentioned above, was Henryk Mania. He pictured the start of Chelmno extermination camp as following:
    "After a few weeks, Lange found the extermination camp at the Chelmno area. An old palace in Chelmno was chosen as permanent site of the extermination camp. The area was fenced with boards to a height of 250 cm. The residents of the palace were displaced…Initially, the camp commandant was Lange, then replaced by Herbert Bothmann. The camp was managed by about 15-20 SS men and more than 160 police officers…This camp [was] set for the liquidation of people, so no detainees were held for a longer period of time…[The prisoners] were told to get off the car. The commander of the camp Bothmann spoke to them… He assured them that they had come to a transit camp. Inside the building, there were three large rooms labelled as bedrooms for children, women and men separately….At the end of the corridor was a room where the prisoners were ordered to strip naked…Then they were brought to the basement to the ramp. The ramp lead them to the car (gas chambers). They were gassed there on the spot with gas from a cylinder, and at a later period directly with gas from the automobile engine. After killing a lot of prisoners they were transported to the forest, where they were buried in specially dug trenches."
    (interview of 27 August 1962, Pawlicka-Nowak, Swiadectwa Zaglady, p. 114 ff., my translation)

    The layout of the gas vans operating with engine exhaust were about the same as those dispatched to the Einsatzgruppen around the same time, according to one of the gas van drivers:
    "The gas vans were big trucks with a box of about 4-5 m length, 2.3 m width and 2 m height. It was covered with metal sheet in the inside. There was a wooden duckboard on the floor. There was an opening in the floor of the box, which could be connected with a flexible metal hose with the exhaust pipe. When the vehicle was full of people, the double swing doors in the back were closed and the connection between exhaust pipe and the inside of the vehicle was established...The gas van drivers started the engine so that the people inside the van suffocated from the combustion gases. When this was the case, the connection between exhaust pipe and van was released..."
    (interrogation of Burmeister of 24 January 1961, BArch B162/3246, p. 150, my translation)

    One peculiarity can be found in the testimony of Adolf Eichmann, who visited Chelmno early in the camp's history in Winter 1941/42. He stated that he was asked to look through a peephole in the driver's cabin into the gassing box (Sassen protocols, BArch B162/3247, p. 30 ff. & Eichmann Trial evidence T/1432; Eichmann, Götzen, p. 180f.). Peepholes in the driver's cabin were also mentioned by the Chelmno escapee Szlama Winer for early January 1942 (reproduced in Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, p. 96f.) and by Burmeister (interrogation of 23 March 1961, BArch B162/3248, p. 66 ff., cf. Kogon et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, p. 114f.), but such detail is lacking in the descriptions of the homicidal gas vans sent to the Einsatzgruppen. According to Theodor L. of the Criminal Technical Institute, which developed the gas vans, the prototype gas van (supposedly based on Opel Blitz chassis) tested in Sachsenhausen was equipped with a peephole in the driver's cabin (interrogation of 11 July 1962, Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/28, p. 17).

    The vehicles of Sonderkommando Chelmno were repaired at the Kraft und Reichsstraßenbauamt repair garages in Kolo, including the homicidal gas vans. In this way, the vehicles became familiar to the Polish personnel of these repair shops. The connection between the exhaust pipe and the gassing box was described by the seven car mechanics:


    Hence, all perspectives on what happened in the property taken over by the SS in Chelmno in late 1941 - that of the local residents, that the German paramilitary forces, that of a Polish prisoner  - show essentially the same events: the killing of Jews unfit for work with homicidal gas vans (corroborated by the Polish car mechanics in Kolo) in the so called palace and their subsequent burial in the nearby forest. Contemporary German documents confirm that the deportations to Chelmno concerned Jews considered unfit for work, see in this respect “The Jews buried in a little wood near Kulmhof”: Documenting Cremation at Chełmno , fnt. 38, 42 and 43.

    97,000 with 3 Special Vehicles

    As indicated by the testimony of the Polish prisoner Mania, the very first gassings in Chelmno were carried out with a gas van operating with carbon monoxide bottles (on this killing technique previously employed by Sonderkommmando Lange to clear asylums see Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, English translation here). This was soon replaced by two gas vans of the first series operating with engine exhaust constructed by the motor pool department of the RSHA by December 1941 (see also section First Series of Gas Vans of Einsatzgruppe B of Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans). The figure of two gas vans is confirmed by the SS men Gustav Laabs, Walter Burmeister and Fritz Ismer. According to Burmeister, who used to help out the gas van drivers, both vehicles were based on French chassis (Renault; citation as above), while Laabs, who was a permanent gas van driver, remembered that the gassing box was mounted on an American chassis (Dodge; interrogation of Gustav Laabs of 18 June 1962, Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/27, p. 228). Some time in 1942, the Sonderkommando Chelmno was also provided with another gas van of the large Saurer type. The addition of the third gas van was mentioned by Fritz Ismer (citation as above) and Walter Burmeister (interrogation of 17 April 1962, Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/26, p. 201; claimed that the Saurer was "not usefull for us").

    The death toll of Chelmno extermination camp until early June 1942 can be estimated from a number of sources:
    • As borne out by the letter from the Warthegau Gauleiter Arthur Greiser to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler of 1 May 1942, the Sonderkommando established by Herbert Lange in Chelmno had been originally ordered to kill 100,000 Jews of the Warthegau:






    "It will be possible to conclude the action of special treatment of about 100,000 Jews [Sonderbehandlung von rund 100,000] in the area of my Gau, authorized by yourself with the agreement of the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, within the next 2-3 months. I hereby ask for authorization to use the existing and trained special detachment after the Jewish action in order to free the Gau of a danger that takes a more catastrophic shape every week.
    There are 230,000 identified ethnic Poles with tuberculosis in the Gau area. The number of Poles with open tuberculosis is estimated at ca. 35,000.

    […]

    Though it is not possible to tackle this popular plague in the Old Reich with corresponding draconian measures, I think I can take the responsibility of proposing to you that here in the Warthegau the cases of open tuberculosis among the Polish people are extirpated."


    (letter Greiser to Himmler of 1 May 1942, Nuremberg evidence NO-246, Roberto Mühlenkamp's translation from here; on the homicidal meaning of special treatment in this specific case, see Documents about the murderous purpose of SK Lange)
    • Fritz Ismer of the SS Sonderkommando estimated that there had been 75,000 to 100,000 corpses buried in three mass graves in the forest camp near Chelmno (interrogation of 9 November 1960, BArch B162/3246, p. 76). Since the mass graves were only filled until the start of open air cremations in Chelmno, which may be dated before mid-July 1942 based on documentary traces, and since there had been a deportation lull between mid-May and mid-July 1942 (see Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, p. 187), this corresponds approximately to the number of Jews killed when the Just memo was written.
    • Jakob Wildermuth of the police Sonderkommando testified - more exactly - that the Sonderkommando Chelmno was supposed to report the completion of the above mentioned "special treatment of about 100,000 Jews" in the Warthegau, which was achieved before the start of the open air cremations:
    "It was said that there had been 100,000 corpses in all mass graves. Bothmann summoned the whole commando, including the police guards, and drove with us to the RSHA in Berlin. This was, as I already said, in Summer 1942...He presumably wanted to report the completion of the killing of 100,000 Jews and introduce us to the RSHA."
    (interrogation of Wildermuth 14 December 1961, BArch B162/3247, p. 181)
    • The historian Patrick Montague has compiled deportation data to Chelmno in his book Chelmno and the Holocaust, p. 185 ff. According to this, about 100,000 people had been sent to Chelmno between 7 December 1941 and 5 June 1942.
    Thus, it appears that the Sonderkommando Chelmno killed about 100,000 people (mostly Jews) with up to 3 homicidal gas vans between December 1941 - Summer 1942, which is in excellent agreement with the statement in the Just memo of 5 June 1942 that "since December 97,000 have been processed with three vehicles in use". This is therefore beyond reasonable doubt a reference to Chelmno extermination camp. Another place where three gas vans were concentrated to kill people on a large scale was the extermination site Maly Trostinez near Minsk. But this was only getting just started by early June 1942 and did not reach this high death toll (see also Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes).


    The Gas Van Explosion
    "The explosion that we know took place at Chelmno is to be considered an isolated case. The cause can be attributed to improper operation. In order to avoid such incidents, special instructions have been addressed to the offices concerned. Safety has been increased considerably as a result of these instructions."
    (memo from Willy Just of 5 June 1942)

    The incident that a gas van exploded at Chelmno is confirmed by several testimonies. The driver Walter Burmeister testified that "a [gas] van exploded, but I cannot say when this occurred and how this happened" (interrogation of 23 March 1961, BArch B162/3248, p. 71). At least two Germans were badly burnt during their time in Chelmno, however, it is unclear whether this is related to the gas van explosion. The judgement of the West-German Chelmno trial mentions that Alexander Ste. was "burnt in the face and on the hands by an explosion at the basement entrance end of May 1942" (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Nr. 594). The police guard Hans Sch. claimed that he obtained "burns on upper arm, back of the head and back" because "an spirit stove exploded" (interrogation of 1 February 1962, BArch B162/3249, p. 125).

    Anyway, the cause of the gas van explosion was subsequently investigated at the RSHA. According to Anton S. of the motor pool department of the Security Police:
    "During my work in Wentritt's repair shop, we received a report from the camp Chelmno that a gas van exploded upon starting up. The doors were blown open and the people inside, who got out, were partly burning. Wentritt and I searched for an explanation for the explosion and we came to the result that the driver of the gas van did not fully turn on the ignition, so that unburned gases reached the exhaust pipe which ignited upon the first spark. We wrote this in a report signed by both of us."
    (interrogation of 21 August 1961, NHStA NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/23, p. 257)

    The explosion was also reported to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police, which had contributed to the development of the gas vans. Theodor L. stated that "half a year or one year after the trial [with the prototype gas van in Sachsenhausen] I became aware that a gas van exploded...the term "processed" matches the tone of the report [to?] Dr. Widmann" (interrogation of 11 July 1962 NHStA NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/28, p. 17).

    Saurer & Hoses & Observation Windows & Lamps

    The memo discusses technical modifications to be implemented for the gas vans and provides a number of hints on the gas vans' equipment and problems in this context.

    It mentions that "larger special Saurer vans" are already employed. The use of a large Saurer chassis for the homicidal gas vans is - amongst other things - confirmed by the set of documents compiled as Nuremberg evidence PS-501 - the Becker letter and the Schäfer, Trühe and Rauff telexes - and the testimony of the gas van drivers Heinz Schlechte, Josef Wendl and Johann Haßler.

    The poor "off-road maneuverability" of the Saurer pointed out in the memo is also discussed in the Becker letter. Examples of when a Saurer gas van failed in the terrain and had to be towed away can be found in the testimonies of the gas van driver of Einsatzkommando 8 Heinz Schlechte and the members of Einsatzkommando 6 Walter Ve. and Paul Br. (interrogation of Schlechte of 7 November 1964, YVA TR.10/5, p. 599, interrogation of Ve. of 1 December 1961 and interrogation of Br. of 12 December 1961, BArch B162/1570, p. 229 and 280).

    The damage of the metal hoses between the exhaust pipe and the gassing box is corroborated by the Trüehe Telex.

    The "observation windows", which are apparently also mentioned in the letter to Gaubschat of 23 June 1942 as "openings covered with sliders in the backdoors", were also described by Schlechte:
    "At the top of the swing doors, far above eye height, there were just two narrow little winows made of strong glass; I want to describe them as mere observation slits."
    (interrogation of Schlechte of 27 August 1963, BArch B162/5066, p. 646)

    The lamp inside the gassing box was mentioned by the gas van drivers Walter Burmeister ("There was an electrical lamp inside the box"; interrogation of 23 March 1961, BArch B162/3248, p. 69) and Wilhelm Findeisen ("I believe the ceiling lamp had a cabion cage"; examination of Findeisen of 30 December 1968, BArch B162/17919, p. 112.

    Fast Unloading Device

    The last but not least modification concerned the implementation of a fast unloading device for the gas vans. The unloading of the vehicles was arguably the most critical part from the perpetrators point view, it was time consuming and a gruesome work, even for bystanders and supervisors but especially in case this was to be done by the Germans themselves.

    According to Emil Gr. of Einsatzkommando 11b "some members of the commando became sick during the unloading" (interrogation of 26 June 1970, BArch B162/1068, p. 4423). Franz We. of Einsatzkommando 6 remembered that "two men had to climb up the vehicle...You could stand it for 5 minutes at best. Then they had to change" (interrogation of 29 November 1961, BArch B162/1570, p. 250f.). Heinz Schlechte recalled that the "unloading of the corpses was a terrible work as the corpses laid bent double and partly cramped in the opened gas van" (interrogation of 6 November 1964, YVA TR.10/5, p. 587). Georg We. of Einsatzkommando 11a testified that "that those insides have croaked in the most cruel manner...The terrible pictures haunt me some nights. The gas van is the main reason why I had a mental breakdown shortly afterwards" (interrogation of 8 March 1961, BArch B162/1008, p. 695).

    As a consequence, the motor pool of the Security Police was urged to think about a fast unloading mechanism for the gas vans. Most likely, some Einsatzgruppen leaders requested to provide the gas vans with tipper. This could explain that Hans S. of Einsatzkommando 8 stated that it was planned to construct the gas vans with tipping devices (interrogation of October 1963, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/29, page number not known) and that a SD deflector - who talked to the Einsatzgruppe C chief Max Thomas - assumed the gas vans were unloaded by tipping the cargo box (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, E27#1000/721#9928-6*, p. 60).

    The tipping devices were considered as impractical by the motor pool of the Security Police because of the greatly reduced interior height and lack of availability of the hydraulic tippers (memo of 27 April 1942). Instead, Anton S. proposed an extractable grate as unloading mechanism, which he had previously seen during his service in the Netherlands (interrogation of 8 February 1961, BArch B162/5066, p. 260o). The proposal was approved by Rauff and submitted to the Gaubschat company (letter from Rauff to the Gaubschat company of 30 April 1942). The request was denied by the company because "[we] currently do not have any personnel at our disposal needed for the construction tasks" and because of "delivery times of some 10 to 12 months" for required cable winch (letter from the Gaubschat company of 14 May 1942). For this reason, the memo in question suggested the implementation of the "retractable grate" into the gassing box in order to "reach a rapid and easy unloading of the vehicle" at a "company in Hohenmauth". This proposal was dismissed by Rauff because "Sodomka in Hohenmauth does not appear proper for maintaing secrecy (Czech company in a purely Czech area with Czech workers)" and the 10 still remaining gas vans were ultimately to be constructed at Gaubschat without the fast unloading device (memo of 23 June 1942).


     Holocaust Denial

    One of the earliest denier treatments of the Just memo can be found in an article by Udo Walendy in Historische Tatsachen Nr. 5, 1979, p. 29ff..  Ingrid Weckert added some more remarks in Historische Tatsachen Nr. 24, 1984, p. 23ff., which was rewritten for her contribution in Germar Rudolf's Dissecting the Holocaust (published in 1994 in German). Also in 1994, Pierre Marais published his book Les camions à gaz en question (in German here). Marais reproduced a full quote of Weckert's article in his section on the Just memo. Their arguments have not much developed since then, so that Santiago Alvarez's take in The Gas Vans is mostly a rehash of those works. The following will focus on Alvarez's book, but it should be kept in mind that it is largely the output of Walendy/Weckert/Marais.

    Language

    Deniers have some issue with the language of the document and Alvarez wonders "whether the author of these lines was a native German speaker and whether he was a technician" because it "exhibits so many formal peculiarities" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 67f.).

    He is not able to point out a single example, which supports that the native tongue of the document's author was not German, though. The spelling of Siphon as Syphon appears on google books in several German publications in the first half of the 20th century and so was certainly a variant used among Germans (e.g. Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht, Band 47, Verlag Chemie, 1942, p. 186f.; Gustav Hell, Die pharmaceutische Nebenindustrie, 4., verb. und verm. Aufl, Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1910, p. 53, p. 68, p.112; Beihefte zum Gesundheits-Ingenieur, Verlag von. R. Oldenbourg., 1907, p. 174). The "non-existing superlative"einzigste (literally, onliest) and the false spelling weitgehendstare - as Alvarez himself notices - a "quite a common error in German colloquial speech" and "has become part of the German vernacular", respectively. In fact, their use rather supports that the author was a native German speaker. 

    Here is another example of the use of einzigste in a contemporary SS document:

    "[Geheime Kommandosache!]
    Einzigste Abschrift
    Funkspruch des SS Oberführer Hartenstein bei AOK.2 vom 12.12.41 an Kdo Stab RF SS

    Habe Befehl zur Liquidierung der Gefangenenlager auf Anordnung AOK2 widerrufen müssen.

    Hartenstein
    SS-Oberführer"
    (radio message Hartenstein to Kdo Stab RF SS of 12 December 1941, BArch B162/3300, p. 361)

    "'Syphonkrümmer' (siphon elbow pipe) is a pleonasm" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 67), but not an uncommon one in German, even among peoplewhoshouldknowbetter (multiple links). The word Lampenfenster (lamp window) is according to Alvarez "neither part of the German language nor of technical lingo nor does it make sense" (p.67). Actually, the term is used for a glass window in spectroscopy and medicine (e.g. Stoeckel, Die Cystoskopie in ihrer Bedeutung für den Gynäkologen, Breitkopf & Hartel, 1903, p. 169). But it is entirely possible that Just just created it as description of the frame and glass around a bulb. There is no reason to suppose that he was too familiar with the terminology for lamp equipment.

    The use of "for example" in the first sentence of the document is supposedly "a nonsensical initiation of a letter". But it is apparently referring to the "special vans at present in service" mentioned in the reference line. If anything, such poor style says something on Just’s writing skills, who did not have an academic education and had left school after 8 years to get a vocational training as metalworker (see his SS file reproduced in NHStA NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/3). There is nothing suggesting that the memo does not correspond to his style and level of German writing.

    In sum, from more than 800 words of technical discussion we've got a few quite common mistakes for native German speakers/people even with technical background and a creative expression for a lamp glass, none of which actually "raise[s] the question whether the author of these lines was a native German speaker and whether he was a technician".

    Chelmno
    "During my analysis of the Becker letter (p. 48) I explained already the catastrophic conditions which the German army had to deal with in Russia during the winter 1941/42. Hence, processing 97,000 units (or even several such amounts) under these conditions would not have been trivial at all, if considering that during the Russian winter the majority of the German equipment was unoperational due to the extreme cold, followed by a spring when catastrophic roads conditions did not permit any major German operation. Hence already the three words 'Since December 1941' render this first sentence historically unlikely."
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans p. 68)

    As pointed out in the first part of this blog, the 97,000 processed with three gas vans since December 1941 is without doubt a reference to Chelmno extermination camp. The site is located in the center of Poland, several hundreds of km westwards of the Einsatzgruppen gas van killing sites in occupied Soviet territory. The argument on "Russia during the winter 1941/42" is completey off the road here. So we got Alvarez trying to lecture about what is supposedly "historically unlikely" on something he has historically and geographically understood not in the slightest.

    He did not bother to reason here why he thought the 97,000 were processed in "Russia". As a matter of fact, he should know that the gas vans operated not only in the occupied Soviet territory, but also in Serbia and Chelmno according to historiography. Some confused attempt of an explanation is instead found 128 pages later, where he comments on the judgement of the West-German Chelmno trial:
    "This is also visible from the court’s claim that, since the number of gas vans mentioned in the Just letter is the same as is said to have been deployed at Chelmno, the Just letter must be talking about these three Chelmno vans. However, the context clearly shows that the reference to the alleged explosion in Chelmno is set in contrast to the general use of these vans, so the author is talking about a general deployment of the vans and not just those at Chelmno."
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 196)

    This sounds very confused and incorrect. The statement on the 97,000 processed with three vehicles is the opposite of "talking about a general deployment of the vans". It is a very specific "example".

    Now, what one could argue is that the Chelmno explosion is set in contrast to the example of the flawless "processing" of the 97,000 with three vehicles, and therefore that these two sites were not identical (cf. Mattogno et al., The 'Extermination Camps' of 'Aktion Reinhardt', p. 820). But this reading is false as we have already established above that the "processing" of the 97,000 can historically only be a reference to Chelmno. The apparent contradiction is resolved when it is taken into account that the author of the memo did not regard the explosion as a technical defect resulting from flawed design, which mattered from his point of view, but from flawed operation ("The cause can be attributed to improper operation").

    Since the victims of Chelmno extermination camp were brought to the execution site by train and trucks and since the burial site was located just some km apart, it was logistically entirely possible to kill 97,000 victims within six months with two or three gas vans (December 1941 - May 1942). The killing of 540 victims per day (in average) required about 7 gassings with each of two the smaller gas vans with a capacity of about 40 victims, and even less when the large Saurer was involved.

    Technical Modifications 

    "If they operated as flawlessly and efficiently as the author claims in his first sentence, why change them? Remember: Don’t fix it, if it’s not broken!"
    (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 69)

    Here we encounter one of Alvarez' biggest problems: he cannot read and understand contemporary German documents too inconvenient for his Holocast denial in their historical context. No doubt because he does not want to. Yet, it does not take too much to explain the author's motives.

    It is clear from the number and kind of modifications to be implemented on the gas vans that there had to be a complaints from those with field experience - the commando leaders. This included the poor off-road performance of the Saurer, damage of the metal hoses, difficulties in cleaning the gas vans, destruction of the lamps inside the gassing box, difficulties in unloading the vehicles, gassing time/reliability of killing/disfigured victims. 

    The complaints were no doubt forwarded to the technical department of the RSHA (Walther Rauff) and the motor pool of the Security Police (Friedrich Pradel) (e.g. by reports of the gas van inspector August Becker such as this here). The car mechanic Harr Wentritt remembered that the modifications resulted from "complaints by the Einsatzkommandos" (interrogation of 2 February 1961, BArch B162/5066, p.260h). Pradel's department had not only distributed but also constructed the gas vans and could have been made responsible for problems with the gas vans. The whole point of the first sentence of the Just memo ("Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed for example, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicles") was to relativize the complaints from the field. What Alvarez fails to recognize is that this sentence is not an objective, neutral assessment of the gas van's performance, but an highly selective and superficial statement to defend the department's previous work on the gas vans. 

    Both views are not contradictionary but merely based on different perspectives. One is from the bird's eye view on the big picture that the almost stationary gas vans in Chelmno managed to kill 97,000 people within six months. The other is from close range that in practice the use of the gas vans used to be inconvenient and inefficient in the occupied East. The technical modifications were supposed to make the operation of the vehicles more convenient and efficient for the Einsatzgruppen.

    Alvarez argues that the memo's discussion of the modifications contains "technical improbabilities", which "leads us to radically doubt the authenticity of this letter" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 77). On a closer look most of the supposed technical improbabilities result from the deniers' own technical, historical and linguistic ignorance. 

    For example, the argument that "I have already discussed the improbability that exhaust hoses rust through within a few months. It would have taken years before such metal hoses had rusted through" (p.75) is addressed and shown as unfounded in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes. 

    His claim that the exhaust gas inlet into the cargo box "could have been blocked by any other object, though, which might have been accidentally or intentionally dropped into the hole by a victim" (p. 76) is false, as this opening was connected to pipes with injection holes, which was further placed under a wooden duckboard. The victims could unlikely simultaneously block multiple openings, which were not accessible to them. Alvarez should have really done some basic literature reading on the gas vans to prevent making such such a newbie mistake. In fact, the pipes are mentioned in the document itself in the next paragraph ("The floor of the vehicle can be tipped slightly. In this way all the liquids can be made to flow toward the center and be prevented from entering the pipes").

    Quite the contrary to Alvarez' assertion  (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 77), it is perfectly conceivable that the victims destroyed the lamps inside the box, if these were not well secured. There was a  panicking crowd and the lamp was hanging right next to the head of the victims due to the low roof of 1.7 m. It is irrelevant whether the victims had an "interest in damaging the light" and idiotic to ask  "how did they find the lamp". The lamps were just in close range of the victims and had to be hit at some point.

    Furthermore, he has misunderstood the text when he argues that "the author’s explanation is nonsense that this movement toward the door was due to' the load' striving 'towards the light'...[s]ince the doors were allegedly 'hermetically sealed,' no light could have entered from it" (p. 77). The memo does not say that the victims strive towards the light when the doors are already closed but "upon closing the door", i.e. when there is still some light coming through the door frame.

    The author's remark that the load needs to be reduced to improve the Saurer's off-road performance is commented by Alvarez that this "depends for the most part on its design and not on its load" (p. 72). But since the design could hardly be changed for the Saurer chassis, there was not much left than to adjust the load. Note that Alvarez did not provide any information on to what extent off-road capabilities depend on the load. It seems not far fetched to assume that the performance of a truck climbing up and down on uneven terrain does also depend on its load. From the memo itself, one can infer that the Einsatzgruppen provided the empirical feedback that the off-road performance of the Saurer was significantly improved by reducing the load. It's still up to Alvarez to show that this was not the case, if he thinks so.

    In relation to the poor off-road capabilities of the Saurer vans, the memo also states that "reducing the number of subjects treated, as has been done so far" would require "a longer running time...as the empty space also needs to be filled with CO", wheras for a reduced length of the box "the operation would take considerably less time, because there would be no empty space". The remark has stirred up quite some attacks by deniers. The most dump comment came no doubt from Walendy who claimed that the "volume should have been almost totally filled anyway" with a loading of 9 - 10 people per m². In reality, there would be still 2/3 free volume with 50 kg average weight of the victims.

    The denier Carlo Mattogno thought he had pull out his calculator to show that there was only a "marginal increase of free space" of 3.7% when reducing the load by 13 people (Mattogno, Chelmno, p. 34). However, since the memo says nothing about the magnitude of the reduction of people to gain off-road performance, this calculation is rather arbitrary. One could also come up with an about 9% increase of the free volume for reducing the number of people of 50 kg from 80 to 50. The planned decrease of the length of the gassing box by 1 m resulted in a decrease of the free volume of up to 20%. One may argue over whether these figures were quantitatively significant. But even if the significance of the changes were exaggerated in the memo were flawed, this would be by no means evidence that the document is not authentic, as if some RSHA technicians could not come up with some flawed idea.

    By the way, Alvarez refrained to demonstrate his claim that "no noticeable overloading of the front axle can occur" by shortening the cargo box, as pointed out by the Gaubschat company towards the RHSA. But since the worry about the load distribution is repeated in the letter to the Gaubschat company of 23 June 1942, which Alvarez regards as part of the "unsuspicious documents" (p. 79), the point is irrelevant anyway as far as the forgery hypothesis is concerned.

    Another point in the memo is indeed questionable, albeit without really supporting the forgery hypothesis, as it may have been well an authentic consideration from the RHSA staff.  This concernsthe statement that the "normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meter" which would "not overload" the Saurer trucks. Alvarez calculates that this would actually result in "two to three tons (40 to 60%) over the maximum load". One may argue over whether 2.3 m was really the width of the cargo box (e.g. the Saurer 2C chassis used to be about 20 cm smaller, Kopacs, Die Österreichischen Saurerwerke, p. 163). His assumption that the average weight of adults and adults including children was 75 kg and 60 kg respectively is also questionable, to put it mildly. Already the average weight of male adult Scots was 63 kg and 64 kg for adult US Americans in 1941. A more realistic figure for Eastern European adults and children in 1941/1942 seems to be 50 kg in average. In contrast to Alvarez' claim, such a packing density of 9-10 m² can be achieved with adults (and even more so with children) and does not require "disciplined cooperation", see Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth". Anyway, it is quite possible that the figure of 9-10 people per m² was inflated by the author, i.e. either he performed a wrong calculation or was supplied wrong data as input. According to testimonial evidence, the Saurer were loaded with about 50 - 80 victims, which corresponds to a density of 4 to 7 people per m².

    Pressure Management of the Gas Vans

    One issue with the operation of the German homicidal gas vans, which needs to be addressed, is how the engine exhaust was introduced into the gassing box without building up critical overpressure. The problem is seemingly solved in the Just memo for the future gas vans by controlling "[t]he excess pressure...by an easily adjustable hinged metal valve on the outside of the vents". What remains unclear, however, is how this issue was dealt with in the gas vans already in operation (cf. Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 70).

    There are several scenarios of how the gas vans were supposed to work before the installation of the overpressure valves in the back (if these were ever implemented in practice):

    A: The gassing box was gas-tight with negligible leakage. The exhaust pumped in the box lead to an increase of the inside pressure. Elliott et al. have measured an exhaust flow of 0.75 m³/min for ~ 11 liters gasoline engines running idle. Downscaled to 5.5 l for the Saurer, this would mean 375 mbar overpressure in 20 min. The cargo box was made of thick steel-reinforced hardboard. There is no calculation/estimation so far how much pressure the gassing box could have withstand before its sides/doors were bursting.

    B: Leakages from the gassing box were significant, despite the efforts to seal it. Substantial leakage was also created by slightly deforming the box upon pressurizing. At some point, there would be a steady state where the exhaust intake is compensated by the as-prepared/created leakage.

    C: There was a T-connection from the exhaust pipe to the gassing box. The exhaust pipe exit was open but had a reduced inside diameter, so that the exhaust would enter the gassing box until a defined, critical pressure was reached.

    D: There was a T-connection from exhaust pipe to the gassing box and the exhaust pipe exist was closed during gassing OR the connection to the gassing box was directly screwed on the exhaust pipe exit. Inside the box, there was a gas outlet through which the excess pressure was relieved.

    It seems inherently dim-witted to operate the gas vans under a high inside pressure (scenario A).  In scenario B, the inside pressure could be much lower than in scenario A, so the gassing box was more likely to resist. Still, this technique was ill-defined and poorly engineered. The drawback of scenario C is that the shut-off pressure limits the maximum concentration of the exhaust gas inside the gassing box as well as the rate the exhaust gas enters the box. Scenario D seems like the best solution from a technical point of view. It allows for full exchange of the atmosphere inside the gassing box with exhaust gas while avoiding overpressure.

    The exhaust outlet could have been located in the roof or in the floor of the gassing box. It was not mentioned by the RSHA mechanic Harry Wentritt or any of the gas vans drivers. So far, I came across a single eyewitness describing such feature:
    "There was an outlet device on the roof, practically the end of the exhaust pipe. The gases were sent through the exhaust pipe into the hermetically sealed van, where they killed those inside, and were directed through the van’s roof."
    (interrogation of Georg We., German army in Krasnodar, of 23 May 1969, BArch, B162/1236, p. 5048)

    Most likely, there was a small pressure relief opening in the floor or the ceiling of the gassing box but due to the absence of further evidence specific details are not known with certainty.

    Forgery Allegation

    The forgery allegation has been developed by denier Ingrid Weckert in The Gas Vans: A Critical Assessment of the Evidence, which is also followed by Alvarez here. According to this, "the Just document is actually a rewritten plagiarism of the RSHA letter of 23 June 1942" (p. 80).

    Weckert writes that "proof for this fabrication is the fact that the 'Note' of June 5, in point 2, refers to a consultation between the RSHA and Gaubschat which the letter of June 23 shows not to have taken place until June 16, fully 11 days after (!) the alleged writing of the 'Note' of June 5!". Alvarez joins in that "proof for a forgery, however, is the fact that the Just letter, dated June 5, is actually referring in its point 2 to a consultation between the RSHA and Gaubschat, which the letter of 23 June 1942 shows to have taken place only 11 days later: on 16 June 1942!".

    The argument is a textbook fallacy. The Just memo of 5 June 1942 mentions "a discussion with the manufacturer", who pointed out that "shortening of the cargo box would result in a disadvantageous weight displacement". The letter of 23 June 1942 lists "changes to the coachworks...as discussed in person on 16 June 1942". Now, Weckert and Alvarez assume that there was no discussion between the RSHA motor pool staff and the Gaubschat company on the shortening of the cargo box other than on 16 June 1942 and certainly not prior 5 June 1942. However, there is no proof, not even an indication, that the matter had not been discussed before, as it is indicated by the Just memo. Hence, this "proof" turns out as nothing but denier's wishfull thinking. Note that the flawed argumentation has been already pointed out in 2000 by John Zimmerman (Zimmerman, Holocaust Denial, endnote 15 of chapter 9).

    Next gaffe from Alvarez: he thinks to have spotted the "discrepancy" that the Just memo "talks about changes to future and old 'Spezialwagen' (special wagons), a term never used in the other documents" (p. 80), as opposed to "Sonderwagen".  Yet, the note of 23 June 1942 mentions that the Gaubschat company was ordered to mount "Spezialaufbauten" (special coach works) on the Saurer chassis. Thus, Spezial- was simply a permissible and interchangeable variant of Sonder- in this context, as also shown by the use of Spezialwagen in the Schäfer telex.

    Figure 1
    Another failed attempt to cast doubts on the documents authenticity is presented on p. 81f., where Alvarez writes that the Just document which "claims to be the 'onliest' copy...actually exists in at least three different 'onliest original' forms". In course of the discussion, it turns out that the differences are limited to handwritten additions. Alvarez feels unable to draw "coherent conclusions" on the issue. It is actually rather simple though. The original document is clearly the one from the Bundesarchiv, since it includes what looks like a comment and paraph of Walther Rauff on the left side of the last page (Figure 1).


    Figure 2
    These handwritten additions have been removed on the reproductions published in Kogon et al., Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas (Figure 2) and Rückerl, NS-Prozesee, while the authors/investigators underlined some sentences themselves. The reason why Rauff's additions have been removed is probably because they were not recognized as original handwriting but considered as some post-war artifact. Alvarez cannot understand why somebody would underline Rauff's name in Kogon's/Rückerl's reproduction. Guess, because he was the only perpetrator named in the document, precisely what investigators were interested in.

    Not only is there no evidence that the Just memo is a forgery, this is further refuted by the testimony of the persons involved with the document, Willy Just, Anton S. and Walther Rauff, who all signed the memo. While Just insisted after the war that he did not know of homicidal gas vans and the content of the memo - and so had all the reason to deny his signature on it -, he confirmed that "I recognize the signature as mine" (interrogation of 6 February 1961, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/22, p. 82).

    Likewise, Anton S. explained that "it is correct that I have signed the memo of 5 June 1942" (interrogation 8 February 1961, BArch, B162/5066 p. 260p) and claimed it as an authentic document he discovered and signed in the RSHA "out of pomposity" half a year after it was authored by Just (interrogation of 21 August 1961, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/23, p. 257).

    Finally,also Rauff testified at the Chile's Supreme Court that "I recognize the signature in form of the letter R on the left margin as mine...The document is a technical report from a clerk named Just from the department of the already mentioned Major Pradel..." (examination of Rauff of 5 December 1962, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/10, p. 104).

    The Alleged True Purpose of the Vans

    Alvarez maintains that "it can be derived with certainty that those vans could not have been used for transporting living human beings". He argues that "the height of the vans after their suggested conversion would only have been 162.5 cm at most...which is inadequate for transporting standing people" (p. 79). However, given that most of the victims to be targeted with the gas vans were children, women and elderly and considering that already the "average terminal height of Russian men born in 1898 was approximately 166 cm" (Elizabeth Brainerd, Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Anthropometric Data, p. 12), even the reduced height inside the cargo box was still sufficient for the task. 

    He further claims that the "requested...'angled gridwork' of 30 to 40 cm...in height was to be added to the end of a prospective floor grate...Living, standing people, however, could never be prevented from falling over such a low trellis". But the people were no longer living and standing when the grate was supposed to be pulled out, they were dead and collapsed to the floor. There was also sufficient space to collapse, first of all because the gas vans were not packed to ultra high densities (instead, typically 4 - 7 people per m²) and because there was an even lower density of people in the front of the gassing box as the crowd had the tendency to move towards the doors. Accordingly, a barrier of merely 30 to 40 cm height could have been well sufficient to prevent the corpses in the front of falling from the movable floor grate.

    Another false argument is the usual Saurer = Diesel canard that "the RSHA instead decided to buy Saurer heavy goods trucks, which had Diesel engines and were therefore only capable of slowly torturing the intended victims to death...It must therefore be assumed that the purpose of these vehicles was not to kill with exhaust gases" (p. 87). The Saurer were imported from German occupied France and equipped with gasoline engines, see Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant (update) (2nd update). 

    It is therefore wrong that the vans described in the existing documentation "could not have been used for transporting living human beings". But if - for the sake of argument - the "special vehicles" constructed by the RSHA at the Gaubschat company were no homicidal gas vans, then what was their purpose and function?

    Alvarez takes over the explanation of Pierre Marais that the "RSHA special vehicles with the described cargo box allowing a fast automatic unloading were meant for the transportation of corpses" (p. 84). This was actually the cover up story of the RSHA staff made up for Gaubschat to explain their strange requests. According to Wentritt, "there was a discussion [with Gaubschat] on the constrution of the gas vans...I remember that it was told about the purpose of this type of vehicles that it was used as transport van for corpses" (interrogation of 14 November 1967, BArch, B162/18154, p. 121).

    The hypothesis that the vans were merely meant for transporting corpses is utterly refuted by the available testimonial as well as documentary evidence (see Becker letter, Trühe telex, Just memo, Rauff letter). It is moreover challenged by the description of the vans in the supposedly "unsuspicious documents of file R 58/871" (p. 79).

    First of all, the RSHA motor pool staff were quite concerned about the inside height of the vehicles for the implemention of the fast unloading mechanism (see memo of 27 April 1942). But if the vans were loaded only with lying corpses anyway, this concern seems misplaced, as opposed to the loading with living people.

    Secondly, the construction of the vehicles was subjected to considerable secrecy. For this reason, the RSHA motor pool staff excluded a Czech company to construct the vehicles, but even the German Gaubschat company in Berlin was not entrusted with all the work on the vans. Some "modifications, which cannot be considered there because for reasons of secrecy, have to be implemented in our own workshop" (see memo of 23 June 1942). This indicates a far more sinister purpose than transporting corpses, which was the official story anyway. Indeed, the actual homicidal modification - the connection from the exhaust pipe to the cargo box - was carried out by the RSHA car mechanics (interrogation of Wentritt of 2 February 1961, BArch B162/5066, p. 260e).

    Thirdly, the letter of 23 June 1942 to Gaubschat mentions that the "internal lights are to be protected with a highly domed gridwork stronger than the one used so far". The protection of the lamps inside, even more so by an even stronger gridwork, is at odds with the purpose of transporting corpses (and of course underminded the cover up story towards Gaubschat). If the lamps needed a very strong gridwork protection, this supports that living and not dead people were put into the cargo box.

    Conclusion

    The Just memo is another powerful piece of evidence on the German homicidal gas vans. Its content on the gas vans and Chelmno extermination camp can be well corroborated by other sources. All persons, who signed the memo, have all confirmed the authenticity of their signature on the document after the war.

    Almost needless to say that the document has attracted fierce attacks from Holocaust deniers - Udo Walendy, Ingrid Weckert, Pierre Marias, Santiago Alvarez and Carlo Mattogno-, as the too explicit text on the gas vans can be only encountered by the usual forgery allegation. Despite these combined forces, Holocaust deniers were unable to present any comprehensible, plausible evidence for their allegation and to address the numerous evidence supporting the authenticity of the document.
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    "Holocaust Handbooks" Updating Policy - Cosmetic Changes and Recycling Instead of Engaging With Critique

    October 26, 2016, 1:19 pm
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    The denier site holocausthandbooks.com has repeatedly released "corrected" and "expanded" editions of their "Holocaust Handbooks Series", most recently Carlo Mattogno's book Auschwitz: Open Air Incinerations. Upon scrolling through the pdf, the most important "correction" seems to be the replacement of "official" by "orthodox" and "cremation" by "incineration". Aside this, three articles have been attached at the end. One might think that these additions constitute new researched material, but they are merely rehashed articles previously published in 2003 (1998 in German), 2003 and 2015 (2004 in German). 

    As usual, the new edition of the book entirely refrains from engaging with its critique, most notable my blog posts The Photograph of the Crematorium Site Undressing Scene in Auschwitz-Birkenau (re: section 7.2), The Auschwitz Open Air Incineration Photographs as Evidence for Mass Extermination (re: section 10,11) and Auschwitz Labour Force Reports as Evidence of Sinister Activity at the Crematoria (re: section 12). It is, by the way, also noteworthy that the latter seems to have contributed at least something to the evolution of the former denier going after the name theblackrabbitofinlé to acknowledge Nazi mass extermination. This loss is particular bad for Holocaust denial as he was one of the few - if not the only one - still active in actual archival research.
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    Is The French Holocaust Denier Thierry Gosselin As Dense As a Black Hole?

    October 30, 2016, 5:24 am
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    A French anti-denier who goes by the nickname "Max Ou" has written a short post on his interactions with the French Youtube-based denier Thierry Gosselin.

    He calls attention to a video in which Gosselin denies the authenticity of the Becker letter (which, by the way, is authentic without question) on the basis of the SS-rune being used in it.

    Apparently Gosselin was unaware of the basic well-known fact that many Nazi typewriters had this double rune as an extra key. Need I say more?

    Gosselin even promised 1000€ to anyone who could provide evidence of such a typewriter, and upon being showered with evidence deleted the comments, then deleted the video and reuploaded it without the parts which show him to be an imbecilic ignoramus.

    Max Ou saved the relevant part of the clip though:



    Needless to say, the denier scammer never paid out the promised 1000€ and even claimed that the photos of the German typewriters with the SS rune were made in Hollywood.

    I'll just quote Max Ou's summary, to which I have nothing to add:
    Anyone familiar with the contemporary documentation knows that there are many examples of "SS" typed in this way. It is common knowledge that the Nazis made typewriters with this special character. Obviously Thierry Gosselin denies the Holocaust without having the slightest notion about the documents of that time and about the Nazi regime. Below I provide a link to high quality photographs of such a typewriter... (which of course strike down all the beautiful "demonstrations" of Gosselin). It is interesting to note that all the "arguments" of Thierry Gosselin, highly technical, elaborate, "scientific" (including technical drawings, AutoCAD measures - no less) on all aspects that allow him to conclude that this and other documents are "fake", are made with the same assurance. This speaks volumes about their real value. All this is only bluff camouflaging gross incompetence.
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    Update of Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Becker Letter

    November 6, 2016, 12:26 am
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    Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans
    Part IX: The Just Memo

    This supplementary post to Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans Part IV compiles more sources supporting the reliability of the content of the Becker letter.

    Saurer and Brakes

    According to the Becker letter"the sleeve of the combined oil-air brake was broken" of Saurer gas vans. The following accounts report brake damages of Saurer gas vans. The gas van driver Wendl specifically testified on the failure of a rubber sealing of his Saurer upon cold temperatures.

    Josef Wendl of Einsatzkommando 8:
    "On my journey I rested again in Minsk. The brake was frozen there. The damage could not be repaired. So I drove to Smolensk with this damage."
    (examination of 6 October 1970, YVA TR.10/9, p. 689)
    "It was a French 'Saurer vehicle'...The vehicle was not in operation at the time, I think in January 1942, because the membrane of the brake device was not working. There was no corresponding spare part available."
    (interrogation of  28 October 1963, YVA TR.10/1, p. 28)

    Emil Le. of Einsatzgruppe D:
    "Later in Rostov I had to repair the brakes of such a gas van. I can tell fore sure that one of these gas vans was a Saurer truck...Shortly after our arrival in Rostov a gas van came to us for repair from Stavropol. In my opinion the brakes of the vehicle had to be repaired. As far as I remember, me, my comrade Lipinski and some Russians have done the repair. The vehicle was in our repair garage for three days."
    (interrogation of 29 August 1963, BArch B162/964, p. 1270f.)

    Becker himself confirmed the episode in his report:
    "The details on the production of the sleeves in the report are correct."
     (interrogation of 28 January 1960, BArch B162/5066, p. 49)


    Saurer and Road Conditions

    The following testimonies recount cases that a gas vans was stuck in the terrain and had to be pulled out by other vehicles. 

    Heinz Schlechte, gas van driver of Einsatzkommando 8:
    "I had the misfortune to stuck with my vehicle in a water filled hollow....My vehicle was towed away by another gas van."
    (interrogation of 7 November 1964, YVA TR.10/5, p. 599)

    Walter Ve. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "The gas van was stuck on the way to the coal mine, before it reached the coal mine. We should have made the van going again with other vehicles. When we arrived, the van had already made its way to about 30 to 40 m from the mine and was already unloaded. Still, the gas van had to be pulled out of the dirt."
    (interrogation  of 1 December 1961, BArch B162/1570, p. 229)

    Paul Br. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "The following had happened in Stalino. They told that the gas van was stuck on its way to the execution. The exhaust gas could not be lead into the inside of the vehicle. But the people inside suffocated from lack of air."
    (interrogation of 12 December 1961, BArch B162/1570, p. 280)


    Camouflaging the Gas Vans

    The camouflaging of some of gas vans of Einsatzgruppe D with windows shutters mentioned in the letter has also been described in the following accounts.

    August Becker, gas van inspector:
    "The vehicles got two windows shutters on each side. I have ordered the camouflaging at the suggestion of the drivers...."
    (interrogation of 28 January 1960, BArch B162/5066, p. 49)

    Emil Me. of Sonderkommando 10a in Krasnodar:
    "It had a box, like a furniture van, and was closed with two big doors at the back. There was a kind of windows shutter at the side, so that it looked like a trailer home..."
    (interrogation of 24 July 1962, BArch B162/1220, p. 1590)

    Georg We. of the Wehrmacht in Krasnodar:
    "I noticed that the vehicle had some windows with curtains."
    (interrogation of 23 May 1969, BArch B162/1236, p. 5048)

    Vassily Tishchenko, helper of Sonderkommando 10a in Krasnodar:
    "These vans were five-ton or seven-ton motor trucks, he said, with bodies built over them. These had double walls and false windows which gave them the appearance of motor buses."
    (examination of 14 July 1943, The People's Verdict. A Full report of the proceedings at the Krasnodar and Kharkov German atrocity trials, p. 16f.).

    Killing in Front-line Cities

    Recall that Alvarez claimed that "German military front line units...most certainly would not have tolerated stirring up the civilian population by having gas vans driving around killing civilians" in the front-line city Taganrog. Yet, executions were carried out in the city by the Security Service already before the gas van arrived there, according to Arthur Am. of Sonderkommando 10a (interrogation of 21 September 1965, BArch, B162/1249, p. 5), Heinrich Gö. of Einsatzgruppe D (interrogation of 4 March 1965, BArch B162/1226, p. 2677) and Leo Ma. of Sonderkommando 10a (interrogation of 21 January 1969, BArch B162/1232, p. 4275). Either these were tolerated by the army or carried out in secret without consent. In any case, it is clear that the Sonderkommando did not bother about that Taganrog was a front-line city and refrained from liquidating people.

    The presence of a homicidal gas van in Taganrog before Rostov was taken over is corroborated by several members of the German forces.

    August Becker, gas van inspector:
    "The gas van drove to Taganrog because it was requested by the local Einsatzkommando..."
    (interrogation of 14 April 1962, BArch B162/1149, p. 1041)

    Karl Od. of Sonderkommando 10a:
    "End of March/early April [1942] we drove from Simferopol via Berdjansk and Mariupol to Taganrog. I made this trip in the box of a gas van."
    (interrogation of 8 February 1965, BArch B162/1226, p. 2557)

    Ewald Sc. of Sonderkommando 10a in Taganrog:
    On the shown photograph, I cannot recognise Dr. Becker as the driver of the gas van with which we came back from Simferopol. It is apparently a very early photograph. Fact is that the driver of this gas van was a SS-Untersturmführer with red hair."
    (interrogation of 28 June 1966, BArch B162/1230, p. 3754)

    Otto Ohlendorf of Einsatzgruppe D:
    "One van was sent to Taganrog immediately without my seeing it and never came back, and the other two vans remained in Simferopol"
    (Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Volume 4, p. 301)

    Paul Ba. of Sonderkommando 10a in Taganrog:
    "I also remember that I have seen the gas van in the yard of our accommodation and I know that some prisoners were occasionally killed in the gas van."
    (interrogation of 13 August 1965, BArch B162/1228, p. 3251)

    Karl Na. of Einsatzgruppe D:
    "In Taganrog, it was the first and last time I have seen a so called gas van. It stood on the yard of our accommodation."
    (interrogation of 11 February 1965, BArch B162/1226, p. 2585)


    Unloading by the Perpetrators

    The Becker letter explains that "various commandos unload after the gassing using their own men". The unloading of the gas van by members of the German paramilitary forces is best known for Einsatzkommando 6 in Stalino, which is also precisely one of the commandos Becker visited during his trip ("When I arrived in Stalino and Gorlowka some days later...").

    Paul Br. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "I have experienced the gas van two times in Stalino. One day, I was driven to a closed down coal mine with 5-7 comarades.....The gas van arrived. It drove backwards to the coal mine. It stopped at a distance of 6-7 m. The doors of the vehicle were opened by the driver. A terrible smell advanced to us. There were about 25-30 dead persons. Among these were men, adolescents and female persons. All were dead. The corpses still displayed the death struggle they had gone through. This appearance was horrible. Some could not keep back their urine and excrements. I was ordered with my comrades to unload the vehicle and to throw the corpses into the coal mine."
    (interrogation of 12 December 1961, BArch B162/1570, p. 280)

    Reinhard Bu. of Einsatzkommando 6: 
    "The people were loaded onto the gas van and Sackenreuther drove to the mine. Sackenreuther handled at some pipe and kept the engine running for about 20 minutes. Sometime later the vehicle was unloaded and the corpses were thrown into the mine. It were each time about 50-60 persons in the gas van, including women and children. The people knocked against the walls of the van. When it was unloaded, the deaths were wedged together, the walls were smeared with excrements and the urine was leaking out. We had to help unloading the gas van about 3-5 times."
    (examination of 25 October 1965, BArch B162/1580, p. 41)

    Rudolf Ho. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "On another occasion I have taken part in the ordered cordoning of the unloading of the gas van...When the doors were opened, I saw that the van was full of corpses....among the corpses were women and children. It was no doubt an execution of Jews. That people doing the unloading, who certainly belonged to our unit, were wearing gas masks, rubber gloves and rubber boots, I did not notice." 
    (interrogation of 12 December 1961, B162/1570, p. 274)

    Franz We. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "Shortly afterwards, we vacationists were loaded on a truck and brought to a coal mine on a hill. After about 30 min the gas an arrived with its driver Sackenreuther....The van was driven backwards to the mine, Sackenreuther opened the back doors. A cloud of smoke came out of the inside of the vehicle. One could not approach the vehicle for the first 5 or 10 minutes. Before the van had arrived at the mine, Eugen En. said: "Now you will get your mouths stuffed! Take the gas masks." We also received rubber gloves and rubber boots. When the cloud was gone, we had to pull out the deaths from the van and throw them in the 8 m distant coal mine."
    (interrogation of 29 November 1961, B162/1570, p. 250)

    Walter Wi. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "I had to help with the unloading of the gas van. The corpses were thrown into a mine. I was ordered to unload the van because those, who were ordered to do the job previously, refused to do it anymore."
    (examination of 25 October 1965, BArch B162/1580, p. 45f.)

    Friedrich Z. of Einsatzkommando 6:
    "When the gas van was unloaded, one could see the terrible death struggle which had gone on...We wore gloves during the unloading..."
    (examination of 25 October 1965, BArch B162/1580, p. 82)


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