Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Turner Letter

In the first part of the letter, Harald Turner "comradely and heartily" thanked Karl Wolff for his "influence and tireless activity" which resulted in a certain "decision in my favour". The letter indicates that this is somehow related to "the installation of the Higher SS- and Police Leader" (i.e. August Meyszner) in Serbia. The background is elaborated in a letter sent by Turner's assistant Georg Kiessel on 31 March 1942 to Karl Wolff. Kiessel wrote that the Wehrmacht commander was upset by the installation of the Higher SS and Police Leader. He considered two SS-Gruppenführer - Turner and Meyszner - in his sphere of influence as "unbearable", so that Turner has to "vanish". The Wehrmacht would attempt this by reducing his Administration Staff to a mere department (Hnilicka, Das Ende auf dem Balkan 1944/45, p. 178). Later the year, on 29 August 1942, Turner recalled towards Meyszner that Himmler had "deflected the attempt of the Wehrmacht to degrade my position because of your appointment" (Friedman, Die zwei intellektuellen SS-Generäle die verantwortlich waren für die Ermordung der Juden in Jugoslawien und in Danzig 1941-1943, hereafter only Friedman). Accordingly, this decision in favour of Turner was to keep the administration structure in Serbia as it was, with Turner as chief of the military administration staff. Turner expressed his thanks to Wolff for negotiating and supporting his case.

The second part of the letter deals with the Jews in Serbia, more precisely with how to deal with Jewish POWs captured and interned by the Germans during their campaign in Serbia, when these have to be released and notice that their "relatives are no longer existing".

But why would the Serbian Jews have been disappeared in the first place, and how?


During the anti-partisan warfare in Serbia in 1941, the German forces begun carrying out reprisal shootings among the civilian population (100 Serbs for every German). These large scale killing activities escalated into the systematic extermination of the male Jews in Serbia.

Turner described these actions as following in a letter to Richard Hildebrandt:

"5 weeks ago I had put the first of 600 against the wall, since then we whacked another 2000 during a clearing action, during another one about 1000 and in between I had 2000 Jews and 200 gypsies shot in the last 8 days, according to the 1:100 ratio for beastly murdered German soldiers and another 2200, almost only Jews, will be shot in the next 8 days. That's not a pleasant work! But at least it has to be done to show the people what it means to even attack a German soldier and also the Jewish question is solved most quickly in this way. Actually it is wrong, if you are exactly, to shot 100 Jews for murdered Germans, for which there should be a ratio 1:100 at the expense of the Serbs, but we had these in the camp anyway - ultimately there are also Serbian nationals and they also have to vanish."

(Turner to Hildebrandt of 17 October 1941, Friedman, my translation)

A few days later, Turner reported to Berlin that the "liquidation of the remaining male Jews" had been ordered by the military commander in Serbia (Manoschek, 'Serbien ist judenfrei', p. 107). Thus, the Germans had put the final nail in the coffin of the male Serbian Jews. 

The fate of the remaining Jewish women, children and elderly was postponed in late October 1941 until "the technical possibility exists within the framework of the total solution of the Jewish question to sent the Jews to the reception camps in the East" (note of Rademacher from 25 October 1941, Eichmann trial exhibit T/883, cf. Curilla, Der Judenmord in Polen und die deutsche Ordnungspolizei 1939-1945, p. 80). The surviving Jews were interned in the Sajmište (Semlin) camp near Belgrad, but still located in the Independent State of Croatia at the rivers Save and the Danube. According to the reports of the German army, 6280 people were interned in the camp on 19 March 1942. 90% of those were estimated as Jews by the former camp commandant Herbert Andorfer (verdict against Andorfer, BArch, B 162 / 25912, cf. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 31, p. 679, case no. 700) and at least 75% of the inmates were women and children (interrogation of Andorfer of 12 July 1967, BArch, B 162 / 25920, p. 66).

In 1942, the concept of the "reception camps in the East" was elaborated in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno. It meant the systematic mass killing of Jewish people unfit for work (see also Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues and Index of Published Evidence on Mass Extermination in Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau).

The German forces in Serbia were already experienced in large scale liquidations from the reprisal shootings and murdering of the male Serbian Jews, so it stood to reason to kill the remaining Jews on-site, instead of deporting them to Upper Silesia, the Generalgouvernement or the occupied Soviet territories just to do the same there. An obstacle to carry out the extermination by the military and police forces in Serbia was to cope with the strain on the firing squads. Although "the shooting of Jews is simpler than the gypsies", it became clear already during the execution of male adults "that this or that person does not have the nerves to carry out the shootings for a long time" (report of Hans-Dieter Walther from 4 November 1941). The killing of children and women in Serbia was, however, more conceivable with an impersonal mass murder method.

"Already some months ago, I shot all Jews I could get my hands on in this territory and concentrated all Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD obtained a "delousing van", which will have carried out the definitive clearing of the camp in about 14 days to 4 weeks..."

(Turner to Wolff of 11 April 1942, my translation, based on here)

The "delousing van" was clearly an euphemism for the Saurer gas van dispatched to the Security Police in Serbia. The killing was finished before 9 June 1942, as Schäfer reported to the RSHA motor pool department that the "drivers SS-Scharführer Goetz and Meyer have carried out the special task" with their "special vehicle Saurer (see document 10 of Contemporary German Documents on Homicidal Gas Vans). Indeed, the number of Jews in Sajmište camp quickly decreased from 4005 by 20 April to 2974 by 30 April, and they entirely vanished by 1 July 1942 (verdict against Andorfer, BArch, B 162 / 25912, p. 22, cf. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 31, p. 682, case no. 700).

On 29 August 1942, Turner reported to the Wehrmacht commander of South-East that "the German administration has first removed the influence of the Jews on the public and the Serbian administration and economy and [then] the Jewish question, just like the Gypsies question, was entirely liquidated (Serbia [is] the only country, in which the Jewish question and the Gypsies question [are] solved)" (Müller-Hill, Tödliche Wissenschaft: die Aussonderung von Juden, Zigeunern und Geisteskranken 1933-1945, p. 62, my translation).

In addition to those gassed prior 20 April 1942, the gas van had thus killed about 4000 Jews within a maximum of 51 days. With a typical capacity of the Saurer gas vans of 50 to 75 people, the vehicle had to do 1 - 2 trips from the Sajmište camp to the Alava shooting range at the outskirt of Belgrad every day. After the extermination of the Serbian Jews was carried out, the "special vehicle" was sent back to Berlin on train. The vehicle was first "thoroughly cleaned" and had to be repaired because of a cracked axle. On 13 July 1942, the repair and maintenance was completed. The "special vehicle" was ready for its next task and its dispatch to Minsk via Riga, where the commander of the Security Police Ostland requested "another S-wagon" with "exhaust hoses" for the "special treatment of Jews" (see document 11 of Contemporary German Documents on Homicidal Gas Vans).






Alvarez starts straight away with a rather imbecilic remark. He wonders what the letter is talking about in the first four paragraphs and "[w]hat makes the author think that the recipient knew what he was writing about?" (p. 88). Guess what, because probably it's not the first time Turner or his staff corresponded and talked with Wolff. And probably, there had been only one big "decision" of interest for Turner favourable influenced by Wolff in the recent time. Alvarez seems to presume that people only write letters clearly explaining the context so that even outsiders without any historical knowledge can understand it 70 years later.

Speaking about it, Alvarez writes that "as far as I could verify, there is no historical event - some decision in favor of Turner and against some ominous 'Wehrmacht' interests - which would warrant such sentences". He further asserts that the letter got Himmler's title wrong ("SS leader" instead of "SS Reich leader") and that this decision was supposed to have influenced "all of Germany’s civil servants", which "sounds far-fetched to the point of being outrageous, and I could not find anything in the literature confirming this" (TGV, p. 88). Of course, all of this is supposed to support his forgery insinuation.

However, as pointed out in the previous section on the historical context of the document, the "decision" was clearly related to the Turner's position within the civil administration in Serbia. It says volumes about Alvarez' commitment and research efforts to seriously understand this document that he did not manage to check out the relevant literature before drawing his extensive conclusion.

Further, "SS leader" is not a false reference to Himmler, but a correct one to Meyszner. Turner used the term in the same sense in his letter to Meyszner of 29 August 1942. The gaffe is telling again. Alvarez writes a book on atrocities carried out mostly by the SS without having ever heard that "SS-Führer" was a common term for SS officers, in this specific case for SS-Gruppenführer. How much studying of sources was done here, you may guess.

And the "civil servants" mentioned were not those all of Germany, but only those working for the military administration in Serbia, who would have been certainly affected by degrading their chief.

In short, if seen in its proper historical context, something Alvarez failed to do, this first part of the letter makes perfect sense.

On the second part, Alvarez dislikes that the letter speaks of "prisoners of war camp" in singular, when Turner raises the question what would happen when captured Jewish officers are released and find out that there are no more any Jews in Serbia - as if Turner would have cared about in how many camps the Jewish POWs had been brought to abroad. What did, however, Turner cared about is the predictable unrest when military trained Jews find out that their relatives have disappeared. Alvarez doesn't get why, "since Jews are said to have been expendable anyhow" (TGV, p. 89). But that's very much the reason Turner himself uses in the very next sentences to disseminate this concern: once the released Jewish POWs previously protected by their status arrive in Belgrad, they are civilians and can be executed like the other Jewish civilians before.

Alvarez believes that he has spotted some bad use of language in Turner's comment, supposedly saying something rather nonsensical like "when freed, they are free at the moment when they are free" (TGV, p. 90). However, he has simply misunderstood the sentence. Alvarez assumed that Turner meant to talk about the "arrival" of "freedom", whereas he actually referred to the real, physical arrival of Jewish POWs in Belgrad from abroad. The sentence makes perfect sense if one can just read it in the proper context.

Turner goes on that some might worry about "repercussions on our prisoners in Canada" when executing the released Jewish POWs. According to Alvarez, "the vast majority of German PoW camps in early 1942 were located in Britain and the U.S. It is therefore beyond comprehension why Turner should have mentioned them. Unless, of course, the author of this letter was Canadian." (TGV, p. 89).

The claim does not correspond to the facts, though. In early 1942, the largest contingent of German POWs captured by the British was not located in Britain, but in North-Africa, Canada and Australia. It is comprehensible that Turner mentioned Canada in his letter, because this is where the first big contingent of Germans was sent to and which would have been best known at the time, e.g. the year earlier, in March 1941, more than 80% of the German POWs captured by the British had been interned in Canada (Wolff, Die Deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in britischer Hand, p. 10).

Finally, Alvarez maintains that "in real life Turner was relatively 'soft' on the Serbs in general and on the Serbian Jews in particular and had no interest in having them executed. The letter analyzed here, however, gives the opposite impression" (TGV, p. 92). Yet, it is the same "hard" attitude Turner also displayed in his letter to Hildebrandt of 17 October 1941 (already quoted above), where he bragged about "I had 2000 Jews and 200 Gypsies shot in the last 8 days...by which the Jewish question is solved most quickly" or towards Himmler that "only because of my order the Einsatzgruppe of the Security Police and SD as well as the police battalion have for example carried out the execution of all male Jews and Gypsies in Belgrad" (Hory, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945, p. 188). Turner's letter to Wolff reflects exactly the attitude he showed towards other SS leaders as well - and whether this corresponded to his inner feeling and true actions is entirely irrelevant here.

Of course, Alvarez would not be a Holocaust denier, if he were really following the evidence where it leads him. Despite the powerful evidence that the Jews from Sajmište camp were killed by the gas van and the absence of concrete evidence for true resettlement, he insists that - because back in October 1941 the Germans were still considering a territorical solution - "so far no document is known which would have changed this decision to deport the Jews" and "unless such a document is found, we must therefore assume that 'clearance' of the camp was not equivalent with mass murder but rather with deportation".

The other way round, since there is very concrete evidence that the Jews in Serbia were mass murdered by the Germans, including this letter Turner to Wolff, one can conclude that the decision to deport the Jews was dismissed after October 1941. Since it was done, it was also decided. The German records are far from being complete to rule out such a decision on documentary grounds. Alvarez also fails to explain why Turner used air-quotes on the "delousing van", if it was really a vehicle for delousing, or why it was the "delousing van" that was actually clearing the camp of people, or why a "delousing van" was a matter for the German Security Service in the first place.

Another Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno did not perform any better on the Turner letter. He relies on the "painstaking analysis of Alvarez [that] the authenticity of the letter in question is spurious and much speaks for it being the clumsy translation of a previous text written in English" (The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”—An Analysis and Refutation of Factitious “Evidence,” Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the “Holocaust Controversies” Bloggers, p. 327). Yet, as I have shown above, Alvarez' supposed "painstaking analysis" is nothing but clumsy and amateurish, and ultimately false.

Mattogno does not really deal with the air quotes either and merely says in reply to a section from Jonathan inBelzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues that "Harrison's pretense about the 'meaning of the inverted commas' is rather naive". It is just as "naive" as thinking that Mattogno does not believe in Nazi "extermination camps" and its "evidence" because he or his editor have put the terms into inverted commas in the above cited book title!

Furthermore, it was actually the "delousing van" that carried out the clearing of the camp from people, which is inconsistent to the explanation that it was merely used for delousing clothing. Unless of course, if the clothing was still on the people during the delousing process and they were indeed homicidally gassed.


Santiago Alvarez's critique of the letter Turner to Wolff of 11 April 1942 as a dubious document is merely a string of historical, linguistic and wilful ignorance without any rational justification whatsoever. Carlo Mattogno has wholeheartedly relied on Alvarez, whose book he "helped to improve...by critically reading an earlier version of it" (TGV, p. 12). Although I would expect Mattogno's historical knowledge and command of German to be slightly better than this, he did not spot any of Alvarez's numerous gaffes either. Indeed, why would he critically read Alvarez when he arrived to a conclusion fitting to his own pre-fabricated Holocaust denial. It is also an instructive example of how carelessly Mattogno brushed away powerful evidence opposing his denial agenda in his alleged "Analysis and Refutation...of the 'Holocaust Controversies' Bloggers".

The document in question is formally authentic, its content is plausible and neatly fits into the historical context. There is no reason to even suspect a forgery allegation. The letter is evidently reporting the killing of Jews in the Sajmište camp with a gas van.