First Published Photographs of Nazi Homicidal Gas Van with Engine Exhaust

Cameron A. Munro has recently published "Engineered for Mass Murder – The Nazi Gas Vans: 1939–1945", a book in which he presents 15 photographs depicting a homicidal gas van built on a petrol-powered Diamond T chassis. 

These photographs were taken in April 1942 by SS-Rottenführer August Vielkind of the Waffen-SS reserve, who was part of the advance detachment of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B, marching from Klintsy via Gomel to Sychyovka. The images were used by prosecutors in Dortmund during investigations into members of Sonderkommando 7a. However, as Munro notes, it seems they "did not forward the photographs to West-German investigators of other units" and "the photographs then lay forgotten in the files of the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen in Münster for many years". 

It’s remarkable that such historically significant material can still be discovered after so many years. And fittingly - characteristic of authentic historical research - the deeper one digs, the more corroborating rather than contradicting evidence tends to emerge. 

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history and mechanics of the Nazi homicidal gas vans.

 

Saurer Company or Why even Rudolf has shown the Diesel Issue is irrelevant on Gas Vans ("Rebuttal of "Holocaust Encyclopedia")

For decades, Holocaust deniers have claimed that the Saurer gas vans had to have diesel engines, and since diesel exhaust has lower carbon monoxide, they conclude the vans couldn’t have been used for murder. The argument is irrelevant as the RSHA turned chassis with gasoline engines into gas vans. A detailed refutation of the "diesel issue" argument was published ten years ago and has never been answered in substance to my knowledge (see Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant). Denier Alvarez’s new edition (2023) of his book "The Gas Vans" continues to repeat it, without a single source, counter-argument, or whisper of a rebuttal to the refutations that already exist. 

Germar Rudolf’s entry "Saurer Company" in CODOH's Holocaust Encyclopedia tries a fresh variation:

He notes that the RSHA motor pool acquired a number of Saurer 5-ton chassis in 1942  and the company Gaubschat in Berlin built a cargo box on each chassis - "for an unspecified purpose".  The historical consensus (or as Rudolf  like to call it "orthodoxy") holds that these were mobile gas chambers. Rudolf argues that because gasoline-engined trucks were supposedly "much easier" to obtain from other manufacturers, the RSHA’s Saurers “must have had diesel engines".

Here’s where the things get interesting. 

Rudolf concedes for the first time what deniers once swore was impossible and what we have pointed out at this blog: that Saurer did, in fact, produce gasoline-engine trucks during the war - in the French factory in Suresnes near Paris

Why Producer Gas Wasn’t Used (Rebuttal of "Holocaust Encyclopedia")

Holocaust deniers often fixate on fringe technicalities or imagined inconsistencies to avoid confronting the overwhelming documentary, testimonial, and forensic evidence. One of their rhetorical questions goes something like this: "If gas chambers were real, why didn't the Nazis use producer gas?" 

Well, challenge accepted.

 

How We Already Debunked Your Franke-Gricksch Report Denial Before You Even Hit 'Publish'

There’s a relatively new holocaust denier blog called Holocaust Claims (https://www.holocaust.claims) churning out posts every other day in 2023. While the pace slowed considerably in 2024, the quality refused to improve.

There is piece titled The Franke–Gricksch Report from September 2023 which quotes  fellow denier Jürgen Graf and tosses in another shaky point gleaned from some video clip. The arguments have been dismantled right here on this blog back in 2019:

- number of muffles in the crematorium, here and here and here.

- coke consumption and freshly burnt, here  and here

- ventilation duration, here and here

 - death time, here

- cremation capacity, here and here and here and here

 - hiding jewelry, here and here

- special tracks in specially designated districts of the camp, here and here and here

It's also telling that, in 2023, a Holocaust denier still harps on Eric Lipman’s quick and dirty typed copy of the report as if the clean carbon copy we discovered and published in 2019 doesn’t exist.

Never Change a Winning Method: How the Nazis Planned to Gas a French General with Carbon Monoxide

On October 28, 1944, the German General Fritz von Brodowski was shot in Allied captivity. Three months later, on 19 January 1945, the Nazis retaliated by shooting the French General Gustave Mesny in a staged escape attempt. 

Given the foreign policy implications, the German Foreign Office was involved in planning the killing and left behind a paper trail, see Kaltenbrunner’s Execution Proposal to Himmler: "Carbon Monoxide Introduced Via an Apparatus Operated From the Driver’s Seat". On December 30, 1944, RSHA chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner sent Himmler two murder options:

1) During the relocation of 5 individuals in 3 vehicles with Wehrmacht insignia, an escape scenario arises when the last vehicle breaks down, or

2) Carbon monoxide is introduced into the sealed rear compartment of the vehicle via an apparatus operated from the driver's seat. The device can be installed with the simplest means and removed immediately afterward. A suitable vehicle has now been obtained after significant difficulties.

The very next bright idea after shooting was gassing with carbon monoxide? It’s almost as if the Security Police had some prior experience with this method. Oh right - they had:

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

Before deniers start questioning why a suitable vehicle was needed despite the existence of gas vans, let’s set the record straight: First, by this stage of the war, the gas vans employed for mass gassings may have already been dismantled. Secondly, the plan was to gas the French General in a car befitting his rank, not in the cargo compartment of a truck.

Review of Holocaust Handbooks Volume 23 - Carlo Mattogno, Chełmno (Part IV - Testimony of Chełmno Escapee Szlama Winer)

Part I - Method

Part II - Scholarly Avoidance

Part III - Systematic Analysis of One Example

Part IV - Testimony of Chełmno Escapee Szlama Winer

Szlama Winer escaped Chełmno extermination camp on January 19, 1942 and upon arriving in the Warsaw Ghetto, provided a detailed account of the atrocities committed there. His report is extensive, comprising approximately 15,450 words and 692 sentences in its English translation. Carlo Mattogno even mocks the "extraordinary wealth of detail" and a "truly prodigious memory". It's remarkable that detailed recollection is now considered as a flaw in eyewitness testimony.  

Slzama Winer

One might think that such a detailed testimony would provide ample material for a thorough analysis. Yet, Mattogno, in his critique, chooses to come up with a mere handful of points - six, to be precise - in an attempt to discredit the entire account as "completely unreliable".

An update about diesel and gas vans at the Krasnodar trial

 In the article "Why the "diesel issue" is irrelevant" I pointed out:

"Deniers also like to point to the two 1943 Soviet gas vans trials in Krasnodar and Kharkov. It was claimed by the Soviets that the gas van engines were diesels. Nick checked out the published English translations of trial transcripts (The People's Verdict), and found only one place where a witness mentions specifically diesel engine (p. 17, interrogation of accused Tishchenko). Given the Soviet propensity for tampering with the published transcripts, one should check the unedited version to see if it mentions "diesel" in this place. Anyway, one swallow does not make a summer, and Tishchenko wasn't even a gas van driver. The rest of the mentions were prosecution's statements, etc. - not the relevant kind of evidence."

I have now gone through the pretrial interrogations of the Krasnodar trial, as well as its original transcript, and found interesting and useful information.

Debunking the World Almanac meme directly

Our reader Jiří Fojtík has pointed out the most probable actual source of the World Almanac's figures for Jews, and that source is from 1937, thus allowing us to debunk the WA claim directly. Earlier we relied on the fact that the WA numbers were unsourced and thus useless. Boy, were we right.

The article has been updated accordingly.

Review of Holocaust Handbooks Volume 23 - Carlo Mattogno, Chelmno (Part III - Systematic Analysis of One Example)

Part I - Method

Part II - Scholarly Avoidance

Part III - Systematic Analysis of One Example

There is consensus among researchers that the Chełmno extermination camp began operations in early December 1941. 

Mattogno states that Krakowski claims the camp was inaugurated on 8 December 1941 without providing "any documentary evidence, not even a single testimony" (p.29, 2nd edition). While Krakowski does indeed fail to cite sources for this specific assertion, this shortcoming is unique to his work (see also Part II). Other scholars, including Montague, Klein, Alberti, and Pawlicka-Nowak, provide sources to confirm the camp’s start-up date.

Mattogno attempts to discredit this consensus by citing Andrzej Miszczak’s testimony from Blumental, Dokumenty i materiały tom I (1946) that the first transport arrived at the camp on 9 December 1941 and dismesses it as “a simple claim without any documentary confirmation.” This highlights the fundamental methodological flaw in Mattogno’s approach that was pointed out in the Part 1 of this review: his refusal to treat testimonies as historical sources unless confirmed by official Nazi documents. 

Let us now move beyond theoretical critiques and examine how Mattogno’s flawed methodology impacts the specific question of Chełmno’s start-up operations.

Review of Holocaust Handbooks Volume 23 - Carlo Mattogno, Chelmno (Part II - Scholarly Avoidance)

Part I - Method

Part II - Scholarly Avoidance

Part III - Systematic Analysis of One Example

Mattogno’s Holocaust Handbooks Volume 23 on Chełmno was first published in 2009 (Italian) and in 2011 (English), with a "2nd revised edition" in 2017. 

Key scholarly works on the extermination of Jews in the Reichsgau Warthegau include 

• Michael Alberti’s Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Warthegau (2006)
• Shmuel Krakowski’s Das Todeslager Chelmno/Kulmhof: Der Beginn der 'Endlösung' (2007)
• Peter Klein’s Die Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt 1940-1944 (2009)
• Patrick Montague’s Chelmno and the Holocaust: The History of Hitler’s First Death Camp (2012). 

Of these four major studies, Mattogno references only Krakowski's work, which is arguably the least comprehensive of the group, rather than engaging with the strongest and most recent scholarship. Furthermore, Mattogno appears unaware of Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak’s Chełmno Witnesses Speak (2004), a critical source collection. As a result, his work was already outdated at the time of its first publication and even more obsolete by the time of the revised edition.

This omission is not merely a matter of quantity, but it has a significant qualitative impact. Montague's research, for instance, offers more thoroughly sourced and detailed synthesis of Chełmno's history than Krakowski's book. Alberti and Klein, meanwhile, provide nuanced analyses of Nazi policies connected to Chełmno and leverage official Nazi documents effectively. 

On pages 23 to 29, Mattogno touches Nazi policy with tons of full quotes - he seems to take the view that the extermination of Jews in the Warthegau would have required an overarching, pre-existing plan to kill all European Jews. Mattogno appears oblivious to the regional and situational policies and of escalation and shifts over time -  and of decades of historical scholarship that examines the evolution and nuances of Nazi policy toward Jews. 

In conclusion, Mattogno's approach to literature research and keeping his work up-to-date is nothing short of abysmal. His refusal to engage with the extensive body of scholarship on Chełmno / Nazi policy suggests he might have spent more time avoiding books than actually reading them.