Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Turner Letter

 Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans

Part I: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant (update 1, 2)
Part II: Producer Gas

 Part III: The Ford Gas Wagon (update)
Part IV: The Becker Letter (update)
Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute (update 1, 2, 3, cf. on Mattogno & here)

Part VI: The Turner Letter

Part VII: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes

Part VIII: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report (cf. on Mattogno)

Part IX: The Just Memo

Part X: The West-German Trials Against Members of Einsatzkommando 8

Part XI: Einsatzgruppe D in Simferopol

Part XII: Material Evidence

Part XIII: Misreading the Fine Print 

 

The next in the row of contemporary German documents on homicidal gas vans misinterpreted by Santiago Alvarez (with Carlo Mattogno as special guest) is a letter sent by the chief of the administration in Serbia Harald Turner to Heinrich Himmler's personal assistant Karl Wolff of 11 April 1942 reporting that "I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp".

The Historical Context of the Letter

Turner under Wehrmacht Fire

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 in Serbia 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 against the Wehrmacht commander.

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?

The Extermination of the Serbian Jews

During the anti-partisan warfare in Serbia in 1941, the German forces began 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 located near Belgrad at the rivers Save and the Danube, but still in the Independent State of Croatia. 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.

By this time, the motor pool department and the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police had already developed mobile gas chambers employing gasoline engine exhaust. The gas vans had been dispatched to the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territory and to Chelmno extermination camp since late 1941. In early March 1942, so he remembered at his post-war trial, the commander of the Security Police in Serbia Emanuel Schäfer received a telegram from the RSHA in Berlin informing him that a "task force with a special order is on their way by land with a special vehicle Saurer" for the "Jewish action in Serbia" (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 11, p. 153).

The Saurer gas van was sent to the Sajmište camp to kill the remaining Jews of Serbia. The corpses were buried on a shooting range across the Save river on Serbian territory. The Security Police member Edgar Enge, who had to accompany some gassing actions, described the extermination process as following:

"For the gassing of the Jews, the gas van drove into the camp without the escort. About 50 Jews were loaded on it. The luggage was put on a separate vehicle. The vehicles left the camp and met the escort at the so called General-Weichs bridge passing over the Danube. The escort consisted of two cars with about seven men (including drivers) and was provided by the commander of the Security Police....The burial site was located on the territory of the shooting range Avella [Avala]. The pits were already thrown up at the burial area. As far as I remember, it was done by an Wehrmacht engineer unit. The Jews were gassed during the drive. The distance between the camp and the burial site was about 10 km. The task of the escort was to make sure a smooth drive of the gas van...The vehicle looked similar to a closed food vehicle. It had a door at the back, which was further secured with a cross bar. The inside was lined with metal sheet. There was a duck board on the ground, which could be removed. The vehicle was cleaned on the yard of our office. This was done by the two gas van drivers."

"Several police men were present on the shooting range in Avella [Avala]...The gas van drove close to the pit. After the door was opened, one could notice that the corpses were usually located more in the back of the vehicle. The prisoners transported the corpses to the pits and covered them with earth."

(interrogation of Enge of 20 & 21 January 1966, BArch B 162 / 25920, p. 14f. & 17; my translation; note that Enge's description that the gassing was carried out while the gas van was driving is in contradiction to what is known how these vehicles operated according to numerous other sources. Likewise, Andorfer's testimony cited below suggests that the gassing was commenced right after the convoy passed the bridge across the Salve but still several km before reaching the shooting range. It seems as if Enge and Andorfer have distorted the gassing procedure - possibly because they were closely involved when the gassing was done while the vehicle was standing somewhere for several minutes. This hypothesis is weakened by the fact that Emanuel Schäfer already mentioned on 16 January 1952, way before he could have meant to protect Enge and Andorfer, that the "exhaust gas was lead into the inside during the drive" [Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ZS-0573, p. 6]. Alternatively, the vehicle may have been a technically modified variant)

The extermination of the Jews from Sajmište camp by means of the gas van was further described by the camp commandant Herbert Andorfer (interrogation of 12 July 1967, BArch, B 162 / 25920, p. 70ff.) and Karl Wetter of the Reserve Police Battalion 64 (interrogation of 24 November 1964, Manoschek, Serbien ist judenfrei, p. 180). Both the head of the Security Police in Serbia, Emanuel Schäfer and the Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia August Meyszner confirmed the use the gas van to kill the Jews (interrogation of Schäfer of 12 May 1952, BArch, B 162 / 5066, p. 76; interrogation of Meyszner of 4 September 1946, Eichmann trial exhibit T896, p. 5).

The killing of the Jews was an excellent opportunity for Turner to brag towards Wolff about his ruthless attitude in solving the Jewish question in Serbia and to collect some extra points for his own, more and more escalating personal conflict with Meyszner (see letters exchanged between Himmler, Turner and Meyszner in Friedman). In the letter of question, he wrote to Wolff that

"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 on 20 April to 2974 on 30 April, and the Jews 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 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 up to 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 Avala 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 a train. It was first "thoroughly cleaned" and had to be repaired because of a cracked axle. On 13 July 1942, the repair and maintenance were 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 had already requested "another S-wagon" with "exhaust hoses" for the "special treatment of Jews" (see document 11 of Contemporary German Documents on Homicidal Gas Vans).

Revisionist Arguments

Form, Style and Language of the Letter

According to the perception of the Holocaust denier Santiago Alvarez, the letter "is riddled with spelling errors, butchered German language, and nonsensical content" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans - hereafter TGV -, p. 87) and seems like an "imbecilic letter [written] on U.S. stationary with its phantasmagorical content" (p. 92). He compared its language against two other letters written by Turner, which are supposedly "grammatically correct, consistent, and make sense, quite in contrast to the letter at issue here" (p. 90). Although Alvarez does not explicitly claim the document a forgery, it is strongly suggested by his insinuations.

Turner's letter to Wolff exhibits a distinct, in some aspects, curious style of writing. However, a comparison with nine other letters written by Turner from Belgrad (to Richard Hildebrandt, Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler and August Meyszner) shows that it was precisely the style Turner was used to. The letters are reproduced in Friedman, Die zwei intellektuellen SS-Generäle die verantwortlich waren für die Ermordung der Juden in Jugoslawien und in Danzig 1941-1943.

The fancy runic insignia of the SS - which Alvarez mocks as "toying around with his typewriter to compose some artistic rendering of the SS rune" (TGV, p. 92) - is characteristic for the letters he sent to the SS leaders Meyszner, Wolff and Himmler. He even used them in copies of Himmler's letters for his own files. Wolff remarked towards West-German investigators that this specially added SS-Runen "indicates his will to emphasise his belonging to the SS" (interrogation Wolff of 7 February 1962, BArch B 162 / 5025, p. 37; Wolff also confirmed the authenticity of the letter at this occasion).

Turner's letterhead as administration chief in Serbia showed only his civilian position "Staatsrat" (printed or stamped) but lacked his honorary SS-Gruppenführer (see his letter to Jovanovic of 4 April 1942). However, it was typical for him to add his SS rank by typewriter when writing to other SS leaders. The army postal service number 18739 on the letter belonged indeed to the military commander and administration staff Serbia, and the signature corresponds to that of Turner as well. David Irving claimed that the letter has a "non-German paper-size", which is rather meaningless since he was writing from abroad and may have used any non-standard paper size available on site. Alvarez says the letter was written on "U.S. letter format", his only source seems to be Irving telling him so. Alvarez even goes a step further and asserts that it was "a paper size which during the war was not available in Europe", but without providing any shred of evidence, this was indeed the case.

Comparison of the letter in question (left) with two other letters authored by Turner (middle and right). Notice a) the similar signatures (all), b) the self-made runic SS (left & middle), the addition of Turner's SS rank (left & middle), the postal field number (left & middle), the stamped or printed civilian title of Turner (all).

The inconsistent spelling and punctuation pointed out by Alvarez can also be found in Turner's other letters. This includes misspelling of ss/ß (e.g. Turner to Wolff of 30/10/42 "vergißt", "Haß"), false comma (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/10/41, p. 5, 3rd line) and switching between spaces/no spaces before and after punctuation marks (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 4/12/41). The English spelling of "Canada" was widely spread among Germans as can be seen from numerous German book titles published in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (e.g. Schmieder, Länderkunde Nordamerikas: Vereinigte Staaten und Canada, 1933; Andree, Veschiedene Beiträge zur Geologie von Canada, 1914; Marryat, Die Ansiedler in Canada, 1904; Penk, Reisebeobachtungen aus Canada, 1898; Müller, Reisen in den Vereinigten Staaten, Canada und Mexico, 1864).

Alvarez is also wrong in his linguistic analysis that the term "möchte ich nicht verfehlen" is not correct German and is "probably [a] literal translation from English" (e.g. Wörterbuch deutscher Synonymen, 1871 p. 377). Turner's use of "allerdings" and "ich erinnere nicht" is typical German. The term "Dank übermitteln" to express ones own thanks, even if linguistically flawed, is not uncommon either even among academics (e.g. König, Briefwechsel, volume 1, p. 323). Turner made excessive use of modal particles in his letters, and specifically, the word "immerhin" was one of his favourites (e.g. in two subsequent sentences in Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/19/42; the letter was studied by Alvarez, but obviously not carefully enough to recognise his style).

In his discussion of the Jewish POWs, Turner referred the verb "dahinterkommen" to the wrong object (to "missing relatives" instead to "the missing of the relatives"). This is, however, a mistake also a native German speaker may miss at first thought. And it's not that Turner's other letters would not contain any flawed sentences once a while (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/10/41 "verdammt schon hochbringen", Turner to Meyssner of 29/8/42 "die Hauptsache ,es würde gemacht .", Turner to Himmler of 30/10/42 "sie aus dem Verband der serbischen Staatswache...zu belassen").

The bottom line is that the letter of 11 April 1942 to Wolff corresponds well to Turner's style of writing. Moreover, it has the rubber stamp of Himmler's personal staff and handwritten notes from Wolff's personal assistant to pass on the letter to Rudolf Brandt confirming that the document was received by Wolff's office.

Content of the Letter

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 favour 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 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 broad 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 undoubtedly 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 wrong use of language in Turner's comment, supposedly saying something somewhat 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 correctly.

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 precisely the attitude he showed towards other SS leaders too - and whether this corresponded to his inner feeling and actual 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 compelling evidence that the Jews from Sajmište camp were killed by the gas van and the absence of concrete evidence for true systematic resettlement, he insists that - because back in October 1941 the Germans were still considering a territorial 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. In other words, since the extermination was done, it had also been 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 Wolff is supposed to have bothered Wolff with a mere delousing van when the real obstacle for resettlement was transport and accommodation capacity. Or why a "delousing van" was a matter for the German Security Service to begin with.

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

Conclusion

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. If it were a forgery, it would be a perfect forgery, which is already unlikely itself, but of course, also failing to support the forgery insinuation. Moreover, its content is plausible, neatly fits into the historical context and is corroborated by numerous evidence. Thus, the letter is evidently an authentic contemporary German document reporting the killing of Jews in the Sajmište camp with a gas van.

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Changelog
28 April 2016: corrected typo in the year of Wolff's cited interrogation, see comments.