Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

In mid-May 1943, the German Foreign office was troubled by a story that the Generalkommissar for Weissruthenien, Wilhelm Kube, showed an Italian delegation of fascists "a gas chamber in which the killing of the Jews was allegedly carried out" in Minsk (see 1943-05-15 Opera and Gas-Chamber: Italian Fascist Delegation’s Visit to Nazi-Occupied Minsk). This was a mobile "gas chamber", since only gas vans are known to have operated in Minsk (see also here).

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

The genesis of the Einsatzgruppen gas vans can be traced back to Fort VII in Posen. Here, the Nazis conducted mass gassing experiments for the Euthanasia action in Winter 1939/40. One branch developed to stationary gas chambers in the Altreich, the other developed to a gas van in the Warthegau, both types operating with carbon monoxide (CO) from gas cylinders. A killing commando of the Gestapo Posen, Sonderkommando (SK) Lange, employed the CO gas van. The war against the Soviet Union with its extermination policy pushed the development of a new mass killing technique since the mass shooting of people not fit for military service posed a considerable strain on the German paramilitary forces. The method had to fit the use in the wide Russian territory. The carbon monoxide gas cylinders already in use were considered not suitable for logistic reasons. In September 1941, gassing with engine exhaust was tried on a large scale in mental asylums in Minsk and Mogilev, followed by the testing of a prototype gas van with engine exhaust.

Düsseldorf to Minsk via Malkinia

On 22 November, 1941, an officer named Meurin submitted a report (translation and transcription here) regarding the deportation of Jews from Düsseldorf, Essen and Wuppertal to Minsk. This revealed an original route that included Lodz, Warsaw, Malkinia (near the site of future Treblinka II death camp) and Bialystok, but then noted a detour (due to fears of partisan attack) via Czeremcha. The train stayed in Malkinia for 1.5 hours but there was no mention of any need to delouse these Jews nor to switch trains due to different rail gauges.

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents: Euthanasia 1940/41

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Herbert Lange (source)

Herbert Lange, born 29 September 1909 in Menzlin in the Province of Pomerania, worked as criminal investigator at the Gestapo in Aachen before the war and took part in the Polish Campaign as member of Einsatzgruppe VI, which settled as Security Police headquarters in Poznan ^[1] (click or hover over footnotes to see references). For a short period of time until 16 October 1939, he was commandant of the Übergangslager (transition camp) Fort VII in Poznan ^[2]. Lange became the leader of a special detail (Sonderkommando) founded by and named after him, which specialized in the killing of mentally ill people with poison gas. In late 1941, he moved on to establish Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp to wipe out the Jews of the Warthegau as well. He was replaced in Spring 1942 as commandant of the extermination camp by Hans Bothmann and employed as investigator in the RSHA. He supposedly died during the battle of Berlin at the end of the war.

Fort VII

Fort VII in Poznan; ref. 2, p. 13

The first Nazi gassings of people took place in Fort VII in Poznan in late 1939. Some experiments with the two most promising killing agents hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide may have been tried in casemates of the camp as early as October 1939. What seems like an experimental gassing with hydrogen cyanide soaked pellets (Degesch's "Zyklon") was mentioned en passant by the RSHA driver Wilhelm F. ^[3] :

"Right after the Polish Campaign I was sent with a group of officers to a town in Poland, I do not remember its name. There was a red haired Untersturmführer, who was called Becker as I now recall. This Becker made experiments with poison gas. A number of people were locked in a casemate and gas was introduced into the casemate through venting pipes. I remember exactly how Becker dropped something into the pipes."

"I have seen that Becker fetched a box with cans. He threw them [into the air shafts]."

From November 1939, mentally ill people were systematically killed with carbon monoxide gas in Fort VII ^[4]. Under the command of Lange the inmates of the asylums near Poznan were driven to the camp, locked in casemates and suffocated with carbon monoxide from pressurized steel bottles. The corpses were buried in mass graves in a forest near Oborniki, 30 km North of Poznan. The handling of the corpses was done by Polish prisoners of Fort VII assigned to Sonderkommando Lange, among those Henryk Mania and Henryk Maliczak, who testified on the killings after the war.

On Mattogno's Hallucination That von dem Bach-Zelewski's Extended Testimony on the Minsk Shooting Is a Jewish Forgery

In a handwritten post-war manuscript, the former Higher SS and Police Leader for Central Russia Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski briefly mentioned the show mass shooting carried out by Einsatzgruppe B on 15 August 1941 for the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in Minsk (NARA Record Group 238, M1270/1/111, p. 41, see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Page five from a declaration of von dem Bach-Zelewski on the "persecution of Jews".

The mass execution was also reported by numerous other witnesses. From a historiographic point of view, what is most significant in von dem Bach-Zelewski's account is that he described how after the shooting and visiting of a mental asylum in Minsk (which are both confirmed by Himmler's appointment diary) Himmler ordered the Einsatzgruppen B leader Arthur Nebe "to make use of a more human method of killing" on the mentally ill people, which links the incident to the subsequent mass killing trials with explosives and poison gas in asylums in Minsk and Mogilev. The connection between the events is supported by von dem Bach-Zelewski's own documented activity on the next day to get a demonstration of the mobile carbon monoxide gas chamber of Sonderkommando Lange (for obvious reasons, he kept quiet about this in his post-war testimony).

A more vivid and detailed description of the Minsk shooting by von dem Bach-Zelewski was published on 23 August 1946 in the German-Jewish newspaper Aufbau (Figure 2). The account is somewhat more general with respect to the scope of Himmler's order following the mass execution and asylum visit. He considered that "shooting is not the most human method", ordered Nebe "to think about it and submit a report based on the experiences made" and agreed to try explosives on mentally ill people in Minsk.

Figure 2: Aufbau, volume 12, issue 34, p. 2.

But if it were according to the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno, von dem Bach-Zelewski's account in Aufbau is a forgery based on his more brief statement from the NARA Record Group 238:

"This anecdote appeared on 23 August 1946 in the New York Jewish newspaper Der [sic!] Aufbau as part of a statement attributed to von dem Bach-Zelewski, but its contents had been massively manipulated by the editorial staff of the newspaper, as is apparent from a comparison with the original statement of this SS officer."

(Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 2nd edition, p. 58)

Unfortunately for Mattogno, this is rubbish. Upon systematically searching the Yad Vashem Archives digital collection of Yitzhak Stone, who "was a senior aid to the American prosecutor in the Nazi War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg" for interesting material for the blog (and there sure is, so stay tuned), I stumbled across the English translation of an undated, 60 pages long "declaration von dem Bach" (YVA, O.18/90, p. 20ff.). The declaration contains amongst other things also the passages reproduced in German in Aufbau (Figure 3).

Eduard Strauch

The documented words and deeds of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch, the commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) in White Ruthenia, pose three unsurmountable problems for deniers. Firstly, Strauch "admitted that, to his own knowledge, a Jew had to be killed just because he was a Jew". This admission was made, not only at his 1948 trial, but also in documents that he wrote for his superiors, which are discussed below. Secondly, Strauch used euphemisms such as "special treatment" and "resettled" in contexts that were so blatant that they could not camouflage their true meaning. Thirdly, Strauch's actions can be traced through testimony showing that they were systematic and ordered from the centre. Deniers cannot therefore claim that Strauch's forces were killing Jews because they were partisans, nor that their actions were ad-hoc and reactive.

Read more!

On July 25th, 1943, Strauch sent a long report to his superior, von dem Bach (Nuremberg file NO-2662), in which he complained bitterly about the behaviour of the Generalkommissar of White Ruthenia, Wilhelm Kube. The report is reproduced in full at the Axis History Forum here. The report includes the following revealing paragraphs:

On numerous occasions Kube has said to me personally that Jews evacuated from the Reich could be spared without any problem since they do not understand the local language and would therefore not pose a danger in so far as their becoming involved in guerrilla activities was concerned.

I am convinced from the evidence that deep down Kube is opposed to our actions against the Jews. If he does not admit to this outwardly the only reason is his fear of the consequences. He is in agreement with actions against Russian Jews because he is able to appease his conscience by the fact that the majority of Russian Jews collaborate with the guerrillas.

Every false denier claim, from Butz downwards, that the Einsatzkommandos were 'just' killing partisans can be safely trashed using this one extract. It confirms what was already obvious to anyone who has read the Operational Situation Reports, such as those in this link, namely that Jews were killed purely on the basis of their assumed 'racial origin'.

Strauch's use of euphemisms has already been the subject of an excellent blog by Nick Terry, revealing how the term 'resettlement' was used euphemistically when Strauch gave the order to kill the Jews of Sluzk. Nick's translation:

On 8 and 9 February 1943 there will be a resettlement in the town Sluzk by the local command the resettlement of the Jews there.
The evacuation of the Jews to the resettlement place happens by means of 6 trucks, each to be accompanied by 4 Latvians.
At the resettlement area are 2 pits. At each pit a group of 10 leaders and men will work, to be relieved every 2 hours. Times 8-10 o'clock, 10-12 o'clock, 12-14 o'clock, 14-16 o'clock.

Strauch's report to von dem Bach, cited above, provides further proof that deniers are pissing in the wind when they try to read 'resettlement' literally in any document produced during the occupation period:

On 1 March 1942 an action was to take place against the Russian ghetto in Minsk. The Generalkommissar received prior notification. In order to disguise the action the Council of Elders was to be informed that 5,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto were to be resettled. These Jews were to be notified by the Council of Elders and told to get ready. Each Jew would be permitted to take along 5 kg of luggage.

As can be proved, the actual intentions of the Security Police were betrayed by the Generalkommissariat. Those Jews employed in the Generalkommissariat were not allowed into the ghetto for several days but were made to stay in the Generalkommissariat, as a result of which it became clear to the ghetto Jews that the version put out by the Security Police was not correct. In addition, further indiscretions were committed, as emerges from liaison reports. At the time it was not possible to prove these incidents. It is clear, however, that the Gauleiter used his knowledge to save his Jews.

Furthermore, the documents of Strauch, Kube and Lohse give several examples of how Sonderbehandlung was used as a euphemism for genocidal killing. Lohse, when forwarding a report from Kube to Rosenberg on 18 June 1943, wrote that:

The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussion. However, it appears hardly believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the General Commissioner of 1 June 1943. What is Katyn against that? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other side and exploited by them! Most likely such propaganda would have no effect only because people who hear and read about it simply would not be ready to believe it.

To lock men, women, and children into barns and to set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable method of combating bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation severely.

Strauch's report to von dem Bach gives an example of such 'special treatment':

During a major ghetto action it was made known by informants that the German Jewish Ordnungsdienst made up predominantly of former World War I servicemen, was intending to put up armed resistance. In order to avoid bloodshed on the German side the Ordnungsdienst was made to assemble and was told that a fire had broken out in the town and they should be at the ready for fire duty. The Jews were then loaded on to trucks and sonderbehandelt.

The Nuremberg judgement against Strauch, cited above also noted that:

On 20 July 1943 Strauch wrote a letter narrating how he had subjected 70 Jews to special treatment and expressing his resentment because complaint had arisen from the fact that he had had the gold fillings removed from the mouths of these Jews before they were killed.

Finally, deniers will be distressed to read that Strauch was acting from higher orders. Heydrich met Strauch in Minsk in April 1942, and his presence enabled this sequence of events, described by Strauch at his trial:

In response to a question regarding the Jewish problem in White Ruthenia, Strauch replied that the Fuehrer Order was valid in White Ruthenia, as everywhere else. He testified that he had a conference with Kube and that Kube told him Jews were needed and he could not do without these Jews, since they should be used in bringing in the harvest, working in an armament factory, and doing other jobs. The defendant thereupon talked to Heydrich and was directed to postpone the execution of the Fuehrer Order until the harvest was brought in.

The harvest of evidence relating to Strauch will thus leave an unpleasant taste in mouths of Hitler-kissing deniers.