Rebuttal of Alvarez of Gas Vans: The West-German Trials Against Members of Einsatzkommando 8

 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 

Introduction

The West-German investigations and trials yielded more than two hundreds of testimonies on the German homicidal gas vans, mostly of former members of the German paramilitary and military forces (Wehrmacht, Security Service, Security Police and Ordinary Police). This massive amount of evidence from perpetrators, accomplices and pro-German bystanders obtained by numerous West-German police officers, public prosecutors and judges in a constitutional democracy over many years poses arguably one of the biggest problems for Holocaust denial encountering the reality of the Nazi gas vans.

In his book The Gas Vans the denier Santiago Alvarez failed to explain and neutralize this evidence. His "analysis" of the West-German investigations is limited to the trial judgements as published in the Justiz and NS-Verbrechen volumes, i.e. he did not research the actual pre-trial investigation and trial files, which is only the first shortcoming of his contribution. According to him, this material is "currently difficult, if not impossible, to access by critical researchers due to German censorship laws" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans, p. 12). This explanation sounds like a lame excuse for not performing crucial archival research on the subject. As a matter of fact, "Santiago Alvarez" was a completely unknown quantity prior the publication of his book in 2011, and there is no evidence it is a pseudonym of a prominent person, who should be known to the Bundesarchiv and the various Landesarchive staff. Most importantly, Alvarez did not even attempt to request the files to test if he could gain access to them  (else he would have indeed reported such). It is therefore evident that there was never any serious intention to examine the West-German trial files (or any others, for that matter).

A point for point rebuttal of all his sections on the trials is beyond what can be managed in this series in terms of space and probably also the patience of the readers, but that's not even necessary given that the omnipresent, systematic flaws penetrating his writing can be demonstrated in case studies. This was previously done by Roberto in "Alvarez" and Marais lie about the judgment LG München I vom 14.07.1972, 114 Ks 4/70  and by myself in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Ford Gas Wagon. The following will further look at his fail on the West-German trials against former members of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B, which operated a gas van in Mogilev in Belorussia.

Update on Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Ford Gas Wagon

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

Santiago Alvarez claimed that, according to the West-German trial verdict against Heinz Rie., there were "only" six hearsay witnesses on a homicidal gas van used by the Secret Field Police in Mogilev (GFP 570) and that the "story sounds more like a rumour than an established fact". However, as pointed out in the original posting, the verdict actually cited three eyewitnesses and five hearsay witnesses - all members of GFP 570 - on the operation of the gas van. Now, according to a report by West-German investigators, there is in fact, much more evidence on the existence and operation of this vehicle available.

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Becker 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 

August Becker obtained his PhD in 1932 at the University Gießen, where he worked in the field of physical chemistry and photochemistry under Prof. Karl Schaum. In December 1939, he was assigned as gassing specialist to the Euthanasia action in Germany and in December 1941 to take care of the gas vans deployed to the Einsatzgruppen. In the following year, he toured through the occupied territories in the East to inspect the operation of these vehicles.

On 16 May 1942, he wrote a preliminary report on his activities to Walther Rauff, who was responsible for technical matters in the RSHA, including motor vehicles. The letter openly discusses the killing of people in gas wagons ("I ordered that during application of gas all the men were to be kept as far away from the vans as possible...the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation")

The document cannot be explained away as describing something other than German homicidal gas vans and accordingly it is dismissed as a forgery by Holocaust deniers. However, there is not a single piece of evidence or comprehensible and well-founded reason to support the forgery allegation; to the contrary: it is clearly an authentic contemporary German document radically debunking the central dogma of Holocaust denial that there had been no systematic gassings.

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Ford Gas Wagon

 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 verdict of the regional court Kiel on the former member of Secret Field Police Heinz Rie. of 14 June 1974 claimed the use of a Ford chassis as a homicidal gas van. I've ignored this in a previous part discussing the chassis of the German gas vans since the Holocaust denier Santiago Alvarez presented the case as somewhat unreliable - and I believed him! But after reviewing the full verdict, it becomes clear that the construction and use of a Ford gas van by the German forces is actually conceivable. And too bad for Revisionists that the truck is supposed to have had a gasoline engine, and so the Diesel issue continues to be irrelevant for the gas vans. 

Sehn's Mistake, Bellinger's Gaffe

In 2001, Joe Bellinger, writing as Ross McCullough, wrote this review of Jan Sehn's book on Auschwitz. Bellinger accurately quoted Sehn's claim that, in the verdict against Degesch MD Gerhard Peters, the Frankfurt court stated that "although Peters did voluntarily agree to supply the camp with poison gas, it is impossible today to prove beyond doubt that people were really killed in Oswiecim with cyclon B."

Bellinger kicked up a fuss over this quote without realising, or bothering to check, that Sehn was misquoting the primary source, which he had only seen via a secondary source, a newspaper article (Trybuna Ludu 9.6.1955). The primary source here actually says

Hieraus folgt, dass eine Feststellungen dahin, dass das von dem Angeklagten gelieferte Zyklon B nicht zu Tötungen benutzt worden ist, nicht getroffen werden kann. Es kann aber nicht bewiesen werden, dass mit dem von dem Angeklagten gelieferten Zyklon jemand getötet worden ist

which Valerie Hébert translates as "From this it follows, that a conclusion, that the Zyklon B delivered, by the accused was not used for killing, cannot be made. It can, however, not be proven, that with the Zyklon delivered by the accused someone was killed."

In addition to the trial verdict and Hébert's thesis, a contemporary report of the trial can be read here. I am grateful to Maximus Olson for his help with this piece.

Graf's Idiocy Regarding West German Trials (Part 3)

Further to Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, the involvement of Nazi sympathizers in aiding defence witnesses in proceedings concerning Sobibor is documented in articles here and here. Note particularly the involvement of HIAG in supporting defendants and helping Frenzel's lawyer Leonhardt Reintzsch to keep Frenzel's case alive until 1985, despite, for example, Frenzel's admissions to Blatt.

The article from Die Zeit informs us that Reintzsch supplied material to Regina Dahl of the far right "National-Zeitung", but that eventually Reintzsch seems to have accepted that the trial was fair:

 "As was credibly assured to me several times by fellow defense attorneys, who have intervened in similar proceedings on various occasions, the public prosecutor’s office has especially in the Sobibor proceedings shown a maximum of objectivity."

Finally, the title of the article was The "Forgotten" Trial, so this cannot by definition have been a "show trial." Thus is another nail driven into the coffin that contains Graf's credibility.

Homicidal gassings at the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial – A statistical survey

About 7000 SS men and auxiliary women were serving in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, some with relatives nearby, external authorities were in contact and corresponding with the Auschwitz camp, hundreds of thousands of people were deported to the site and a certain number of civilian workers had access to the camps. Not too far away were villages as well as the town of Auschwitz. In short, there were many people involved in and around the Auschwitz complex.

Now, suppose the Revisionist view on Auschwitz, i.e. the falseness of homicidal gassings, is true. Then this mass of people with different backgrounds, abilities and personalities should generate substantial testimonial evidence to support. Yet, only very few accounts are known – three come to my mind, Wilhelm Stäglich[1], Thies Christophersen[2] and Walter Schreiber[3], none of them can be classified as actual eyewitness against homicidal gassings and none is without substantial problems. Is this really it?

More West German Trials That Do Not Fit the Denier Script

Bartov provides this excellent account of the trials of Köllner and Thomanek, who committed atrocities in ghettos and labour camps in the area of Polizei Sipo Czortków, located in the Galician district of Tarnopol. Two points should be noted. Firstly, although Köllner andThomanek were given life sentences, Sipo commander Peckmann was acquitted. Secondly, the treatment of witness testimony was rigorous and strict. The judgment against Köllner stated:

The judgment was based only on witness testimonies in which errors caused by flawed observation or flawed memory as well as untrue statements could be ruled out with certainty.

These features cannot be reconciled by the paranoid ramblings of denier legalism.

Leniency of West German Courts in Euthanasia Trials, 1948-1959

This table shows the decisions reached in major West German euthanasia trials held between 1946 and 1959. It can be clearly seen that sentences fell markedly from 1948 onwards. There were numerous acquittals and many defendants were found guilty of manslaughter or of being accomplices rather than being given murder sentences.