Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, ref. K-206919 (Archives of the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany).
This supposed incident is also mentioned in a copy of a follow-up letter of 17 May 1943 from von Thadden to Adolf Windecker.
6.5.1.3. “Gas Chamber” or “Gas Van”? Von Thadden’s Letter of 15 May 1943
At last, Spektor adduces a document which he introduces in the following manner (Spektor 1993, p. 60):
“On 15 May 1943 representatives of the Italian Fascist party visited Minsk. The general commissioner for Byelorussia, whose name was Kube, showed them a church that was being used as a warehouse. A diplomat named von Thadden, who held the rank of legation counselor, first class, and was then stationed at the Foreign Office in Berlin, heard about this visit from another legation counselor, von Rademacher, and made the following note in his diary on 15 May 1943: ”
I have reproduced the full text of the document below; here, it is important to note only that Kube is said to have shown the Italians “a gas chamber.”
Spektor reproduces the quote as is, without comment, and this is perfectly understandable: for an intelligent re-entry into a discussion of the “gas van,” in fact, the document should make precise reference to a “gas van,” but the term “ Gas- hammer ” can only refer to a stationary “gas chamber,” which, however, never existed at Minsk.
His colleagues reproduce the document without bothering to examine the question in greater depth, giving the document fleeting mention. Browning, after summarizing the document, comments (Browning 1978, p. 150):
“Since taking his post as Generalkommissar in Minsk, Kube had been openly critical of Nazi Jewish policy. Many Jews were killed in the Minsk area by firing squad, but there is no record that the Germans actually erected gas chambers there. Kube must have known about the gas chambers elsewhere and used the Italian inquiry about the piles of Jewish baggage to present the Italians with a graphic, complete, and convincing information about the killing of Jews as he could. Whatever the veracity of the incident in Minsk, it is clear that rumors of the gas chambers circulated unofficially through the German bureaucracy and that Rademacher was privy to such rumors. ”
Gerlach writes as follows in this regard: “Contrary to several statements, a stationary gas chamber has never existed in the area around Minsk,” and in a note, precisely in relation to the Spektor quote, he states: “It was probably a gas van” (Gerlach 1999, p. 768). An Italian historian, Liliana Picciotto, adds the following concept (Picciotto, fn 13, p. 94):
“The gas vans functioned at Minsk at least until the summer of 1943. To this end, in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there exists a document according to which a group of fascist experts visiting Italian workers at the front, stopped at Minsk. During the visit, General Commissar Wilhelm Kube, Gauleiter for Byelorussia, showed the Italians a desecrated church. When the Italians asked about the packages and suitcases piled up inside, Kube explained that they were all that remained of the Jews deported to Minsk. Kube then showed the Italians the gas chamber in which the Jews had died. ”
Notwithstanding the fact that interpreting the term “gas chamber” as meaning “gas vans” is an obvious distortion, it is worthwhile taking a quick look at the document in question, the full text of which reads as follows:
“Note.
Herr Legation Councilor Rademacher informed me that Gauleiter Kube, on the occasion of a visit by fascist representatives in Minsk, was also shown a church used for worldly purposes by the Communists. In reply to a question by the Italians as to the meaning of the small packages and suitcases piled up inside, Kube declared that these objects were all that remained of the Jews deported to Minsk. Kube subsequently showed the Italians a gas chamber in which the Jews would allegedly be killed. The fascists were said to have profoundly shocked.
Herr Rademacher learned of this event through Herr Koppen, Adjutant of Reichsleiter Rosenberg. In his opinion. General Consul Windecker in Riga was said to be aware of the event as well, because as far as he, Rademacher, could recall, the event occurred when fascist representatives were sent to the East in order to see to the welfare of Italian workers.
Berlin, 15 May 1943 ” (T/341)
As for the authenticity of the document, it should be noted that the “Geheim” stamp and those indicating the registration numbers “K206919,” “H322193” and “E421193” are doubtlessly authentic, that is, genuine stamps then in use at the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as shown by other letters by Eberhard von Thadden, such as those published by Randolph L. Braham. 290 What is rather dubious, on the other hand, is the authenticity of the signature. Von Thadden usually signed his letters with the initials “vTh” (followed by the date, day and month), while the signature of the note in question is by a different hand and is a rather clumsy attempted imitation - or reconstruction of von Thadden’s signature. 291
What Thomas Kues has said about this document (Mattogno/Kues/Graf 2013, pp. 603-608) should be supplemented by the fact that there is no trace of it in the documentation published by the archives of the German Foreign Office (cf. Roth- fels 1978 and 1979), whence the document in question should have originated, 292 just as there is no trace of any record of the presumed visit to Minsk itself by any Italian fascist delegation, a visit which, if it had ever occurred, would have required negotiations for the issuance of the permits required, and the establishment of an itinerary for the visit. If the visit had really occurred, it would have left a marked imprint, not only in the Italian archives in the memories of Italian fron- disti like Luca Pietromarchi and Giuseppe Bastianini, true collectors and propagators of anti-German rumors to undermine Italian-German relations. In his documented book All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-43, Jonathan Steinberg, who makes extensive use of Pietromarchi’s journal, is completely ignorant of the document in question and the related matter while according considerable importance to quite an insignificant document, although it is the only one that mentions the killing of Jews by gas: a “note” of 4 November 1942, which states:
“General Pieche reports that it seems to him that the Croatian Jews from the German occupation zone deported to the Eastern territories have been ‘eliminated’ through the use of toxic gas in the trains in which they were sealed up. ” Steinberg attributes such importance to this rumor-mongering that he reproduces the original document (Steinberg, p. 73).
Not even the well-informed Vatican knew anything about the presumed visit by the fascist delegates, who are said to have been so shocked by the story of the “gas chamber.” Barely 10 days before the note in question, on 5 May 1943, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State summarized “the terrible situation of the Jews in Poland” in a note on the propaganda bandied about at the time, complaining, among other things, of the following (Holy See, p. 274):
“Special death camps near Lublin (Treblinkaf 293J and Brest-LitovskJ 2941 It is said that they are sealed up, several hundreds at a time, in chambers, where they are said to succumb to the effects of gas . 12951 Transported in cattle cars, hermetically sealed, with quicklime on the floor. ”
No mention of the “delegation,” not even during the following period. If the visit to Minsk had really taken place as described in the presumed note from von Thadden, the Vatican, with its innumerable channels of information, would have known about it immediately, particularly in Italy.
290. Braham 1981, Vol. 2, e.g. on pp. 364, 367, 369, 370, 380.
291. Mattogno/Kues/Graf 2014, “Remarks on von Thadden's note dated 15 May 1943,” pp. 538-543 (not included in the English edition Mattogno/Kues/Graf 2013).
292. Browning (1978, fn 21, p. 249) indicates precisely the following archive reference: “PA [= Politisches Archiv des Auswartigen Amtes], Inland II g 169 a. Thadden memorandum, 15 May 1943. T 120/K781/K209619.”
293. Treblinka is not near Lublin, but between Warsaw and Bialystok.
294. A phantasmagorical “death camp.”
295. Here the editor specifies that “even in August 1943, there were still no certain proofs [of exterminations by gas]; see the communication dated 30 August from the Secretary of State of the United States: ‘.. .there are insufficient proofs to justify the declaration relating to executions in gas chambers,’
