http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/26-tgv.pdf
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... s-why.html
I actually agree with some of what they wrote. I do think some of Alvarez's arguments were pretty weak. However, some of the blogger's arguments are also very weak.
I will mainly be focusing on the articles on the Becker and Just documents. In my view, these are the only incriminating documents that deal with gas vans. Everything else is not really worth going over.
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... -just.html
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... ecker.html
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... n-gas.html
I will not address everything, just the parts I think are most important.
In the Just document it says:
The vans’ load usually amounts to 9 to 10 per m2 [10 sq ft]. Although no overloading occurs thereby for the spacious Saurer special vehicles, utilization in that form is not possible, because their off-road capability is highly reduced by this.
Mattogno responds:
According to the note of the RSHA on 27 April 1942, the cargo boxes of these special vehicles were 5.8 m long and 1.7 m high, and their load capacity was 4,500 kg.33 Since the normal load was allegedly nine to ten – we assume people – per square meter, if the truck’s floor was 2.5
meters wide (see further below), this would result in an area of 14.5 m2 and a volume of 24.65 m3. In this case, it would have held no more than
(4,500 kg ÷ 14.5 m² =) 310 kg/m². Hence the permissible average weight of each person would have amounted to (310 kg/m² ÷ [9 to 10m-2] =) 34.4 to 31.0 kg, an unrealistic value for groups in which adults had to be relatively numerous. For the alleged gas chambers at Birkenau, Robert Jan van Pelt took a more-reasonable average weight of 60 kg per victim (van Pelt 2002, pp. 470, 472).
In other words: Loading nine to ten average people of 60 kg into such a truck would have amounted to (14.5 m² × [9 to 10 m-2] =) 7.8 to
8.7 metric tons, which is almost twice the permissible load of 4.5 metric tons. Hence the above-quoted memo’s claim is utterly wrong that “no
overloading occurs.”
page 33: http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/23-c.pdf
How does the blogger deal with this?
Already the average weight of male adult Scots was 63 kg and 64 kg for adult US Americans in 1941. A more realistic figure for Eastern European adults and children in 1941/1942 seems to be 50 kg on average.
Last I checked, 50 kg is still well above 30 kg.
Anyway, it is quite possible that the figure of 9-10 people per m² was inflated by the author, i.e. either he performed a wrong calculation or was supplied false data as input. According to testimonial evidence, the Saurer vans were loaded with about 50 - 80 victims, which corresponds to a density of 4 to 7 people per m².
So he is saying that eyewitness testimony contradicts the document, and this is supposed to increase our trust in this document?
Back to the document:
A reduction of the load area appears to be necessary. This will be achieved by shortening the body by approximately 1 m [39"]. The above difficulty is not to be solved, as has been done so far, by reducing the number of units [of payload]. This is because a reduction in the number of units necessitates a longer operation time, since the empty spaces [left by omission of the payload units] also have to be filled with carbon monoxide. In contrast to this, a substantially shorter operation time suffices in case of a shorter load area and a completely filled loading space, since empty spaces are missing.”
Mattogno responds:
The memo’s claim that merely reducing the number of payload units led to “a longer operation time, since the empty spaces also have to be filled with carbon monoxide” is just as ridiculous. Even though shortening the load area by 1 m (or 17%) while maintaining the load density would reduce the air volume accordingly, reducing the load density instead has hardly any effect on the air volume. To show this, I assume first of all that the vehicle’s maximum load of 4,500 kg (≈ 4.5 m³ of bodies) was not exceeded. That would amount to (4,500 kg ÷ 60 kg) 75 persons, or 5.2 persons (or 310 kg) per square meter. We now reduce the payload by as many persons as would result from shortening the box by one meter. This amounts to (1 m × 2.5 m × 310 kg/m² =) 775 kg or roughly 13 people, or an additional air volume of 0.775 m³. Hence decreasing the load by 775 kg would increase the empty volume merely from (24.65 m³ – 4.5 m³ =) 20.15 m3 to (20.15 m3 + 0.775 m3 =) 20.925 m3, or just 3.7%. Even if we assume a higher load density as suggested by the memo, this would still not be more than a 7.2% increase in air volume. And if, as stated in the verdict of the Bonn Jury Court of 30 March 1963, the death of the victims occurred within about nine to ten minutes after starting the engine,34 this marginal increase of free space would have resulted in an equally marginal change of the execution time, which would have been in the order of 20 to 40 seconds. This shows that the analysis presented in this memo of 5 June 1942 is ludicrous.
The blogger's response?
The least clever comment was submitted by Walendy who claimed that the "volume should have been almost totally filled anyway" with a loading of 9 - 10 people per m². In reality, there would be still 2/3 free volume with 50 kg average weight of the victims.
The denier Carlo Mattogno thought he had to pull out his calculator to show that there was only a "marginal increase of free space" of 3.7% when reducing the load from a realistic valie in his point of view. With the load density mentioned in the document, "this would still not be more than a 7.2% increase in air volume" (Mattogno, Chelmno, p. 34). One may argue over whether these figures were quantitatively significant. But even if not, this would merely mean that some RSHA technicians came up with a flawed idea. (like Walendy above!)
Walendy has never gassed a bunch of people with gas vans nor does he have experience with it. If he makes a mistake, it is understandable since he is not directly involved in gas van mass murder. The guy writing this letter has supposedly been gassing a bunch of people, yet he thinks this will make a difference. Shouldn't he know this is stupid as he has direct access to all of this that is going on? This is yet another stupid argument by the blogger.
Back to the document:
To allow for the rapid inflow of the carbon monoxide while preventing excessive pressure, two open slits of 10 cm × 1 cm [4" × 0.4"] are to be located in the upper back wall. These are to be covered on the outside with easily movable hinged metal flaps in order to allow for self-regulation of any potential excess pressure.
Alverez's response:
The demand to have two slits of 10 cm × 1 cm added to the rear wall of the cargo box so that excess gas can escape means that at the time the memo was written no such slits existed and that the gas had no other way of escaping – or else the slits would have been superfluous. Hence
the cargo boxes would have been sealed hermetically and the gas pressure would have built up inside until the doors were opened; many “witness testimonies” as well as the Becker document analyzed before confirm this explicitly. Nonetheless these boxes are said to have gassed almost 100,000 human beings. In my mind this is a radical impossibility.
page 70
The blogger's response?
There are several scenarios of how the gas vans were supposed to work before the installation of the overpressure valves in the back (if these were ever implemented in practice):
A: The gassing box was gas-tight with negligible leakage. The exhaust pumped in the box lead to an increase of the inside pressure. Elliott et al. have measured an exhaust flow of 0.75 m³/min for ~ 11 liters gasoline engines running idle. Downscaled to 5.5 l for the Saurer, this would mean 375 mbar overpressure in 20 min. The cargo box was made of thick steel-reinforced hardboard. There is no estimation so far how much pressure the gassing box could have withstood before its sides/doors were bursting.
B: Leakages from the gassing box were significant, despite the efforts to seal it. Substantial leakage was also created by slightly deforming the box upon pressurizing. At some point, there would be a steady-state where the exhaust intake is compensated by the leakages.
C: There was a T-connection from the exhaust pipe to the gassing box. The exhaust pipe exit was open but had a reduced inside diameter, so that the exhaust would enter the gassing box until a defined, critical pressure was reached.
D: Inside the box, there was a gas outlet through which the excess pressure was relieved.
It seems not wise to operate the gas vans under high inside pressure (scenario A). In scenario B, the inside pressure could be much lower than in scenario A, but still ill-defined. The drawback of scenario C is that the shut-off pressure limits the maximum concentration of the exhaust gas inside the gassing box as well as the rate the exhaust gas enters the box. Scenario D seems like the best solution from a technical point of view. It allows for a full exchange of the atmosphere inside the gassing box with exhaust gas while avoiding overpressure.
The exhaust outlet could have been located in the roof or on the floor of the gassing box. So far, I came across a single eyewitness describing such feature:
"There was an outlet device on the roof, practically the end of the exhaust pipe. The gases were sent through the exhaust pipe into the hermetically sealed van, where they killed those inside, and were directed through the van’s roof."
But the whole point was that these were implemented because there was nothing to let the pressure out in the first place. Like Alvarez says, or else it would be superfluous. So the blogger has not dealt with this problem with the document. And once again, he quotes someone who directly contradicts this document.
And this problem carries over to the Becker document:
Furthermore, I ordered to keep all men as far away from the van as possible during the gassings, in order that they will not be harmed by possibly escaping gases.
Alvarez's response:
By referring to “possibly escaping gases,” the author once more confirms his underlying hypothesis that a proper operation of a gas van required as sealed cargo box, as this phrase implies that under normal conditions of the gassing operation no gases escape near the vehicle. But as already described in chapter 1.3.2., an engine whose exhaust pipe is connected to a sealed cargo box will bend and eventually blow the box apart. Hence we have a physically or mechanically impossible claim here.
Not to mention the fact that “possibly escaping gases” could not be more dangerous for those operating the vehicle than the inevitable inhalation of exhaust gases of city traffic or of the idling engine of a stationary vehicle.
I presume the blogger didn't respond to this because he thought he dealt with it in his article on the Just document. But as I have demonstrated, he failed.
Either these documents are fake, or they are some elaborate joke by the people who made them. Either way, these documents should not be taken seriously. Unfortunately for the blogger, he failed to make that case.
