Gas van
Encyclopedia
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
Nazi Germany
During trips to Russia in 1941, Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
learned the psychological impact on the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
killers posed by the shooting of women and children. Hence, he commissioned Arthur Nebe
Arthur Nebe
SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe was a member of the NSDAP party with card number 574,307. In July 1931, he joined the SS and his membership number was 280,152. His early career included the Berlin position of Police Commissioner in the 1920s...
to explore ways of killing that were less stressful for the killers. Nebe's experiments eventually led to the production of the gas van. This vehicle had already been used in 1940 for the gassing of East Prussian Pomeranian mental patients in Soldau, a camp located in the former Polish corridor.
It was a vehicle with an airtight compartment for victims, into which exhaust gas
Exhaust gas
Exhaust gas or flue gas is emitted as a result of the combustion of fuels such as natural gas, gasoline/petrol, diesel fuel, fuel oil or coal. According to the type of engine, it is discharged into the atmosphere through an exhaust pipe, flue gas stack or propelling nozzle.It often disperses...
was piped while the engine was running. As a result, the victims were gassed with carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide , also called carbonous oxide, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that is slightly lighter than air. It is highly toxic to humans and animals in higher quantities, although it is also produced in normal animal metabolism in low quantities, and is thought to have some normal...
, resulting in death by the combined effects of carbon monoxide poisoning
Carbon monoxide poisoning
Carbon monoxide poisoning occurs after enough inhalation of carbon monoxide . Carbon monoxide is a toxic gas, but, being colorless, odorless, tasteless, and initially non-irritating, it is very difficult for people to detect...
and suffocation
Suffocation
Suffocation is the process of Asphyxia.Suffocation may also refer to:* Suffocation , an American death metal band* "Suffocation", a song on Morbid Angel's debut album, Altars of Madness...
. The suffocations usually occurred as the gas van was carrying the victims to a freshly dug pit or ravine for mass burial.
Gas vans were used, particularly at Chełmno extermination camp, until gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s were developed as a more efficient method for killing large numbers of people. In Belgrade, the gas van was known as "Dušegupka" and in the occupied parts of the USSR similarly as "душегубка" (dushegubka, literally (feminine) soul killer/exterminator).
The use of gas vans had two disadvantages:
- It was slow—some victims took twenty minutes to die.
- It was not quiet—The drivers could hear the victims' screams, which they found distracting and disturbing.
By June 1942 the main producer of gas vans, Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke GmbH, delivered 20 gas vans in 2 models (for 30-50 and 70-100 individuals) to Einsatzgruppen, out of 30 ordered. Not one gas van was extant at the end of the war. The existence of gas vans first came to light in 1943 during the trial of Nazi collaborators involved in the gassing of 6700 civilians in Krasnodar
Krasnodar
Krasnodar is a city in Southern Russia, located on the Kuban River about northeast of the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It is the administrative center of Krasnodar Krai . Population: -Name:...
. The total number of gas van gassings is unknown. One German document dated June 5, 1942 in occupied Minsk indicates that from December 1941 to June 1942 3 gas vans were used to kill 97000 civilians.
The gas vans are extensively discussed in some of the interviews in Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
's film, Shoah
Shoah (film)
This page is about the film by the name of Shoah. For other uses, see Shoah Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust...
.
Soviet Union
According to some journalism publications, based on rumors that gas vans were already used on an experimental basis during the Stalinist purgesGreat Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
of the late 1930s. Moscow NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
section chief Isay Berg would suffocate batches of prisoners with engine fumes in a camouflaged bread van while on the drive out to the mass graves
Mass graves in the Soviet Union
This page discusses mass graves in the Soviet Union.-Soviet repression and terror:The government of the USSR under Stalin murdered many of its own citizens and foreigners. These mass killings were carried out by the security organisations, such as the NKVD, and reached their peak in the Great Purge...
at Butovo
Butovo firing range
The Butovo firing range is the name of a location where more than 20,000 political prisoners were shot during the Great Terror of the Soviet Union and thereafter from 1938 to 1953. It is located in the Yuzhnoye Butovo District of Moscow, near the village of Drozhzhino...
, where they were subsequently buried.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
in his controversial historical work Two Hundred Years Together
Two Hundred Years Together
"Two hundred years together" is a 2-volume historical essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.Solzhenitsyn published this two-volume work on the history of Russian-Jewish relations in 2001 and 2002. The book stirred controversy and is viewed by many historians as unreliable in both factual data and...
claimed that Isay Berg, the head of the administrative and economic department of NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
of Moscow oblast
Oblast
Oblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...
, was the inventor of the gas van in Soviet Union in 1937. Solzhenitsyn wrote:
There is no official, or documentary evidence of such version. At attempt of the formal investigation in 1939, and in 1956 while trying to rehabilitate Berg also any data on this "invention" was not found.
According to the Russian researcher A. A. Milchakov, however, Berg's connection to the invention of the gas van (already used in 1936) has never been conclusively proven, and Berg himself was summarily executed during the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
in 1939.
See also
- Execution vanExecution vanExecution vans, also referred to as "mobile execution units", were developed by the government of the People's Republic of China and were first used in 1997. Prisoners are strapped to a stretcher and executed via lethal injection inside the van. The vans allow for death sentences to be carried out...
- Walter RauffWalter RauffWalter Rauff , was an SS officer in Nazi Germany, attaining the grade of Colonel in June 1944...
- August BeckerAugust BeckerAugust Becker was during the Nazi regime in Germany an SS lieutenant colonel and chemist in the Central Reich Security Office...
- The HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
- Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
External links
- The Development of the Gas-Van from the Jewish Virtual Library
- Film: Short explanation about the Gas vans at the Nuremberg trialsNuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
(USHMM) - NAZI GAS VANS By Rob Arndt