What happened to all the Gas Vans used in the Holocaust?
Discussion
832ark said:
I'll tell you what I do find 'unbelievable' (and I mean incredible, not that I don't believe) is that they systematically killed 11 million people over a 5 year period. The sheer scale of evil is just incomprehensible, how could the people on the ground actually doing this work do these things to other human beings? How did the logistics work? I know we joke about German efficiency but they must have done huge quantities of work on the most efficient ways to kill people and dispose of bodies. Very sobering indeed.
I have often pondered just how the idea of mass murder was floated at the Nazi party weekly progress meetings. It's not like a snot-nosed little intern will have stuck his chewed fingernailed hand up and said "Please, Sir! We could just gas them all, couldn't we?" It had to have been a series of infinitesimal steps from evacuation, through forced deportation, and onwards to death camps. The film 'Conspiracy' comes closest in my experience to showing how it could have come about even though it is chronologically late in the proceedings. Nevertheless it shows how the unthinkable can be made almost acceptable. Very well worth a watch along with the two Churchill stories: 'The Gathering Storm', and 'Into the Storm' In Conspiracy Stanley Tucci as Adolph Eichmann is particularly chilling.832ark said:
I'll tell you what I do find 'unbelievable' (and I mean incredible, not that I don't believe) is that they systematically killed 11 million people over a 5 year period. The sheer scale of evil is just incomprehensible, how could the people on the ground actually doing this work do these things to other human beings? How did the logistics work? I know we joke about German efficiency but they must have done huge quantities of work on the most efficient ways to kill people and dispose of bodies. Very sobering indeed.
Without getting into a completely other type of debate, there was many estimates of the amount killed by the Reichstag internally throughout their rule. The 6m Jews & 11m overall (Gypsies, disabled & several other persecuted groups) being the almost universally accepted numbers today, however there where many other estimates ranging from 0.8-6million jews and 4-11million overall. These estimates where all made by different entities between 1945 and 1955 with the universally accepted numbers today being on the very upper end of the estimates. Now there was varying amounts of evidence for the various estimates however the reason the upper numbers where picked up by western media at the time was more of a shock and awe movement to discourage sympathy for the still demonised nazi officials which where undergoing trial. With that in mind the actual number killed may be on a more 'believable' magnitude but the truth has been obfuscated by history.This of course does nothing to take away from the atrocities committed, whether the innocent death toll at the hands of the Reich was 4million or 11million it is still a tragic event and the memory of its victims demand our upmost respect. And as such real examining of the evidence in modern time really is an unneeded and difficult to conduct insult on their memory.
Yet the Armenian genocide of 1915 which killed 1.5 million is rarely spoken of against the Jewish genocide. Their methods were pretty direct and brutal, with little attempt to cover up what was happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obersalzberg_Speech
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Nazi Germany (1933-45)
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
[August 22, 1939]
My decision to attack Poland was arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken. Ever since the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.
In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini. Mussolini is the weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.
Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter -- with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.
I have issued the command -- and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad -- that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness -- for the present only in the East -- with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obersalzberg_Speech
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Nazi Germany (1933-45)
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
[August 22, 1939]
My decision to attack Poland was arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken. Ever since the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.
In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini. Mussolini is the weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.
Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter -- with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.
I have issued the command -- and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad -- that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness -- for the present only in the East -- with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
Edited by cootuk on Sunday 15th January 20:41
Edited by cootuk on Sunday 15th January 20:42
sleepera6 said:
It's a bit of a sensitive subject, but I have been reading about the Second World War and I note that they used "gas vans" to exterminate victims during the Holocaust before they introduced gas chambers. Around 7,000 Jews, Romas, Jehovah's Witnesses and others died in a gas van, out of the 6,000,000+ who died between 1941-1945 under the German Reich.
I have established two brands that participated in the production of gas vans (carbon monoxide was piped in to the van), Magrius-Deutz (now seperated and Magrius is owned by Iveco group) and Mercedes.
What happened to the gas vans?
I notice how you didn't mention Trade Unionists, how very PH.I have established two brands that participated in the production of gas vans (carbon monoxide was piped in to the van), Magrius-Deutz (now seperated and Magrius is owned by Iveco group) and Mercedes.
What happened to the gas vans?
I didnt personally see the relevance of perpetuating the memory. Of the holocaust because, as a young un, id always simply assumed hitler was a nutter and it couldnt happen again.
I visited dachau camp a few years ago. Few were killed there its more of a 'test camp'. I came out with my mind absolutely blown at how many companies and famous people had got into bed with the nazis.
Most striking for me was that the gas chambers we are speaking about were designed by siemens and basf in a business partnership and that they actually tendered for the work. These two still well known companies actively pursued a contract to build ovens to murder people.
Bmw and mercedes museums in frankfurt both have sections apologising for their collusion with the nazi regime.
I visited dachau camp a few years ago. Few were killed there its more of a 'test camp'. I came out with my mind absolutely blown at how many companies and famous people had got into bed with the nazis.
Most striking for me was that the gas chambers we are speaking about were designed by siemens and basf in a business partnership and that they actually tendered for the work. These two still well known companies actively pursued a contract to build ovens to murder people.
Bmw and mercedes museums in frankfurt both have sections apologising for their collusion with the nazi regime.
sleepera6 said:
Am I right to think, that gas vans were phased out and replaced by gas chambers after the Final Solution, introduced by Heinrich Himmler? Or was the gas van part of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question?
From vague memories of TV documentaries the Gas vans were the first instruments of mass murder used by the NAZIs. It was first used on the German disabled and mentally disabled.Killing Jews started with mass shootings in Eastern Europe moving on to the Gas chambers. As such I don't think they played a big part in the mass murder of Jewish victims.
sleepera6 said:
I have established two brands that participated in the production of gas vans (carbon monoxide was piped in to the van), Magrius-Deutz (now seperated and Magrius is owned by Iveco group) and Mercedes.
Slightly off topic, Josef Mengeles father made farm machinery, the brand was still making (rather good) machines until relatively recently but has been swallowed up by another brand 832ark said:
I'll tell you what I do find 'unbelievable' (and I mean incredible, not that I don't believe) is that they systematically killed 11 million people over a 5 year period. The sheer scale of evil is just incomprehensible, how could the people on the ground actually doing this work do these things to other human beings? How did the logistics work? I know we joke about German efficiency but they must have done huge quantities of work on the most efficient ways to kill people and dispose of bodies. Very sobering indeed.
When I visited the Anne Frank house the most sobering thing were the index cards for her and her family for the concentration camp. Murdering people even in astounding numbers is just about comprehensible, but documenting your victims on index cards first is just mind boggling. As an aside, a fascinating place to visit if you are in Amsterdam is the resistance museum. It is not simply a museum documenting the resistance movement, but the choices they had to make; adapt, collaborate or resist, a choice that of course never had to be made on the UK mainland. They have an excellent English language website - https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/museum/en/museum
MarshPhantom said:
Anyone?
There is a qualitative difference between a calculated program to exterminate a people and the excesses of battlefield. In the case of Stalln, he was of course a monster ( there are still admirers there too), He determined that if he left the people in Stalingrad siege to starve that the fighters would fight harder and over a million died.
However he was not fundamentally our to exterminate everyone in Germany or Russia, He was just indifferent to their fate. Pre was in the thirties he had held his own pogroms and also wiped out the muxhjit class, much as Mao wiped out the merchant class in the cultural revolution. There have been lots of ethnic wars,, ( think of the Tutsis trying to wipe out the Hutus), but the industrialization of death, the meticulous planning, the scale and objective remains unique. The experiments, dehumanization were on a scale not seen before or since.
motco said:
832ark said:
I'll tell you what I do find 'unbelievable' (and I mean incredible, not that I don't believe) is that they systematically killed 11 million people over a 5 year period. The sheer scale of evil is just incomprehensible, how could the people on the ground actually doing this work do these things to other human beings? How did the logistics work? I know we joke about German efficiency but they must have done huge quantities of work on the most efficient ways to kill people and dispose of bodies. Very sobering indeed.
I have often pondered just how the idea of mass murder was floated at the Nazi party weekly progress meetings. It's not like a snot-nosed little intern will have stuck his chewed fingernailed hand up and said "Please, Sir! We could just gas them all, couldn't we?" It had to have been a series of infinitesimal steps from evacuation, through forced deportation, and onwards to death camps. The film 'Conspiracy' comes closest in my experience to showing how it could have come about even though it is chronologically late in the proceedings. Nevertheless it shows how the unthinkable can be made almost acceptable. Very well worth a watch along with the two Churchill stories: 'The Gathering Storm', and 'Into the Storm' In Conspiracy Stanley Tucci as Adolph Eichmann is particularly chilling.Have a 100-yearold relative in good health and she recounts many grim tales of the 1920s to 1940s when horses would be shot on the spot in public if they did not pull canal barges fast enough, nobody was bothered that half their village had been wiped out by WW1, and there were no funerals or mourning for the masses (someone just threw them in the ground and scraped a bit of soil on top). Life was worth far, far less back then, and mass-murder for political gain had been the norm across the entire world for most of the past ~7,000 years, from Athens to Rome to Berlin.
Does not excuse the Nazi atrocities, of course, but it does shine some light on how "the way things were done" in Europe was wildly different to how things are done today.
Yes they existed, but they killed so fee people it was insignificant to really be included or mentioned, you're searching for a Gaswagen
As for there being any left, I'd honestly hope not, and if there were any I think it should be destroyed, certain things are better lost to history unfortunately
said:
"Beginnings
Shortly after the occupation of Poland , the local hospitals and nursing homes were scoured for victims who were by the Nazis as "unworthy of life" considered. These were mostly shot. Almost at the same time - the exact date is disputed - the test gassings from January 1940 [9] in the Nazi killing center Brandenburg / Havel was in East Prussia and Poland from the Sonderkommando Lange a truck trailer used as a mobile gas chamber. It was this one by the inscription " Kaiser's coffee business " camouflaged followers, in the pure carbon monoxide gas was introduced from some in the tractor carried steel cylinders. [10] This team was only used from January 1940 to July 1941, [11] the delivery of gas cylinders of Ludwigshafen was impractical since.
At the suggestion of Heinrich Himmler were in the fall of 1941 in Mogilev [12] killing experiments were carried out with car exhaust to the firing squad to relieve them of their bloody murders in the future. On November 3, 1941, gas vans in was Sachsenhausen tested; , killing one 30 Soviet POWs with engine exhaust gases . There is also a second, larger were probably Saurer lorry used tested and further test gassings carried out. [13]
Locations
Since December 1941 gas vans in were Chelmno / Kulmhof stationed, but also in Riga , in Wartheland and four Einsatzgruppen in use. [14] 1942, a gas cart from Berlin was used in occupied Serbia ordered. Between March and June 1942 7.500 were Jews , Roma and Sinti from that time on Croatian lying area sajmište concentration camp on the journey through the middle of Belgrade to Jajinci , [15] where the bodies were thrown into a pit, murdered. After this use of gas vans was transferred by train to Berlin and after an overhaul then at the Einsatzgruppe B in Belarus ( Minsk used). Even with the KdS -Dienststellen, the successor institutions of the Einsatzgruppen, they were partially responsible for the execution of prisoners - mainly Jews -. Used, for example, in Kiev 1942-43.
In Mogilev the group 570 who used Secret Field Police between late April and June 1944 a provisionally converted prey trucks as gas vans. [16]
technology
During the construction of these gas vans which advised Forensic Institute of the Security Police in Berlin the authority. The Division II D 3a of the RSHA under Walter Rauff had six smaller 3.5-ton truck of the brand Diamond and Opel -Blitz retool and ordered the end of 1941 the first five of 30 Saurer -vans that were larger and up to 100 People. [17] In Chelmno was also a Renault -Truck used with a gasoline engine.
The box structures with tight-closing double doors at the rear were purchased from Gaubschat delivered / Berlin-Neukölln. The conversion to the gas wagon was carried out in the workshop of Unit II D 3 a. The witness Harry Wentritt described it in 1961 before the Court in Hannover as follows: [18]
"There was a the exhaust gas hose attached, which was conducted from the outside to the floor of the car. In this car we drilled a hole in the diameter of about 58 to 60 mm, in the thickness of the exhaust pipe. A metal pipe (exhaust pipe) was welded to the inside of the car, above this hole, which could be connected to the exhaust hose connected to the outside. At the start of the engine and after connections, the exhaust gases of the engine went through the exhaust into the exhaust hose and from there to the exhaust pipe, which was installed inside the vehicle, where the gas then spread.
The box structure was clad in the inside with sheet metal. An initially attached small viewing window was omitted in later versions. Further technical amendments to the "optimization" were not implemented. [19]
killing
Depending on the size of the trucks looking like furniture cars, 25 to 50 victims were forced to board. The engine was operated for at least ten minutes. During this time, screams and throbbing of the encircled people were often heard, and they pressed into the locked door in death. The ordered for inspection chemist August Becker wrote: [20]
"The gasification is not made correctly. In order to finish the action as quickly as possible, the drivers are always full-throttle. By this measure the persons to be executed suffer the asphyxiation death and not, as planned, the death of the perpetrator. My instructions have now shown that if the levers are properly adjusted, death will be faster and the prisoners will fall asleep peacefully. "
If the CO content had exceeded the value of 1 percent in the car, were a deep unconsciousness and then death.
According to a document dated June 5, 1942, 97,000 Jews had been killed in three such gas trucks operating in Kulmhof since December 1941. [21]
Chełmno
In extermination camp Chelmno / Kulmhof stationed Gaswagen two (temporarily even three). In the largest truck, which resembled a dark-painted furniture car, 100 to 120 persons were forced into it. [22] There were murdered alone in January 1942 10,003 people. The extermination program was temporarily terminated in March 1943, but resumed and until the end of May 1944 winter offensive of the Red Army continued in January 1945th
Early Polish estimates came from more than 300,000 people murdered in Chelmno by engine exhaust. At the beginning of the 1960s, courts found a minimum of 152,676 victims; They based themselves exclusively on existing documentary material"
This is one of the few, they did get a livery I believeShortly after the occupation of Poland , the local hospitals and nursing homes were scoured for victims who were by the Nazis as "unworthy of life" considered. These were mostly shot. Almost at the same time - the exact date is disputed - the test gassings from January 1940 [9] in the Nazi killing center Brandenburg / Havel was in East Prussia and Poland from the Sonderkommando Lange a truck trailer used as a mobile gas chamber. It was this one by the inscription " Kaiser's coffee business " camouflaged followers, in the pure carbon monoxide gas was introduced from some in the tractor carried steel cylinders. [10] This team was only used from January 1940 to July 1941, [11] the delivery of gas cylinders of Ludwigshafen was impractical since.
At the suggestion of Heinrich Himmler were in the fall of 1941 in Mogilev [12] killing experiments were carried out with car exhaust to the firing squad to relieve them of their bloody murders in the future. On November 3, 1941, gas vans in was Sachsenhausen tested; , killing one 30 Soviet POWs with engine exhaust gases . There is also a second, larger were probably Saurer lorry used tested and further test gassings carried out. [13]
Locations
Since December 1941 gas vans in were Chelmno / Kulmhof stationed, but also in Riga , in Wartheland and four Einsatzgruppen in use. [14] 1942, a gas cart from Berlin was used in occupied Serbia ordered. Between March and June 1942 7.500 were Jews , Roma and Sinti from that time on Croatian lying area sajmište concentration camp on the journey through the middle of Belgrade to Jajinci , [15] where the bodies were thrown into a pit, murdered. After this use of gas vans was transferred by train to Berlin and after an overhaul then at the Einsatzgruppe B in Belarus ( Minsk used). Even with the KdS -Dienststellen, the successor institutions of the Einsatzgruppen, they were partially responsible for the execution of prisoners - mainly Jews -. Used, for example, in Kiev 1942-43.
In Mogilev the group 570 who used Secret Field Police between late April and June 1944 a provisionally converted prey trucks as gas vans. [16]
technology
During the construction of these gas vans which advised Forensic Institute of the Security Police in Berlin the authority. The Division II D 3a of the RSHA under Walter Rauff had six smaller 3.5-ton truck of the brand Diamond and Opel -Blitz retool and ordered the end of 1941 the first five of 30 Saurer -vans that were larger and up to 100 People. [17] In Chelmno was also a Renault -Truck used with a gasoline engine.
The box structures with tight-closing double doors at the rear were purchased from Gaubschat delivered / Berlin-Neukölln. The conversion to the gas wagon was carried out in the workshop of Unit II D 3 a. The witness Harry Wentritt described it in 1961 before the Court in Hannover as follows: [18]
"There was a the exhaust gas hose attached, which was conducted from the outside to the floor of the car. In this car we drilled a hole in the diameter of about 58 to 60 mm, in the thickness of the exhaust pipe. A metal pipe (exhaust pipe) was welded to the inside of the car, above this hole, which could be connected to the exhaust hose connected to the outside. At the start of the engine and after connections, the exhaust gases of the engine went through the exhaust into the exhaust hose and from there to the exhaust pipe, which was installed inside the vehicle, where the gas then spread.
The box structure was clad in the inside with sheet metal. An initially attached small viewing window was omitted in later versions. Further technical amendments to the "optimization" were not implemented. [19]
killing
Depending on the size of the trucks looking like furniture cars, 25 to 50 victims were forced to board. The engine was operated for at least ten minutes. During this time, screams and throbbing of the encircled people were often heard, and they pressed into the locked door in death. The ordered for inspection chemist August Becker wrote: [20]
"The gasification is not made correctly. In order to finish the action as quickly as possible, the drivers are always full-throttle. By this measure the persons to be executed suffer the asphyxiation death and not, as planned, the death of the perpetrator. My instructions have now shown that if the levers are properly adjusted, death will be faster and the prisoners will fall asleep peacefully. "
If the CO content had exceeded the value of 1 percent in the car, were a deep unconsciousness and then death.
According to a document dated June 5, 1942, 97,000 Jews had been killed in three such gas trucks operating in Kulmhof since December 1941. [21]
Chełmno
In extermination camp Chelmno / Kulmhof stationed Gaswagen two (temporarily even three). In the largest truck, which resembled a dark-painted furniture car, 100 to 120 persons were forced into it. [22] There were murdered alone in January 1942 10,003 people. The extermination program was temporarily terminated in March 1943, but resumed and until the end of May 1944 winter offensive of the Red Army continued in January 1945th
Early Polish estimates came from more than 300,000 people murdered in Chelmno by engine exhaust. At the beginning of the 1960s, courts found a minimum of 152,676 victims; They based themselves exclusively on existing documentary material"
said:
The old storm-bearer came to tears. "High court," he sobbed, "I know nothing about the extermination of Jews."
The ex-SS man, who currently sits on the Anklagebank in the Hanover court of justice, is accused of subsidizing 6,000 murders. Friedrich Pradel, 65, formerly Head of the Motor Vehicle Division II D 3a at the Reichsicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), ordered at least 13 mobile gas chambers to be installed and rolled from Berlin to the east.
The man who, as head of the RSHA car repair shop, installed the killing retreats in the gas-fueled cars: the former SS underrun leader Harry Wentritt, 63. Wagoned from 1941 onwards, behind closed garage doors, in armchairs of the types "Saurer" and "Diamond" , With which the exhaust gases of the truck engines were directed into the interior of the hermetically sealed vehicles (allegedly an idea of the then German Kripo boss Nebe).
In the "G-Wagen" from the Pradel / Wentritt workshop, thousands of Jews who had joined the SD Einsatzgruppen after the attack on the Soviet Union in the stage between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea "for liquidation". Under the pretext of being resettled, loused and showered, became the victims. - forty to sixty men, women and children at the same time - were bombed into the death carts.
For example, what happened in 1942 in a camp in the Semlin suburb of Belgrade is the result of testimony from the Hanoverian expert on Nazi procedures, First Prosecutor Dr. Dietrich Goetz. In the course of a quarter of a year, 5700 Jewish women and children were convicted in one The gas truck stifled after the men had been shot. In June 1942, the head of the security police in Belgrade, SS-Stormman Schäfer, reported to Berlin that all Serbia was now "Jewish-free," and sent back the garbage truck with the message "Spezialwagen has carried out the order."
The murder procedure: The drivers let the engine of the gas cars run for a quarter hour with a weak hand gas. "The car has not shaken, and people have not shouted," the gas car chauffeur Erich Gnewuch said in 1961, before committing suicide at the Moabit prison in Berlin.
On June 5, 1942, Pradel himself had reported to his superiors in a red-stamped file with the stamp "Secret Reichssache". Since December 1941 "97,000 had been processed" with "three loaded wagons," without any defects on the vehicles. "
Pradel did not want to know that the "97,000" were systematically brought into the hands of Jews. "I thought that people were condemned to death, that is, captured partisans, and maybe soldiers of the enemy troops." And weepishly indignant: "But Jews - no, never."
Pradel can not even recall the telegraphic inscriptions, in which the SD groups of troops demanded more gas wagons with the express reference to "new transports of Jews", or - as on 15 June 1942 the commander of the security police in Minsk - the "allocation of ten exhaust gas hoses" "Since the existing ones are already leaking".
Pradel recalls the purpose of the gas wagons: "It should be a more humane kind of execution," he says hesitantly. Question of the judge: "For whom is humane - for those who are to be executed or the executive commissions?" No Answer.
In fact, the nerve of the executives should be spared with the murder car. One of the 63 witnesses to be heard in the trial: "The commanders were constantly complaining about nervous breakdowns, disobedience and drunkenness, and even suicide by people who also had to shoot at women and children."
What is being negotiated in Hanover is one of the complexes that were first brightened by the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle for the persecution of Nazi crimes (SPIEGEL 4/1963). 1960 saw Ludwigsburger public prosecutors in the viewing of American archival material RSHA-Hausmitteilungen, which indicated on a writing table scroll of Pradels. Pradel was not hard to find; he was again active in the motor vehicle industry: as commissar for the service of the Lower Saxony police.
With the help of an RSHA file note, Pradel's chief (and head of the garbage truck) was also appointed: the former SS leader Walter Hermann Julius Rauff, head of the technical group II D in the Reichsicherheitshauptamt. He oversees a meat factory in Chile today, unattainable for German justice. Although he was temporarily arrested in 1962, the Chilean judiciary refused to surrender. Murder was punishable under Chile's criminal law after 15 years and not after 20 years, as in the Federal Republic.
SS gas wagon: "People did not scream"
SS-gas wagon leader Ranot
"It always worked out well
TL;Dr Germans pumped gas into vans and .monoxide poisoned people as more humane and stopped their soldiers getting depressed after executing people through a hole in a wall.The ex-SS man, who currently sits on the Anklagebank in the Hanover court of justice, is accused of subsidizing 6,000 murders. Friedrich Pradel, 65, formerly Head of the Motor Vehicle Division II D 3a at the Reichsicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), ordered at least 13 mobile gas chambers to be installed and rolled from Berlin to the east.
The man who, as head of the RSHA car repair shop, installed the killing retreats in the gas-fueled cars: the former SS underrun leader Harry Wentritt, 63. Wagoned from 1941 onwards, behind closed garage doors, in armchairs of the types "Saurer" and "Diamond" , With which the exhaust gases of the truck engines were directed into the interior of the hermetically sealed vehicles (allegedly an idea of the then German Kripo boss Nebe).
In the "G-Wagen" from the Pradel / Wentritt workshop, thousands of Jews who had joined the SD Einsatzgruppen after the attack on the Soviet Union in the stage between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea "for liquidation". Under the pretext of being resettled, loused and showered, became the victims. - forty to sixty men, women and children at the same time - were bombed into the death carts.
For example, what happened in 1942 in a camp in the Semlin suburb of Belgrade is the result of testimony from the Hanoverian expert on Nazi procedures, First Prosecutor Dr. Dietrich Goetz. In the course of a quarter of a year, 5700 Jewish women and children were convicted in one The gas truck stifled after the men had been shot. In June 1942, the head of the security police in Belgrade, SS-Stormman Schäfer, reported to Berlin that all Serbia was now "Jewish-free," and sent back the garbage truck with the message "Spezialwagen has carried out the order."
The murder procedure: The drivers let the engine of the gas cars run for a quarter hour with a weak hand gas. "The car has not shaken, and people have not shouted," the gas car chauffeur Erich Gnewuch said in 1961, before committing suicide at the Moabit prison in Berlin.
On June 5, 1942, Pradel himself had reported to his superiors in a red-stamped file with the stamp "Secret Reichssache". Since December 1941 "97,000 had been processed" with "three loaded wagons," without any defects on the vehicles. "
Pradel did not want to know that the "97,000" were systematically brought into the hands of Jews. "I thought that people were condemned to death, that is, captured partisans, and maybe soldiers of the enemy troops." And weepishly indignant: "But Jews - no, never."
Pradel can not even recall the telegraphic inscriptions, in which the SD groups of troops demanded more gas wagons with the express reference to "new transports of Jews", or - as on 15 June 1942 the commander of the security police in Minsk - the "allocation of ten exhaust gas hoses" "Since the existing ones are already leaking".
Pradel recalls the purpose of the gas wagons: "It should be a more humane kind of execution," he says hesitantly. Question of the judge: "For whom is humane - for those who are to be executed or the executive commissions?" No Answer.
In fact, the nerve of the executives should be spared with the murder car. One of the 63 witnesses to be heard in the trial: "The commanders were constantly complaining about nervous breakdowns, disobedience and drunkenness, and even suicide by people who also had to shoot at women and children."
What is being negotiated in Hanover is one of the complexes that were first brightened by the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle for the persecution of Nazi crimes (SPIEGEL 4/1963). 1960 saw Ludwigsburger public prosecutors in the viewing of American archival material RSHA-Hausmitteilungen, which indicated on a writing table scroll of Pradels. Pradel was not hard to find; he was again active in the motor vehicle industry: as commissar for the service of the Lower Saxony police.
With the help of an RSHA file note, Pradel's chief (and head of the garbage truck) was also appointed: the former SS leader Walter Hermann Julius Rauff, head of the technical group II D in the Reichsicherheitshauptamt. He oversees a meat factory in Chile today, unattainable for German justice. Although he was temporarily arrested in 1962, the Chilean judiciary refused to surrender. Murder was punishable under Chile's criminal law after 15 years and not after 20 years, as in the Federal Republic.
SS gas wagon: "People did not scream"
SS-gas wagon leader Ranot
"It always worked out well
As for there being any left, I'd honestly hope not, and if there were any I think it should be destroyed, certain things are better lost to history unfortunately
MarshPhantom said:
MarshPhantom said:
Not trying to be controversial, but why is the Holocaust remebered as the worst thing Hitler did. More than 20 million Russians died during WW2, and they pretty much defeated Hitler and the Nazis on our behalf.
Anyone?PF62 said:
As an aside, a fascinating place to visit if you are in Amsterdam is the resistance museum. It is not simply a museum documenting the resistance movement, but the choices they had to make; adapt, collaborate or resist, a choice that of course never had to be made on the UK mainland. They have an excellent English language website - https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/museum/en/museum
Tis indeed a very good museum that and opposite the Zoo, as nice walk from the centre of Amsterdam as well williamp said:
sleepera6 said:
GreatGranny said:
No idea why you would be interested in this but I would have thought they were all destroyed.
Well I hope they would have been.
No reason for them to be kept.
Surely one would be at a museum? Although it would of had a dark past.Well I hope they would have been.
No reason for them to be kept.
Nothing wrong with taking an interest in researching WW1 and 2.
I think the subject matter - so long as it isn't actively glamorised - sets its own pitch. And it is inevitably miserable. As such, I personally don't think there would be a risk of that.
MarshPhantom said:
liner33 said:
I visited a museum in France and there was a guillotine there that has been used for dozens if not hundreds of executions
I couldn't see something like that in a UK museum but not all cultures feel the same
Not trying to be controversial, but why is the Holocaust remebered as the worst thing Hitler did. More than 20 million Russians died during WW2, and they pretty much defeated Hitler and the Nazis on our behalf.I couldn't see something like that in a UK museum but not all cultures feel the same
Yipper said:
Hard -- almost impossible -- to believe now, but it really was a different time and culture back then.
Have a 100-yearold relative in good health and she recounts many grim tales of the 1920s to 1940s when horses would be shot on the spot in public if they did not pull canal barges fast enough, nobody was bothered that half their village had been wiped out by WW1, and there were no funerals or mourning for the masses (someone just threw them in the ground and scraped a bit of soil on top). Life was worth far, far less back then, and mass-murder for political gain had been the norm across the entire world for most of the past ~7,000 years, from Athens to Rome to Berlin.
Does not excuse the Nazi atrocities, of course, but it does shine some light on how "the way things were done" in Europe was wildly different to how things are done today.
The repercussions of losing such a large percentage of the country's young men echoed into the 1920s and 30s, the idea the deaths of these husbands, sons and fathers were not grievously felt is ridiculous; stoicism was more widely valued in those days perhaps but the idea no-one cared is nonsense.Have a 100-yearold relative in good health and she recounts many grim tales of the 1920s to 1940s when horses would be shot on the spot in public if they did not pull canal barges fast enough, nobody was bothered that half their village had been wiped out by WW1, and there were no funerals or mourning for the masses (someone just threw them in the ground and scraped a bit of soil on top). Life was worth far, far less back then, and mass-murder for political gain had been the norm across the entire world for most of the past ~7,000 years, from Athens to Rome to Berlin.
Does not excuse the Nazi atrocities, of course, but it does shine some light on how "the way things were done" in Europe was wildly different to how things are done today.
liner33 said:
MarshPhantom said:
MarshPhantom said:
Not trying to be controversial, but why is the Holocaust remebered as the worst thing Hitler did. More than 20 million Russians died during WW2, and they pretty much defeated Hitler and the Nazis on our behalf.
Anyone?
The key difference is hitler killed 11m non-combatants and Stalin did around half that.
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