View source for Gas van

{{Short description|Vehicle used for mass murder, especially during the Holocaust}}
{{pp-extended|small=yes}}
[[Image:Chelmno Gas Van.jpg|thumb|300px|Burned-out [[Magirus|Magirus-Deutz]] furniture mover van near [[Chełmno extermination camp]]. This van had not been modified, as explained by ''Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality'' (1946),<ref name="ww2today.com">
{{cite web |url=http://ww2today.com/16th-may-1942-ss-discuss-the-use-of-mobile-gassing-vans | title=SS use of mobile gassing vans | publisher=World War II Today | work=A damaged Magirus-Deutz van found in 1945 in Kolno, Poland | date=2011 | access-date=April 22, 2013 | quote=''Source:'' Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality: ''Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression'' – Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Office, 1946, Vol III, p.&nbsp;418}}</ref> but can help the reader visualize the process.]]

A '''gas van''' or '''gas wagon''' ({{langx|ru|душегубка|dushegubka}}, {{literal|soul killer}}; {{langx|sr|душегупка/dušegupka}}; {{langx|de|Gaswagen}}) was a truck re-equipped as a mobile [[gas chamber]]. During [[World War II]] and the [[the Holocaust|Holocaust]], [[Nazi Germany]] developed and used gas vans on a large scale to kill inmates of asylums, Poles, Romani people, Jews, and prisoners in occupied [[Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|Poland]], [[German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II|Belarus]], [[Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia|Nedić's Serbia]], the [[Soviet Union]], and other regions of [[German-occupied Europe]].<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Bartrop|editor-first=Paul R |editor-first2=Michael |editor-last2=Dickerman |title=The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u4I2DwAAQBAJ|volume=1|year=2017|publisher=ABC-CLIO|location=Santa Barbara|isbn=978-1-4408-4084-5|chapter=Gas Vans|pages=234–235}}</ref><ref>[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/chelmno/sonderdruck.html "Gas Wagons: The Holocaust's mobile gas chambers"] {{Webarchive
|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111011123645/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/chelmno/sonderdruck.html |date=2011-10-11 }}, an article of the [[Nizkor Project]]</ref> There are several documented cases of gas vans used by Soviet [[NKVD]] during the [[Great Purge]].<ref name="Robert Gellately 2007, p. 460">Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''. New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 460.</ref>

== History ==

===Nazi Germany===
The use of gas vans by Germans to kill Jews, Poles, Romani people, the mentally ill people, and prisoners in occupied territories during [[World War II]] originated with ''[[Aktion T4]]'' in 1939. Ordered to find a suitable method to kill, the ''Technical Institute for the Detection of Crime'' ("Kriminaltechnisches Institut der Sicherheitspolizei" ([[:de:Kriminaltechnisches Institut der Sicherheitspolizei|de]]), abbreviated KTI) of the [[Reichssicherheitshauptamt]] (RSHA) decided to gas victims with [[carbon monoxide]].{{sfn|Beer|1987|p=405}}

In October 1939, the Nazis started gassing prisoners at [[Fort VII]] near [[Poznań|Posen]]. The first victims were Polish and Jewish inmates of asylums for the mentally ill.{{sfn|Alberti|2006|p=326-327}} Witnesses report that from December 1939, mobile gas chambers were used to murder the inmates of asylums in [[Pomerania]], Eastern Prussia and Poland.{{sfn|Beer|1987|p=405-406}} The vans were built for the [[Herbert Lange|''Sonderkommando'' Lange]] and their use was supposed to speed up the killings. Instead of transporting the victims to the gas chambers, the gas chambers were transported to the victims. They were most likely devised by specialists from the Referat II D of the RSHA. These mobile gas chambers worked on the same principles as the stationary gas chambers: through a rubber hose the driver released pure CO from steel cylinders into the air tight special construction that was shaped like a box and placed on the carrier. The vans resembled moving vans or delivery lorries and were labelled ''[[Kaiser's Kaffee Geschäft]]'' ([[:de:Kaiser’s Tengelmann#Kaiser’s vor 1971|de]]) ("Kaiser's Coffee Shop") for camouflage. They were not called "gas vans" at the time, but "Sonder-Wagen", "Spezialwagen" (special vans) and "Entlausungswagen" (delousing vans).{{sfn|Alberti|2006|p=327-328}}{{sfn|Beer|1987|p=405-406}} The Lange commando killed patients in numerous hospitals in the [[Wartheland]] in 1940. They drove to the hospitals, collected patients, loaded them into the vans and gassed them while they were driving them away.{{sfn|Friedlander|1997|p=139}} From 21 May to 8 June 1940 the Sonderkommando Lange murdered 1558 sick people from [[Soldau concentration camp]].{{sfn|Beer|1987|p=406}}

In August 1941, SS chief [[Heinrich Himmler]] attended a demonstration of a mass-shooting of Jews in [[Minsk]] that was arranged by [[Arthur Nebe]], after which he vomited. Regaining his composure, Himmler decided that alternative murder techniques should be found.<ref>Longerich, Peter (2012). ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', p. 547, {{ISBN|978-0-19-959232-6}}.</ref> He ordered Nebe to explore more "convenient" ways of killing, less stressful for the killers. Nebe decided to conduct his experiments by murdering Soviet mental patients, first with explosives near Minsk, and then with automobile exhaust at [[Mogilev]].<ref>Lewy, Guenter (2000). ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'', pp. 204–208, {{ISBN|0-19-512556-8}}.</ref> Nebe's experiments led to the development of the gas van.<ref name="Browning/essays">[https://books.google.com/books?id=L1O2ZvS29DYC&dq=gas+van+nebe+invent&pg=PA117 The path to genocide: essays on launching the final solution By Christopher R. Browning]</ref> This vehicle had already been used in 1940 for the gassing of East Prussian and Pomeranian mental patients in the Soldau concentration camp.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hilberg |first1=Raul |title=The Destruction of the European Jews |date=1 January 2003 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-09592-0 |page=960 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HinIpmliz2MC |language=en}}</ref>

Gas vans were used, particularly at the [[Chełmno extermination camp]], until [[gas chamber]]s were developed as a more efficient method for murdering large numbers of people. Two types of gas vans were used by the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' in the East. The ''[[Opel]]-Blitz'', which weighed 3.5 tons, and the larger ''Saurerwagen'', which weighed 7 tons.<ref name="Klee-Dressen-Riess">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ACWKeRF49UYC&q=%22gas-vans+in+operation%3A+the+Opel-Blitz%22+%22Saurerwagen%22&pg=PA69 | title=The gas-vans (3. 'A new and better method of killing had to be found') | publisher=Konecky Konecky | work=The Good Old Days: The Holocaust As Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders | date=1991 | access-date=2013-05-08 | author=Ernst. Klee, Willi Dressen, Volker Riess | page=69 | isbn=1568521332}}</ref> In Belgrade, the gas van was known as "Dušegupka" and in the occupied parts of the USSR similarly as "душегубка" (''dushegubka'', literally ''"soul killer"'' or ''"exterminator"''). The SS used the euphemisms ''Sonderwagen'', ''Spezialwagen'' or ''S-Wagen'' ("special vehicle") for the vans.<ref name="Montague-206a">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=02ABWyc_Ks0C&q=%22a+gas+van+broken+down+on+the+highway%22&pg=PA206 | title=The Gas Vans (Appendix I) | publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press | work=Chełmno and the Holocaust: The History of Hitler's First Death Camp | year=2012 | access-date=2018-09-15 | author=Patrick Montague | page=Appendix I: The Gas Van | isbn=978-0807835272}}</ref> The gas vans were specifically designed to direct deadly exhaust fumes via metal pipes into the airtight cargo compartments, where the intended victims had been forcibly stuffed to capacity. When the gas was released, victims screamed and knocked on the walls, begging for the Germans to release them.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2005 |title=Testimonies of SS-Men Regarding Gassing Vans |url=https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/RESOURCE/DOCUMENT/DOCGAST.HTM |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929121811/https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/RESOURCE/DOCUMENT/DOCGAST.HTM |archive-date=29 September 2023 |website=Florida Center for Instructional Technology}}</ref> After their deaths, their bodies were "thrown out blue, wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual blood". These gruesome symptoms were one of the reasons why [[Rudolf Höss]] chose [[Zyklon B]] as the primary killing method for Jews. Ironically, Zyklon B inflicted similar symptoms.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Nestar |chapter=The Nazi's Pursuit for a "Humane" Method of Killing |date=2018 |title=Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2 |journal=Understanding Willing Participants |volume=2 |pages=241–276 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1_8 |isbn=978-3-319-97998-4 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

By June 1942 the main producer of gas vans, {{ill|Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke|de}} GmbH, had delivered 20 gas vans in two models (for 30–50 and 70–100 individuals) to Einsatzgruppen, out of 30 that were ordered from that company.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}} 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 who had been involved in the murder of civilians in [[Krasnodar]]. A group of 30 to 60 civilians were gassed on August 21 and 22, 1942 by members of ''[[Schutzstaffel#SS-Sonderkommandos|SS-Sonderkommando]] 10a of [[Einsatzgruppe]] D, who were supported by local collaborators. Subsequently, gas vans were used for murder of Roma people and ill persons.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.memorialmuseums.org/eng/denkmaeler/view/787/Memorial-to-the-victims-of-fascism-in-Kranodar | title=Krasnodar Gas Wagon Attacks, from memorialmuseums.org, in English | date=2018 | access-date=2020-05-31 | archive-date=2021-08-21 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210821053609/https://www.memorialmuseums.org/eng/denkmaeler/view/787/Memorial-to-the-victims-of-fascism-in-Kranodar | url-status=dead }}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=August 2022}} The total number of gas van killings is unknown.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/gas_chambers_vans_de.html | title=Gaswagen, from deathcamps.org, in German | date=2006 | access-date=2018-10-06}}</ref>

The gas vans are extensively discussed in some of the interviews in [[Claude Lanzmann]]'s film ''[[Shoah (film)|Shoah]]''.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}}

===Soviet Union===
According to historian [[Robert Gellately]], "the Soviets sometimes used a gas van (''dushegubka''), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation."<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''. New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 460.</ref> while Nazi killers have "invented the first gas van, which began operations in the Warthegau on January 15, 1940, under Herbert Lange".<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''. New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 367.</ref>

During the [[Great Purge]] in the [[Soviet Union]], NKVD officer Isaj D. Berg used a specially adapted airtight van for gassing prisoners to death on an experimental basis.<ref>[[Catherine Merridale]]. ''Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia.'' [[Penguin Books]], 2002 {{ISBN|0-14-200063-9}} p. 200</ref> The prisoners were gassed on the way to [[Butovo firing range|Butovo]], a phony firing range, where the [[NKVD]] executed its prisoners and buried them.<ref>Timothy J. Colton. ''Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis.'' [[Harvard University Press#Related publishers, imprints, and series|Belknap Press]], 1998, {{ISBN|0-674-58749-9}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=lXM2H6tWHskC&dq=gas+chamber+butovo&pg=PA286 p. 286]</ref> According to testimony given by NKVD officer Nikolai Kharitonov in 1956, Isaj Berg had been instrumental in the production of gas vans.<ref name="Kizny236">Tomasz Kizny, Dominique Roynette. ''La grande terreur en URSS 1937–1938''. Lausanne: Éd. Noir sur Blanc, 2013, p. 236.</ref> Berg had become chief of the administrative economic department in Moscow's NKVD in the summer of 1937.<ref>Alexander Vatlin. ''Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police''. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016, {{ISBN|978-0-299-31080-6}}, p. 11.</ref> In October 1937 he was charged with the supervision of the Butovo firing range.<ref name="Kizny236" /> Berg had to prepare Butovo for the mass execution of people from greater Moscow and to ensure that these executions would take place smoothly.<ref>Alexander Vatlin. ''Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police''. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016, {{ISBN|978-0-299-31080-6}}, p. 15.</ref> According to testimony given by Fjodor Tschesnokov, a member of Berg's execution team, in 1956, trucks were used, which were equipped with valves through which the gas could be directed inside the vehicles. The interrogations revealed that the prisoners were stripped naked, tied up, gagged and thrown into the trucks. Their property was stolen.<ref name="Kizny236" /> Berg was arrested on 3 August 1938<ref>Alexander Vatlin. ''Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police''. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016, {{ISBN|978-0-299-31080-6}}, p. 67.</ref> and sentenced to death for participating in a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy within the NKVD" and executed on 3 March 1939.<ref name="Kizny236" />

The scale at which these trucks were used is unknown. Author Tomas Kizny assumes that they were in use while Berg oversaw the executions (October 1937 to 4 August 1938). He points to archaeological excavations conducted in 1997. Then 59 corpses were exhumed who most likely had been murdered during Berg's tenure. Only four of these victims had been shot in the head, which leads Kizny to conclude that at least some of them had been gassed.<ref name="Kizny236" /> FSB officers Alexander Mikhailov and Mikhail Kirillin, and historian Lydia Golovkova, recounted the testimony of one witness at a mass execution site outside Moscow.<ref name=Lipkov>[https://magazines.gorky.media/continent/2005/123/ya-k-vam-travoyu-prorastu.html Александр ЛИПКОВ, "Я к вам травою прорасту..."], Alexander Lipkov, [[Kontinent]], N 123, 2005. "Mikhail Kirillin: The details of everything that happened here, we restored by talking with one person. There were no other survivors who would directly work in the zone. And now he is gone. This is the former commandant of the Moscow administration, who told all the details ... 
Lydia Golovkova: He told the following: cars loaded with people moved through the forest, up to 50 people were stuffed into a truck. Muscovites have long called these cars "dushegubka [soul killers]." In the case of Berg, who took part in the executions, of which there is his signature, he was accused as the inventor of these gas vans. 
Alexander Mikhailov: According to the driver of such a truck, the gas was used to prevent the possibility of riot in the truck. Naturally, the people who swallowed carbon monoxide have been suppressed, and many of them accepted death as deliverance from the torment. 
Lydia Golovkova: The exhaust pipe turned inside the van, and people came already half-conscious. Buses with half-dead people drove up from the side of the forest. There was a tower with a searchlight above the trees, the territory was surrounded by barbed wire, and there was a long wooden hut, where everyone was supposedly brought in for sanitation."</ref> As many as 50 prisoners were loaded into trucks whose exhaust pipes were turned into the trucks, which Muscovites called "soul killers" and which were said to have been invented by Berg. Prisoners were "half dead" when they arrived at the site, where most were subsequently executed.<ref name=Lipkov />

===Invention of the gas van?===
Historians of the Holocaust like [[Henry Friedlander]] argue that the mobile gas chambers were invented in Germany in 1940, and they were first used to murder patients of Wartheland hospitals.<ref>[[Henry Friedlander]]. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, {{ISBN|978-0-8078-2208-1}}, p. 139.</ref> Katrin Reichelt names [[Albert Widmann]] and [[Arthur Nebe]] as having developed the method. The vans themselves were modified by [[Walter Rauff]], {{ill|Friedrich Pradel|de}} and [[Harry Wentritt]].<ref>Katrin Reichelt. "Gaswagen". In: ''Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart''. vol. 4, ed. by Wolfgang Benz. Berlin: DeGruyter, p. 143&nbsp;f.</ref> Matthias Beer calls gas vans "a special product of the Third Reich".<ref>Mathias Beer. "Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden". In: ''Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte'' (in German). 35 (3): p. 403.</ref>

[[Robert Gellately]] points out that during a euthanasia program in occupied Poland the Nazi killers sought a more efficient and secretive killing process and thus "invented the first gas van, which began operations in the Warthegau on January 15, 1940, under Herbert Lange".<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''. New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 367.</ref> He also notes, that "the Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation. They used crematoriums to dispose of thousands of bodies, but had no gas chambers."<ref name="Robert Gellately 2007, p. 460"/>

Journalist [[Yevgenia Albats]] maintains that gas vans were a "Soviet invention".<ref>Yevgenia Albats: ''KGB: The State Within a State. The secret police and its hold on Russia's past, present and future''. (International Affairs, Vol. 72). London: Tauris, 1995, p. 101.</ref> Kizny names Berg as the "inventor".<ref name="Kizny236" />

{{Wikisource|Overhauling of gas vans}}

==See also==
*[[Execution van]]
*[[August Becker]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Bibliography==
* {{cite book|last=Alberti|first=Michael|title=Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EUF7mNMHz4gC|year=2006|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|location=Wiesbaden|language=DE|isbn=978-3-447-05167-5}}
* {{cite journal
| last       = Beer
| first      = Mathias
| year       = 1987
| title      = Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden
| language = DE
| url        = https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1987_3_4_beer.pdf
| journal    = [[Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte]]
| volume     = 35
| issue      = 3
| pages      = 403–417
}}
* {{cite book|last=Colton|first=Timothy J.|author-link=Timothy J. Colton|title=Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lXM2H6tWHskC|year=1995|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=978-0-674-58749-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Friedlander|first=Henry|author-link=Henry Friedlander|title=The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gqLDEKVk2nMC|year=1997|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill|isbn=978-0-8078-4675-9}}
* {{cite book|last=Merridale|first=Catherine|author-link=Catherine Merridale|title=Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m6TWAAAAMAAJ|year=2002|publisher=Penguin|location=New York|isbn=978-0-14-200063-2}}
* {{cite book|last=Vatlin|first=Alexander|editor=Seth Bernstein|title=Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZoARDQAAQBAJ|year=2016|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|location=Madison, Wisconsin|isbn=978-0-299-31080-6}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Gas van}}

*[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/vans.html The Development of the Gas-Van] from the Jewish Virtual Library
*[http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/viewer/wlc/film.php?RefId=DFG0667E Film: Short explanation about the Gas vans at the] [[Nuremberg trials]] ([[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ]])
*[http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/NAZI%20GAS%20VANS.htm NAZI GAS VANS By Rob Arndt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706154053/http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/NAZI%20GAS%20VANS.htm |date=2017-07-06 }}
*[https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/nediceva-vlada-je-aktivno-ucestvovala-u-resavanju-jevrejskog-pitanja-u-srbiji/ Nedićeva vlada je aktivno učestvovala u rešavanju "Jevrejskog pitanja" u Srbiji - Društvo - Dnevni list Danas. Istoričar Radosav Tucović o kolaboraciji Specijalne policije sa nacistima u Drugom svetskom ratu]<ref>Nedićeva vlada je aktivno učestvovala u rešavanju "Jevrejskog pitanja" u Srbiji - Društvo - Dnevni list Danas. Istoričar Radosav Tucović o kolaboraciji Specijalne policije sa nacistima u Drugom svetskom ratu. ''Translated in English from Serbian:'' Nedić's government actively participated in solving the "Jewish question" in Serbia - Society - Dnevni list Danas. Historian Radosav Tucović on the collaboration of the Special Police with the Nazis in World War II</ref>

{{Einsatzgruppen}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gas Van}}
[[Category:Infrastructure of the Holocaust]]
[[Category:Execution equipment]]
[[Category:Einsatzgruppen]]
[[Category:Vans]]

[[de:Gaskammer (Massenmord)#Gaswagen]]