Wahrheitssucher wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 8:20 pm
Have you read this book Hans?
If not I think you should be ashamed to be peddling this stuff as if it is definitive proof.
Yes, I have read the book and I agree with Munro's assessment that the photographs picture a homicidal gas van at Sonderkommando 7a.
Assessment?
Hmmm? Sounds then like its just photos of a van that are open to interpretation.
The context here is a recent book from Cameron Munro publishing 15 new pictures of alleged gas vans, and covered by the HC blog here:
I have still not been able to see copies of these photos (and warheitssucher makes a good point about copyright in the original thread), my question to the board is: has there been any meaningful update on this in the ~6 or so months since?
I haven't seen any new news. This is the book cover for Cameron Munro's book, as seen on the publisher's website and that of The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It describes that the fifteen photos are not of gas vans plural but of a singular gas van.
This is the photo that is now floating around the internet, e.g. on Reddit and X. It appears to be the back of the same truck in the cover photo. There are handdrawn arrows on the photo.
Munro and the publisher also make a lot of use of crude drawings like this one. These were made in the postwar or late in the war for Polish interrogators.
The question that remains to be answered is, what proof has Munro found that this was a gas van? Since there are 18 men standing in the first photo and at least 11 men in the second photo, couldn't the van have been a people carrier? Since he provides numerous photos of similar vehicles, couldn't it be like one of those, like a Kastenaufbau of similar wooden construction that he calls a mobile kitchen truck? Or couldn't it be used for disinfesting clothing or any other mundane purpose?
If Munro's evidence for gassings is still just postwar statements, it's not going to "shut down deniers" like he hopes. But that seems to be what he points to in a passage from his book shown on the publisher's website.
I have also compared and contrasted the evidence assembled from the witness testimonies with the few surviving original documents (originating from: RSHA Amt IID, Gaubschat and the EG) on the construction, technical features, deployment and the mechanical and operational difficulties with the RSHA-built gas vans.
Given Holocaust deniers' focus on the gas vans, the sensitivities of reputable historians on the topic, and as further explanation of the construction and technical fixtures of the gas vans, the endnotes include the relevant direct quotes from witness testimonies and documents as explicit evidential support; they are therefore voluminous and an integral part of the book. The should be fully read in conjunction with the main text. Without the extensive endnotes, it would be impossible for the reader to asses for themselves the veracity of my research on the RSHA-built gas vans and the proof that the fifteen photographs are of a RHSA Series I gas van without having to repeat the work, a somewhat arduous task.
I will say that my impression of Munro is actually quite positive. In his lectures he devotes a great deal of his time to contextualizing the gas van narrative within the relevant world history of euthanasia, eugenics, and disinfestation. He discusses Zyklon in the context of typhus-carrying lice. He says Rudolf Hoess was "a notorious exaggerator" and his "story also doesn't make sense". He admits the popular photo of a Magirus-Deutz truck does not show a gas van. So his approach to history is much more intellectually honest than I am used to seeing.
Apparently, it's a gasoline-powered American Diamond T that the Germans captured in the western campaign.
Then they built a homicidal gas van on the chassis.
So either it's using a lot of custom parts, or using a lot of American parts.
Either way, I hope the book explains how and where the Germans got replacement parts if anything broke down, since they wouldn't get them from the USA due to being at war with America. Or maybe they custom engineered it so parts were interchangeable with the abundant Soviet submarines in the region.
And we'd expect the gas vans to be breaking down all the time. The stationary gas chambers are said to break down often, resulting in hours-long delays or switching from 5-15 minute diesel/gasoline exhaust to 24-hour chlorine, etc.
Another ad hoc design that defies all myths of German efficiency.
(Some questions could be answered by ordering the book, but their website says they're not shipping to the USA right now.)
I have gone through much of this book, will circle back to it at some point. For now:
Munro (and the entire 'gas van evidence') relies heavily upon wartime hearsay, rumor, and inconsistent post-war testimonies from the 1960s, the latter of which were extracted in high-pressure environments and rife with contradictions on technical details, timelines, etc.
Contemporary wartime documents are exceedingly scarce, handled by vindictive post-war authorities and, where of a technical nature allegedly portraying homicidal features, are just as compatible with disinfestation purposes.
Munro continues the 21st century historiographical tradition of casting a wide net for wartime rumors of any allegation ('gas vans', in this case), disregarding absurdities or inconsistencies along the way, and assuming all post-war investigations and 'confessions' were sincere fact-finding efforts -- accepting statements and conclusions more or less at face value. With any 'convergence' between these elements, Munro interprets 'proof' as established.
Conveniently, of the fifteen photos of alleged 'gas vans' which Munro introduces in his book, there is not a single one which shows the front half of the driver's side -- the precise location where Munro insists we should be able to see the engine exhaust piped directly into the Kastenaufbau. There appear to be photos of every angle of the 'vans' except this one.
Munro points to a few fuzzy images of what he claims are fingernail scratches on the metallic interior of a van admittedly being used at that time for transport (of furniture, etc.). Not only are the scratches hardly perceptible, but Munro apparently gives no consideration to the fact that heavy items like furniture or war materials can also scratch walls during transport.
At most, Munro demonstrates that the vans for which wartime rumors about 'gassing' were being alleged frequently included the vans operated by Sonderkommando VIIa (SK VIIa). But what this tells us primarily is simply that SK VIIa operated a large van, possibly used for delousing and documented (per Munro's own photograph) as also being used for transport.
It is plausible that some of the rumored observations about these vehicles (during or post-war) could have originated from their use in transporting corpses and/or in delousing various materials (furniture, corpses, etc.). It is near-certain that non-incriminating services of this kind were needed on many occasions by SK VIIa and other units.
Munro dedicates part of his book to showing what he considers the roots or epistemology of 'gas vans' and includes just a few examples such as mobile stations used for testing of gas masks and a mobile gas chamber for euthanizing stray dogs. Strangely, Munro totally omits any discussion of mobile delousing chambers which were well-known and documented as having been deployed by Germany and much needed in eastern Europe at that time (see Alvarez's "The Gas Vans", 2023).
Munro makes much ado about slits or peepholes on the rear door(s) of the Kastenaufbau, apparently not aware that stationery delousing chambers are also known to have peepholes.
Munro also makes much ado about particular features of the alleged 'gas vans', including about their lack of windows, their zinc galvanized concave roof, etc., all while disregarding the fact that pre-war Gaubschat models of furniture and transport vans showed very similar features (see Munro, p. 73, 74, 76, 89)
None of Munro's photos show any direct connection between mass executions and the vans.
Overwhelmingly, the 'gas vans' appear as yet another narrative that was -- like many others which circulated originally as rumors -- attempted as a core thematic element in the postwar trials but which were ultimately abandoned in postwar historical literature, public consciousness, and media (e.g. Hollywood) for almost a century (Munro's book is the first-ever orthodox 'Holocaust' literature piece on the alleged 'gas vans'), likely due to common sense objections to this narrative's impracticalities and stark resemblance to atrocity lies.
Munro has indicated that he has other records gathered and compiled about the 'gas vans' which he has thus far withheld in his current book. He has committed to writing another book in the years ahead which will cover more of these sources which he deems relevant. I would imagine certain revisionist scholars/authors could be giving Munro the opportunity to finish his current series before responding in-depth.
...he cries out in pain and proceeds to AI-slop-spam and 'pilpul' you...
.
I didn’t find the video on youtube [below] by the author, very convincing:
• he talks with emotional hyperbole of “the horrific deaths of the victims”.
• he admits the book has been produced to combat two books on the previously rumoured-but-unproven, alleged gas-vans. So it is an admitted attempt to refute the research published by people whom he dismisses with ad hominem smear-tactics and ‘poisoning-the-well’ fallacious logic as “deniers”. This publication is thus admitted to not be the result of open-ended, impartial, objective research.
• the presentation on the website and on the video is clearly aimed at uncritical, faithful believers to shore up their faith.
• it is a publication advertised by (so presumably sponsored by) a transparently unobjective, biased and anti-German ‘Jewish Memorial’ indoctrination foundation:
“On June 25, 1999 after many years of debating the German Bundestag passed a majoritarian and cross-party resolution to build the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. For the implementation of the resolution, the planning and realisation of the Field of Stelae and the Information Centre, the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a foundation under public law, was established with effect from April 6, 2000.
Between April 2003 and May 2005 the Foundation was in charge of the building project for the Memorial and is now responsible for the running of the Memorial as a place of remembrance, information and encounter. According to the Foundation Act, it is also obligated to »ensure that all victims of National Socialism are remembered and honoured appropriately« as well as to point out the »authentic sites of remembrance«
And then this quote below — visible on the page shown in a photograph of the book on the website — demonstrates it appears to be the same weak and discredited combination of:
i.) confirmation-biased conjecture and assumption; plus
ii.) eye-witness/lie-witness testimony.
QUOTE:
“Unfortunately; the fifteen photographs of the RSHA Series I gas van do not show a perspective of the inside floor of the RSHA-built gas van, nor the left-hand driver's side of the gas van, where the mechanism for feeding the gas from the exhaust pipe into the interior of the gas van was located. To visualise these features and for general case of understanding of the technical features of the RSHA-built gas van, I have prepared three drawings of the RSHA Series gas van with Diamond-T chassis) assigned to SK VIIa.
The drawings, which are included in this book, depict the left-hand driver's side of the gas van, the inside floor of the gas van and the mechanism for directing the exhaust gas into the gas van. They are drawn to an approximate scale based on: the fifteen photographs of the RSHA Series 1 gas van assigned to SK VIIa, and witness testimonies and surviving documentation relating to the RSHA-built gas vans.
They are not technical drawings and should be viewed in conjunction with reading the main text card, most importantly, the relevant endnotes to understand the assumptions underpinning them.
The above is NOT how anyone goes about producing genuine historical research. This book appears to be relying on the same old, ‘evidence-weak but emotively-strong’ approach to evidence assessment. Plus how many people are going to buy it? So how do ordinary people get to judge its contents?
Compare with the approach of Holocaust Handbooks which provides ALL their research for open scrutiny via free e-books.
As for the reference to trials in Dortmund (where I used to live as a teenager), we should all know that the post-war trials were hopelessly flawed parodies of justice. Consequently, arguing that because these photos of vans were used in post-war trial, proves NOTHING.
Without presenting verifiable court transcripts, this may well be similar to arguing that employees of the Hamburg distributorship Tesch & Stabenow (TESTA), (who were convicted in military courts in Hamburg in March 1946) prove homicidal gas chambers.
The owner of the firm Bruno Tesch, and his coworker Karl Weinbacher were charged with having knowingly supplied Zyklon B to murder jews in camps. But there is actually ZERO evidence that Weinbacher and Tesch knowingly supplying Zyklon B to murder human beings.
And yet despite that absence, they were convicted anyway, condemned to death and hung in the Hameln penitentiary on May 16, 1946.
I haven’t seen nor read this book. Just the advertising/marketing selling it. So… Thanks to Callafangers for his in-depth assessment.
It appears that this book and the ‘research’ it is peddling, is the equivalent of printing photos of tins of ZyklonB and giving an emotive speech outside the pesticide factory while claiming this is proof of Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher’s guilt in participating in genocide.
A ‘holocaust’ believer’s problem is not technical, factual, empirical or archeological — their problem is psychological.
