Talk:Gas van

message: Now that the moves and merges have settled down for a little bit, we should discuss the section ordering (which was an active dispute before the attempted split, which somewhat froze things because it was unsure how the page would end up.)  By my reading the Nazi section had been stable in the first position for a while; looking over the history, it seems like the order was repeatedly swapped, often in edits that didn't mention they were doing so, and that it hasn't really been discussed much because the split drowned it out.  In any case, I feel that the Nazi usage has far more sustained coverage and is far more central to the topic, and therefore ought to be listed first. The argument that they should be listed in timeline order doesn't make any sense, since none of the sources connect the two aspects in a timeline (in fact, even hinting at that points to dangerous WP:SYNTH concerns, ie. we absolutely cannot imply, even indirectly, that the Nazi usage was inspired or influenced by the Soviet usage in anyway, shape, or form, because we don't have any sources for that.)  Additionally, most of the higher-quality coverage of the Soviet usage relates it to the Nazi usage in the sense of deriving notability from it as a point of comparison (ie. the Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick quote makes no sense if we list the Soviet usage first); they clearly take the position of "here's an obscure bit of historical trivia related to the well-known, well-established use of gas vans by the Nazis."  That sort of thing only makes sense when listed second. --Aquillion (talk) 01:38, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost every source on the Soviet gas vans connect them directly. For example, according to the academic book by Albats, "Owing to the shortage of executioners, Chekists used trucks that were camouflaged as bread vans as mobile death chambers. Yes, the very same machinery made notorious by the Nazis - yes, these trucks were originally a Soviet invention, in use years before the ovens of the Auschwitz were built". Other sources (like Solzhenitsyn) say the same. Albats and others clearly do NOT take a position "here's an obscure bit of historical trivia..." (this is something you apparently do). They consider Soviet gas vans as something really notable. I think that the order of subsections should be simply chronological, just as on page Gas chamber. My very best wishes (talk) 01:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

text: However, changing the order of sections does not change anything significantly. One would only have to adjust the lead of the page. My very best wishes (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section ordering 

message: Although I think the current version is an improvement, the last paragraph needs rewrite. In my opinion, the question of "priority" of invention of a gas van does not belong to the Soviet gas van section. The literature about Nazi gas van is abundant, and the story of its invention is covered in much more details, so Albats is hardly a really good expert in that. In my opinion, the mainstream view of gas van invention should be described in the Nazi gas van section (or in a separate section), and opinia of Albats, who believes that gas vans were invented in the USSR should be mentioned briefly as a minority viewpoint.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:54, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Historians of the Holocaust (Robert Gellateley being an exception) do not deal with Berg's gas vans. Writers dealing with Soviet gas vans often insist on Soviet innovation, however. But there is not much of a debate which could be paraphrased. Albats' view should still not be left unchallenged, precisely because it is a minority viepoint. The section on Nazi gas vans will ultimately be expanded. Then things might become clearer. But it should be clear already that the German development in no way relied on some Soviet predecessor. I could do very well without any reasoning about "invention" and do not think that a separate section would be legitimate.--Assayer (talk) 01:04, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet gas van section 

message: The same claims in this article were discussed in Russian Wikipedia's article Газваген and they were promptly removed because the content doesn't quite pass the smell test, and I strongly recommend editors to remove the similar deceptions re-appearing on the English Wikipedia. The content is tied to a Komsomolskaya Pravda article published in 1992, a time when the Russian media was awash with sensationalist yellow journalism. I've searched Komsomolskaya Pravda to see if it published any articles in the 21st century related to these allegations, but I didn't come across anything at all, indicating that these allegations are not widely accepted or reported, not even by the very same newspaper in the 21st century. There's no reason why the Komsomolskaya Pravda of 1992 ought to supersede the same newspaper's reporting in the last 20 years, a period from which I did not locate a single story related to "Russians built gas vans". It's curious that the same people who decry the use of "Soviet propaganda", "Russian censored sources" for Wikipedia articles gleefully cite Komsomolskaya Pravda, as well as authors citing that source, when it furthers their goal of showing the Russian government in a negative manner.
This is primarily all I located in Komsomolskaya Reporting about gas vans published in the 21st century:
The Germans tested terrible vehicles on Krasnodar residents. 
''
FSB published documents on how the Nazis buried 214 children in Yeysk
This is all I found in Russian scholarly journals related to gas vans:
"The main goals of the leadership of the GUPVI of the NKVD of the USSR were not the killing of prisoners of war by various methods, but their isolation, the creation of satisfactory living conditions for the representatives of the special contingent, the maximum use of the labor of these foreigners in industry, construction and even in agriculture, as well as the full-scale implementation of anti-fascist measures in detention centers disarmed military personnel of the enemy armies. In the Soviet camps, their leadership did not implement racist or nationalist theories; there were no crematoriums, gas chambers, or gas vans. No medical experiments were conducted on prisoners of war. Life in Udmurtia in particular and in Soviet captivity as a whole was not a complete horror or hell for former soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht and its allied armies, as was often the case in Hitler's "death factories."Bulletin of Tomsk State University - 2017
From the Holocaust Museum
entry on gas vans:
After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. Gassing also proved to be less costly. Einsatzgruppen gassed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and mentally ill people.
The article cites Robert Gellately in an effort to provide a bit of academic legitimacy to the "Russians built gas vans" allegations. However, Gellately specifically cited the aforementioned Komsomolskaya Pravda article, and I suspect that he did so after he came across the contents from another author, because the footnotes for the section of Gellately's book about Russia almost entirely consists of secondary sources from America/Britain's equivalent of the "La Leyenda Negra" type of historiography for Russia e.g. Richard Pipes and Orlando Figes. In regard to the sections in his book covering Russia, Gellately's source base does not include very many archival documents, primary sources and contemporary newspapers, and that's probably because he's a specialist on German history rather than Russian history.
I located a specific academic Maria Alexandrovna Solovey, identified as "Associate Professor, Department of Russian History" at Donetsk National University, author of more than 20 scientific publications and author of the monograph "Encyclopedia of Delusions: Third Reich", and she finds the allegations to be very much in doubt and even suggests that there's an anti-Semitic atmosphere surrounding the allegations that Isay Berg, who happened to be Jewish, built gas vans.
There is a misconception that the creator of the famous "gas van"... was the head of the administrative and economic department of the NKVD Directorate for the Moscow Region I.D. Berg. They say that it was he who first guessed that the transportation of the machines and their killing could be successfully combined. So to say, two in one bottle....Moreover, the emphasis is usually placed on the surname of the inventor, similar to German, but still not German, - Berg. The Soviet, or rather, expressed in the language of unfortunate nationalists, the "Jew-Bolshevik" trace in the creation of gas van appeared around the beginning the 1990s.
In 1993, in the weekly “Arguments and Facts”, the words of Lieutenant Colonel of the Main Directorate of Security of the Russian Federation A. Oligov were published: “Indeed, the head of the administrative department was the father of the gas chamber - a specially equipped van of the Bread type with an exhaust pipe brought up to the body; Office of the NKVD in Moscow and the Moscow Region I. D. Berg. For its intended purpose - to destroy people - the gas chamber was first used in 1936. In 1939, Berg was shot. ” By the way, there is a version that in 1939 Berg was sentenced to death precisely for the invention of the gas van. The accused himself in court denied having been involved in inventing it. Later, when in 1956 the case of the gas van was reviewed, Berg’s involvement in the gas van was also not proved....We dare to suggest that the Soviet Union did not invent the gas vans. First of all, due to the technical backwardness of the Soviet Union. The fact is that building a mobile gas van is much more difficult than just taking an indoor wagon and bringing its exhaust pipe to it...In addition, diesel engines were used in gas vans, and in the Soviet Union, almost all vehicles were powered by gasoline. So do not be mistaken: if someone in the Soviet Union and made a mobile gas chamber in a particular bread van, then there is no reason to consider it as the “working model” of the murderer that is notorious for the whole world. The technical characteristics of a conventional, non-converted bread van with an exhaust pipe connected to the body do not allow us to consider it a mass execution tool. A truly "death machine" was invented and put on stream in the Third Reich.
A brief discussion about Isay Berg:
The cited source is "Jews in the Soviet NKVD, 1936-1938", Mikhail Tumshis, Vadim Zolotarev. Tumshis is cited in this Oxford University Book: On NKVD clans, see, for example...M.Tumshis, VChk: Voina Klanov (Moscow: Eksmo, 2004) Tumshis is described as, "historian, archivist, independent researcher. Former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Samara. Research interests: history of Russian state security agencies, history of Russian police and police, history of the USSR. The author of 6 books, about 2 dozen articles. In 2003-2010 employee of the personnel department of the Samara branch of the Saratov Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia." He wrote:
The materials of the archival criminal case against I. D. Berg contain the following evidence: “... Berg was then the head of the task force to enforce the decisions of the three UNKVD MO. With his participation, vehicles were created, the so-called gas van. Those vehicles transported those arrested and sentenced to be shot, and on their way to the place of execution of sentences they were poisoned by gas. Berg admitted that he was organizing the execution of sentences using a motor vehicle (gas van), explaining that he was following the instructions of the leadership of the UNKVD MO and that without them it would be impossible to execute such a large number of executions, to which three of them were sentenced at the same time.
From Berg’s interrogations and from conversations that went on among the employees of the NKVD MO, it was known that the sentencing procedure organized by Berg was harsh: those arrested for execution were stripped naked, tied, gagged and thrown into a car. The property of those arrested under the leadership of Berg was plundered .
Later on, Berg did not confirm these testimonies. In the 1960s during rehabilitation, Berg’s testimonies and testimonies about the "gas van" were quite contradictory. Each of the witnesses provided his mutually exclusive version. So, for example, the executor for the enforcement of sentences Chesnokov said that Berg provided the economic needs of the operational group that carried out the sentences (food and clothing allowance) - that's all. The presence of "gas van" was denied by commandant of the NKVD in the Moscow region A.V. Sadovsky. Thus, the version of the existence of "gas van" was actively discussed both in 1956 and in 1962, but it remained unproven. 
Further doubt about the allegations
Witness Viktorov, who worked under Berg’s leadership at the Butovo training ground, testified:
“When executing the sentences, I performed the service of guarding the territory where the executions were carried out...The shooting was carried out by a special group. From this group I remember Shinin , CHESNOKOV and Ilyin...The executor for the enforcement of sentences Chesnokov said that Berg provided the economic needs of the operational group that carried out the sentences (food and clothing allowance) - that's all....To the investigator’s question about the “murders”, Chesnokov replied that he knew about special vehicles for delivering convicts to the place of execution. “These cars were equipped with plugs, with which it was possible to let gas into the body. This was done to ensure safety during the delivery of convicts to the place of execution, i.e. in case of a riot in the car. Whether this means was used to pacify the convicts, I do not know. ”
Chesnokov also did not know what relation Berg had to these cars.
Shinin said: “In the period 1936-1937. I had to work in a special zone where the sentence was carried out. I served as the security chief of this zone. In a number of cases, he himself participated in the execution of sentences. Regarding Berg, I can say that he visited our zone often, I saw him together with Semenov, obviously, he was aware of all the events with us ... What were Berg's responsibilities in our zone, I don’t know ... Sentenced people were often shot in the presence of a doctor and a prosecutor "and ..." as required by law "," there were no other means of extermination.
And about commandant Sadovsky also denied the existence of "gas vans" during his work at the Butovo training ground, that is, from January to the end of October 1937 (so the question of gas chambers, although discussed in 1956 and 1962, remained unproven; witnesses who were interested in this case expressed mutually exclusive versions on this subject.)Waikapu (talk) 01:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a hoax and atrocity propaganda to me. If it’s included should be called Soviet gas van hoax. It’s very hard to regulate the amount of carbon monoxide to produce the desired result. I passed out once from CO poisoning from a gas heater. Diesel exhaust has nominal amounts of CO. Holocaust deniers use this argument against many testimonies of diesel gas chambers at Treblinka. Raquel Baranow (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Russians used gas vans" Hoax 

message: Well, in my opinion, this edit is simply a removal of sourced information about crimes by the Soviet secret police (NKVD), without any actual reason. Also note that the text was here for a couple of months. So you guys need a consensus to make these changes. My very best wishes (talk) 04:05, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Ever since you introduced your sources on 21 October the text has been challenged, including a discussion at WP:RSN, it has been discussed at length, lastly at Talk:Gas_van#Removal, and it has been repeatedly removed by different editors.. The reasons given are WP:REDFLAG and WP:OR. How you conceptualized the the whole section is also a violation of WP:DUE. So there is no consensus to keep it as that. Ignorance is not an argument. With the title you chose for this talk section you also seem to suggest some cover up going on. Please clarify.--Assayer (talk) 15:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

text: All right. I started an RfC below as suggested.My very best wishes (talk) 18:58, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of sourced information about crimes by the Soviet secret police

message: Let me mention that for the following citation, the spelling of Massachusetts is incorrect. 
Colton, Timothy J. (1995). Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-58749-6.
Thanks KConWiki (talk) 18:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Spelling error

message: Would it be possible to alter the sentence "Instead of transporting the victims to the gas chambers, the gas chambers were transported to the victims." so it doesn't read as prose?
Perhaps changing "were transported to the victims" to "were brought to the victims"? This removes the repetition which reads more as narrative rather than factual writing AnonsysL (talk) 11:19, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rephrasing of a turn of phrase