The ‘Disappearance’ of SS-Hauptscharführer Lorenz Hackenholt A Report on the 1959-63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt, the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps © Michael Tregenza (Page 12) Consequently, commandant Wirth placed Hackenholt in charge of the camp garage and vehicles, the procurement of spare parts and fuel, as well as technical equipment for the camp generally. [31] This included the installation and maintenance of an electricity generator near the garage. [32] According to agreeing testimonies by his former SS-comrades, Hackenholt certainly had 'special technical knowledge and mechanical abilities' which he utilized with great inventiveness in the early days at the camp at the beginning of 1942. While the first primitive gas chambers were being built in the wooden shed, Hackenholt, together with Siegfried Graetschus, converted a big Post Office delivery van into a mobile gas chamber by connecting the engine exhaust pipe to the sealed rear compartment. The van was then used to kill the village idiots and cripples in nearby villages. It was an invention of which Hackenholt was very proud, and one which particularly endeared him to commandant Wirth. [33] After the completion of the gassing shed, Wirth carried out various experiments in its three small gas chambers using different kinds of poison gas, including the exhaust fumes from the Post Office van whose exhaust pipe was connected to the main gas pipe under the gassing shed. Among the first Jewish victims were about 150 labourers who had been brought to the camp from nearby towns to finish the construction work. They were killed with Zyklon B, a hydrocyanic acid based pesticide supplied to all military units in the field. [35] Further experiments using CO gas from steel cylinders, [36] the same method used in the T4 killing centres in the Reich, were also carried out on Jews from the Durchgangsghettos (transit ghettos) at Izbica and Piaski on the road between Belzec and Lublin. These experimental victims, brought to the camp in several railway goods wagons, were very probably Jewish mental patients deported from the Reich. One SS-NCO commented about these experiments conducted by commandant Wirth: Belzec was the laboratory ... he tried everything imaginable there. In Belzec, Wirth tested the basics of the extermination machinery right through with his men. [37] Finally, and to some extent influenced by Hackenholt's gassing van, the engine exhaust fumes from a Soviet tank were decided upon as the most suitable and economic means for the mass murder of Jews. Former SS-NCO Hans Girtzig, who served in Belzec with Hackenholt, told officers from SK III/a about this gassing installation in the camp: _______________ [31] ZStL 208 AR-Z 252/59 (Belzec Case), p. 1754. Statement by Heinrich Gley on 8.5.1961 in Munster. [32] Ibid., p. 1469. Statement by Robert Juhrs on 11.10.1961 in Frankfurt-am-Main. [33] Ibid., p. 1421. Statement by Kurt Franz on 14.9.1961 in Dusseldorf [34] Niedersachsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Hanover, Nds. 721 Hild. Acc. 39/91, No. 28/133, personal reminiscences of Ferdinand Hahnzog, July 1962, p. 245. [35] ZStL 208 AR-Z 252/59 (Belzec Case), p. 1685. Statement by Josef Oberhauser on 12.12.1961 in Munich. [36] Ibid. [37] Franz Suchomel, Christian Wirth, genannt 'Christian der Grausame' oder 'Stuka' (Ukr.), Altotting 1972 (private report).    Back Page 12 Forward
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