Burmeister, Walter

Walter Burmeister (born 2 May 1906), SS Oberscharführer, is said to have occasionally driven a gas van at the Chełmno Camp. Interrogated on 23 March 1961 by the German judiciary in preparation for the West-German Chełmno Show Trial at Bonn, he described the vans as they appear in the extant authentic correspondence between Germany’s Department of Homeland Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and the Gaubschat Company, yet adding that exhaust gas was fed into the cargo box through a pipe, perforated with holes, which routed into a “metal spiral hose.” Burmeister insisted that the vehicles he drove were “medium-weight Renault trucks with gasoline engine.” However, there is no trace of any Renault truck ever used as a gas van, nor of the fanciful piping system, which Burmeister evidently made up.

During an interrogation two months earlier, Burmeister did not mention a Renault, and simply had the gas fed into the cargo box through a hole in the floor via a flexible metal hose.

Despite his cooperation, he was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for aiding in the murder of at least 152,100 people, hence, not even 45 minutes jail time for each life taken.

(For more details, see Alvarez 2023, pp. 149-151.)