The Holocaust Historiography Project

Piller, Walter

Walter Piller
Walter Piller

SS Hauptscharführer Walter Piller was the deputy commandant of the Chełmno Camp in 1944. Toward the end of the war, he was captured by the Soviets. After some time of appropriate treatment in their captivity, Piller signed a deposition. He stated in it that the extermination of Jews deported from the Łódź Ghetto started in mid-May and ended in mid-August of 1944. In some 36 trains — three trains per week — a total of roughly 25,000 Jews were sent to Chełmno to be killed there. These figures all collide with the orthodoxy’s narrative, which knows only of ten trains on ten consecutive days from late June until early July.

Piller stated moreover that the gas van’s killing mechanism was operated by the driver opening a valve from the driver cabin during transit. This allowed some undefined gas to enter the cargo box and kill all inside within two to three minutes. This is also at odds with the orthodox narrative, which insists that the gas van’s mechanism consisted of a simple hose connecting the exhaust pipe to the cargo box. This connection had to be made from the outside, and before the vehicle was driven. Doing this during transit was impossible. There was moreover no valve, and the gas used was not some mystical fast-active poison gas, but simply exhaust gas that killed within 20 minutes if produced by a gasoline engine — or not at all if coming from a diesel engine.

Hence, even from the orthodox perspective, Piller’s coerced confession is full of typical Soviet propaganda lies and hyperbole. It also collides with the documented fate of the Jews from the Łódź Ghetto.

(For more details, see the entry on the Chełmno Camp, on gas vans, the Łódź Ghetto as well as Mattogno 2017, pp. 59f.; Alvarez 2023, pp. 149-151.)