commander of the camp. Enge was subsequently made Andorfer's deputy. That month, German military authorities demanded the camp be cleared of Jews in order to accommodate the growing number of captives taken in battles with the Partisans. By February the camp held about 6,500 inmates, ten percent of whom were Romani. In early March, Andorfer was informed that a gas van had been sent to the camp from Berlin. The Sauer van had been delivered upon the request of the German military administration chief in Serbia, Harald Turner. Stricken with guilt over having to play a central role in the murder of the Jewish inmates, some of whom he had developed good relations with, Andorfer requested a transfer; this was denied. In order to ensure the quickness and efficiency of the gassings, he made announcements intended to convince the prisoners that they were going to be transferred to another, better-equipped camp. He went so far as to post fictitious camp regulations, and announced that prisoners would be allowed to take their bags with them. Many detainees registered for the supposed transfer, hoping to escape the camp's terrible living conditions. Inmates who had volunteered to leave the previous evening climbed into the van the next day in groups of between 50 and 80. The drivers of the van, SS-Scharführers Meier and Götz, distributed candy to children in order to win their affection. Afterwards, the doors of the van were sealed shut. The van then followed a small car driven by Andorfer and Enge, before crossing the border into German-occupied Serbia. It was here that one of the drivers exited the van and crawled underneath it, diverting its exhaust into the interior of the vehicle and killing the inmates with carbon monoxide gas. The van was then taken to the Avala firing range, where corpses were dumped into mass graves freshly dug by Serbian and Romani prisoners. Such gassings became routine, and the gas van arrived every day except Sunday. Rumours quickly circulated about the gassings, with news reaching German troops stationed in Belgrade and even some Serbians. Consequently, the gas van was nicknamed the "soul killer" () by the Serb population exposed to these rumours. It is thought that the gassings took the lives of as many as 8,000 inmates, mostly women and children. The seven Serbian prisoners that had participated in unloading the murdered inmates from the van were shot