Between 1940 and 1941 , Rauff went back to the Navy as a volunteer , commanding a mine sweeper flotilla in the English Channel . He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander ( '' Korvettenkapitän '' ) in April 1941 , shortly before he was discharged from active service , he then returned to the Reich Security Main Office . During early 1940 , he headed the SD in German-occupied Norway for few months . According to the CIA , he was a close friend of Reinhard Heydrich , the main architect of The Holocaust . In 1941 and 1942 , Rauff was involved in the development of gas vans , mobile gas chambers used to kill , by poisoning or suffocation , those people deemed enemies of the German state : Jews , disabled people , communists and others . According to declassified CIA documents : As an official of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Reich Security Main Office , Rauff designed gas vans used to murder Jews and persons with disabilities . The MI5 file is more explicit concerning Rauff 's " technical " skills : Rauff supervised the modification of scores of trucks , with the assistance of a Berlin chassis builder , to divert their exhaust fumes into airtight chambers in the back of the vehicles . The victims were then poisoned and/or asphyxiated from the carbon monoxide accumulating within the truck compartment as the vehicle travelled to a burial site . The trucks could carry between 25 and 60 people at a time . In 1972 , in Santiago de Chile , Rauff made a deposition as a witness before a German prosecutor . On the subject of the extermination of Jews in Poland and Russia , asked whether at that time he had any doubts concerning the use of gas vans , Rauff answered : Rauff delegated the task of keeping the gas vans operating in the Soviet Union and other Nazi-occupied areas to an SS chemist , August Becker , who kept Rauff fully informed on the gas van killing operations
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Walter Rauff