What type of gas was used in the holocaust

ISBN Protected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded cells, death came instantaneously the moment the Zyklon B was thrown in. A short, almost smothered cry, and it was all over…. I must even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon, and at that time neither Eichmann nor I was certain as to how these mass killings were to be carried out.

It would be by gas, but we did not know which gas and how it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a procedure. Felix Sparks Debate the Holocaust?

But despite such pressure, Hitler declined to employ it as a chemical weapon against the Allied Powers. Though Germany was the first to unleash chlorine gas on French troops during the Second Battle of Ypres in April , Britain and France would also employ chlorine and mustard gas during the Great War, generating widespread outrage over the new horrors of chemical warfare.

Adolf Hitler dressed in his field uniform during World War I. The idea that Hitler would have objected to using poison gas on the battlefield on ethical grounds may seem blatantly inconsistent with the fact that Nazis were systematically using Zyklon B and other chemical agents to exterminate millions of people in the gas chambers.

Other factors may have been involved. If those bombers used sarin or another chemical weapon, they would have contaminated the same area their troops would then have had to march into. Learn the sinister history behind the lethal chemical agent that killed the half-brother of an infamous dictator. More importantly, perhaps, Hitler must have known that if he used chemical weapons, his adversaries would retaliate in kind.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill , for one, had long argued in favor of the use of such weapons to shorten military conflicts. The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B previously used for fumigation by gassing some Soviet prisoners of war and ill prisoners in September Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air.

They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz. At the height of the deportations in —44, an average of 6, Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.

Gassing Operations: Oral History Excerpts. The gas chambers were relatively small, constructed to kill those prisoners the Nazis deemed "unfit" to work. Most of these camps used Zyklon B as the killing agent in their gas chambers. New Haven: Yale University Press, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Pressac, Jean-Claude.

Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, Swiebocka, Teresa, editor. Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

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