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Gas chamber


A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used. Gas chambers were used as a method of execution for condemned prisoners in the United States beginning in the 1920s and continue to be a legal execution method in three states. During the Holocaust, large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program. The use of gas chambers in North Korea has also been reported.

Gas chambers were used in the 1930s and 1940s by the Third Reich initially as part of the "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people and political undesirables. In June 1942 many hundreds of prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp, including 45 Dutch communists, were gassed in Bernburg Euthanasia Centre. At these locations, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide delivered in metal cylinders followed by the development of less expensive methods of mass murder during the Holocaust with the exhaust gas of gasoline-powered cars, trucks and army tanks used at designated death camps.

The Nazi concentration and extermination camps, including Auschwitz and Majdanek, used hydrogen cyanide in the form of Zyklon B. The first experimental gassing with Zyklon B took place at Auschwitz I on September 3, 1941, in the cellar of Block 11 using 600 Soviet POWs and 250 other prisoners who were sick and no longer able to work. The gas chosen by the command of Operation Reinhard was exhaust gas from internal combustion engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report among others). In order to process the hundreds of victims delivered in Holocaust trains each day, the killing centres at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland, used the cheapest available killing agent for use in the gas chambers of these extermination camps. In accordance with the Nazi cross-European policy of genocide against the Jews, the SS "processed" thousands of Romani people, (male) homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, intellectuals and the clergy from all occupied territories.


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