In Nazi concentration camps, German officials locked prisoners in rooms that were infested with pesticide. The chambers were not the first method of mass extermination used by Germany. Until 1941, SS officers (Hitler’s military police) disposed of small groups of prisoners in transport trucks, locking them in sealed buckets that received carbon monoxide from the exhaust. The technique was adapted to locked rooms and soon truck smoke was replaced by a cheaper and more efficient pesticide. The first human application took place in August 1941. The victims were a group of Russian prisoners. In order not to be accused of a war crime, the Germans stopped burying the bodies in mass graves and started to burn them.
industry of death
Extermination in the gas chambers was quick, efficient and left no trace.
– (Alexandre Jubran/)
1.Last shower
Elderly people, children, sick people or people with physical limitations were not suitable for work in the concentration camps and were sent for execution. In order to avoid panic, soldiers and doctors told prisoners that they would be given a shower and given clean clothes to join friends and family.
2.Terrible against humans
Zyklon B was mainly used to eliminate lice and insects from prisoners. In Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp, only 5% of the product shipment was used in the gas chambers. In order not to despair the victims, the poison was chemically manipulated so as not to emit an odor.
3. Giving gas
Equipment for activating and exhausting the gas was installed in rooms adjacent to the chambers. The Zyklon was placed in a metal compartment to be heated and generate steam. After 30 minutes of burning, with everyone in the chambers already dead, the exhaust fans sucked in the gas, allowing the bodies to be removed.
4. Collective agony
The chambers at Auschwitz held 800 people – if there was a capacity, those who were left were shot at the time. When the poison began to take effect, people moved away from the gas vents and crowded around doorways. Children and old people were crushed because of the general panic.
5. Architecture of Destruction
The chambers, usually built underground, were interconnected to facilitate the flow and removal of bodies. You sonderkommando, Prisoners in charge of assisting in the extermination process were housed on the same floor as the chambers and isolated from other workers.
6. Lethal Cloud
The poisonous gas, based on hydrogen cyanide, interfered with cellular respiration, making victims starved of oxygen. The result was death by suffocation after convulsive crises, bleeding and loss of physiological functions. Death was slow and painful. On average, from inhalation to death, the process lasted 20 minutes.
7. Back to Dust
You sonderkommando cleaned the chambers. They checked the dental arches, looking for gold teeth and valuables, such as jewelry hidden in the victims’ mouths. Afterwards, they burned the bodies in giant ovens to eliminate any trace of the extermination process.
SOURCES Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitzby Olga Lengyel; Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three years in the Gas Chambers, by Flip Müller; It is Inside de GasChambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, by Shlomo Venezia; holocaustresearchproject.org