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Gas chambers
The Nazis began experimenting with poisonous gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of
mental patients. "Euthanasia," a Nazi euphemism, referred to the systematic killing of Germans whom the Nazis
deemed "unworthy of life" because of mental illness or physical disability. Six gassing installations were
established as part of the Euthanasia Program. These killing centers used pure, chemically manufactured carbon
monoxide gas. The Nazis began to use gas to kill prisoners after soldiers complained of fatigue and mental anguish
caused by shooting large numbers of people. Gassing also proved to be less costly than other forms of murder.
In 1941 it was decided that the deportation of Jews to death camps in order to be gassed was the most efficient way
of achieving the “Final Solution.” The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the
Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide, by gassing
around 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941. Zyklon B pellets converted to lethal
gas when exposed to air. In 1942, systematic mass killing in gas chambers with carbon monoxide gas generated by
diesel engines began in Poland.
As victims were unloaded from cattle cars, they were told that they had to be disinfected in showers. Victims were
ordered to enter the "showers" with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chambers.
The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated. At the height of the deportations, up to
6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.
Genocide
The term “genocide” was first introduced by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish lawyer in 1944.
Lemkin, seeking a term to describe the systematic murder of a people, combined the Greek “
genos”
meaning race
or tribe, with -
cide
, from the Latin word for killing. On December 9, 1948 the United Nations established
"genocide” as an international crime defined as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Ghetto
Ghettos are city districts, often enclosed, in which the
Germans concentrated the municipal and regional Jewish
population and forced them to live under miserable
conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by physically separating
Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and
from other Jewish communities. The Germans established at
least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied Poland and the
Soviet Union alone.
Homosexuals: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust
Nazi theory held that inferior races produced more children
than "Aryans," so anything that diminished Germany's
reproductive potential was viewed as a racial danger. Nazi
Pink triangle worn by those identified as gay
Andrej Koymasky
