Gas+Chambers+-+What+were+they?

Gas Chambers - What were they? Paying for a bullet in each head and euthanasia for each body was starting to pile up and it was beginning to be too expensive. That is why Gas Chambers were created; the Nazis running the death camps wanted a cheap way to commit mass murders. It came about as a theory that was later tested on the patients of the war hospitals. They took 250 patients from the hospital and crammed them all into completely sealed stone room and drop deadly gas in through the ceiling. After the fist gas was dropped, all were hurt but none died. They removed the patients, raised the amount, and put them back in. This time they died; all of them. The man who did this first testing was named Lagerfuhrer Fritzsch. The gas used in these Gas Chambers is called Zyklon B; a gas that becomes active when it comes in contact with air. When the gas was inhaled by those in the chamber they would bleed at the ears, foam at the mouth, and suffocate. Also after about twenty minutes after these horrible deaths red and green spots could be seen on their __skin__.

After each gassing "they were to carry out a special task, they were told, about which they were to tell no one, upon the penalty of death" (Piper 165), prisoners of the camps were forced to put on gas masks, go into the chambers, pick up the dead, strip them, and pile their bodies. This was awful because it was showing all the prisoners the end that they had coming, it showed them their fate, and it wasn't one they wanted. This became the way they committed mass killings in all the camps because they could kill so many, so quickly, so cheaply. Killing this many though resulted in huge piles of clothes shoes and bodies all over the camps which eventually was leaked to the public and could not be contained because no one could believe it. The Gas Chambers were a horrible huge part of the Death Camps and Concentration Camps and killed an unimaginable amount of Jews during the Holocaust.

To learn more about the Gassing and other forms of mass murder; click [|here] (Warning: some material may not be suited for all ages).