Gas chamber
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A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing, 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. During the Holocaust, large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program.[1] The use of gas chambers has also been reported in North Korea. Gas chambers have also been used for animal euthanasia, using carbon dioxide as the lethal agent. Sometimes a box filled with anaesthetic gas is used to anaesthetize small animals for surgery or euthanasia.
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[edit] Napoleonic France
In his book, Le Crime de Napoléon, French historian Claude Ribbe has claimed that in the early 19th century, Napoleon used poison gas to put down slave rebellions in Haiti and Guadeloupe. Based on accounts left by French officers, he alleges that enclosed spaces including the holds of ships were used as makeshift gas chambers where sulfur dioxide gas (probably generated by burning sulfur) was used to execute up to 100,000 rebellious slaves. These claims remain controversial.[2]
[edit] Nazi Germany
Gas chambers were used in the Third Reich during the 1930s and 1940s as part of the "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people and political undesirables in the 1930s and 1940s. At that time, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide, often provided by the exhaust gas of cars or trucks or army tanks.[3]
During the Holocaust, gas chambers were designed to accept large groups as part of the Nazi policy of genocide against the the Jews. Nazis also targeted the Romani people, homosexuals, physically and mentally disabled, and intellectuals. In early 1940, the use of hydrogen cyanide produced by Zyklon B was tested on 250 Roma children from Brno at the Buchenwald concentration camp.[4] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz.[5]
Carbon monoxide was also used in large purpose-built gas chambers. The gas was provided by internal combustion engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report).[6]
Gas chambers in mobile vans, concentration camps, and extermination camps were used to kill several million people between 1941 and 1945. Some stationary gas chambers could kill 2,500 people at once. Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, attested to the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust.[7]
The gas chambers were dismantled or destroyed when Soviet troops got close, except at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Majdanek. The gas chamber at Auschwitz I was reconstructed after the war as a memorial, but without a door in its doorway and without the wall that originally separated the gas chamber from a washroom. The door that had been added when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter was left intact.[8]
[edit] United States
Gas chambers have been used for capital punishment in the United States to execute criminals, especially convicted murderers. The first person to be executed in the United States by gas chamber was Gee Jon, on February 8, 1924 in Nevada. In 1957, Burton Abbott was executed as the governor of California, Goodwin J. Knight was on the telephone to stay the execution.[9] Since the restoration of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, only ten executions by gas chamber have been conducted.[10] By the 1980s, reports of suffering during gas chamber executions had led to controversy over the use of this method.
At the September 2, 1983 execution of Jimmy Lee Gray in Mississippi, officials cleared the viewing room after eight minutes while Gray was still alive and gasping for air. The decision to clear the room while he was still alive was criticized by his attorney. David Bruck, an attorney specializing in death penalty cases, said "Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while reporters counted his moans."[11]
During the April 6, 1992 execution of Donald Harding in Arizona, it took eleven minutes for death to occur. The prison warden stated that he would quit if required to conduct another gas chamber execution.[12] Following Harding's execution, Arizona voted that all persons condemned after November 1992 would be executed by lethal injection.[10]
Following the videotaped execution of Robert Alton Harris a federal court declared that "execution by lethal gas under the California protocol is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual."[13] By the late 20th century, most states had switched to methods considered to be more humane, such as lethal injection. California's gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison was converted to an execution chamber for lethal injection.
As of 2006, the last person to be executed in the gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand, sentenced to death before 1992, who was executed in Arizona on March 3, 1999. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that he could not be executed by gas chamber, but the decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.[10] The gas chamber was formerly used in Colorado, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon. Five states: Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri and Wyoming, retain the gas chamber as a method of execution, but allow lethal injection as an alternative.[14]
[edit] Other nations
In 2004 it was reported that gas chambers were used by North Korea both as punishment and for testing of lethal agents on humans. [15]
[edit] Images
 The former gas chamber in New Mexico State Penitentiary, Used only once in 1961, subsequently replaced by lethal injection. |
 The former gas chamber in San Quentin State Prison, now an execution chamber for lethal injection. |
[edit] References
- ^ Many sources including http://www.yadvashem.org
- ^ Randall, Colin (November 26, 2005), “"Napoleon's genocide 'on a par with Hitler."”, Daily Telegraph, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/26/wfra26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/26/ixworld.html>
- ^ Jewish Virtual Library The T-4 Euthanasia Program http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/t4.html
- ^ Emil Proester, Vraždeni čs. cikanu v Buchenwaldu (The murder of Czech Gypsies in Buchenwald). Document No. UV CSPB K-135 on deposit in the Archives of the Museum of the Fighters Against Nazism, Prague. 1940. (Quoted in: Miriam Novitch, Le génocide des Tziganes sous le régime nazi (Genocide of Gypsies by the Nazi Regime), Paris, AMIF, 1968)
- ^ The Nizkor Project, Auschwitz: Krema I http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-04.html
- ^ Kurt Gerstein, Der Gerstein-Bericht(The Gerstein Report) http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/gerstein/gerstein-bericht.php
- ^ Modern History Sourcebook: Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz: Testimony at Nuremberg, 1946 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1946hoess.html
- ^ The Nizkor Project, Auschwitz: Krema I http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-04.html
- ^ Race in the Death House (March 25 1957). Retrieved on 2007-11-14.
- ^ a b c ""German executed in Arizona, legal challenge fails"", CNN, March 4, 1999.
- ^ ""Some examples of post-Furman botched executions"", Death Penalty Information Center, May 24, 2007.
- ^ Weil, Elizabeth (February 11, 2007), “"The needle and the damage done”, The New York Times, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/magazine/11injection.t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin>
- ^ Fierro, Ruiz, Harris v. Gomez, 94-16775 (U.S. 9th Circuit 1996).
- ^ ""Methods of execution"", Death Penalty Information Center.
- ^ Barnett, Antony (February 1, 2004), “"Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag"”, The Guardian, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,1136483,00.html>
