Zyklon B

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This article is about the cyanide-based insecticide used during the Holocaust. For the Norwegian black metal band see Zyklon-B (band).
Empty poison gas canisters, found by the Allies at the end of World War II
Empty poison gas canisters, found by the Allies at the end of World War II

Zyklon B (IPA: [tsykloːn ˈbeː], also spelled Cyclon B) was the tradename of a cyanide-based insecticide notorious for its use by Nazi Germany against civilians in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek during the Holocaust. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid, Blausäure in German, hence B), a stabilizer, and a warning odorant that were impregnated onto various substrates, typically small absorbent pellets, fibre discs, or diatomaceous earth. It was stored in airtight containers; when exposed to air, the material released gaseous hydrogen cyanide (HCN).

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[edit] History and production

Zyklon B was originally developed as a pesticide by Fritz Haber, a German Jew who emigrated in 1933. It was first produced in World War I by TASCH (Technischer Ausschuss für Schädlingsbekämpfung, or Technical Committee for Pest Control) as a delousing agent. Out of TASCH emerged DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH, or German Corporation for Pest Control), which played a key role in the manufacturing of Zyklon B in World War II. Many German companies had a stake in DEGESCH, but all eventually sold their shares to the chemical giant Degussa (Now known as Evonik) in the early 1920s. Degussa developed the process to manufacture Zyklon B in "crystals" (actually silicagel absorbent chunks), as it was used during World War II. To raise capital, Degussa split its controlling interest of DEGESCH with IG Farben in 1930: both companies held a 42.5% share in DEGESCH, with the remaining 15% held by the Th. Goldschmidt AG of Essen.

DEGESCH's role at this point was limited to acquiring patents and intellectual properties: it did not itself produce Zyklon B. The manufacture of Zyklon B was handled by the Dessauer Werke für Zucker and Chemische Werke, which acquired the stabilizer from IG Farben, the warning agent from Schering AG and the prussic acid from Dessauer Schlempe and assembled them into the final product. This company extracted prussic acid from the waste products of the sugar beet refining process. From 1943 to 1945, the Kaliwerke, from the Czech town of Kolin, also supplied prussic acid to the Dessauer Werke. When Zyklon B became used in the gas chambers, the Nazis ordered the warning agent removed.

Upon production, Zyklon B was sold by Degesch to Degussa. To cut costs, Degussa sold the marketing rights of Zyklon B to two intermediaries: the Heerdt and Linger GmbH (Heli) and Tesch and Stabenow (Tesch und Stabenow, Internationale Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung m.b.H., or Testa) of Hamburg. Both suppliers split their territory along the Elbe river, with Heli handling the clients to the west and Testa doing the same in the east.

Zyklon B is still in production in the Czech Republic in the factory Draslovka Kolín a.s. in the city Kolín under the tradename Uragan D2, sold for eradicating insects and small animals.[1]

[edit] Use on humans

A Soviet soldier posed at Majdanek holding the cover of the vents through which Zyklon B was poured. London press, October 1944.
A Soviet soldier posed at Majdanek holding the cover of the vents through which Zyklon B was poured. London press, October 1944.

From 1929 onwards the U.S. used Zyklon B to disinfect the freight trains and clothes of Mexican immigrants entering the US.[2] Farm Securities Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott recorded the use of cyanide gas and zyklon by the Public Health Service at the New Orleans Quarantine Station during the 1930s.[3]

[edit] Use by Nazi Germany

See also: The Holocaust

The pesticide was used by Nazi Germany as a chemical weapon to poison prisoners in the gas chambers of the largest extermination camp, Auschwitz Birkenau, and also at Majdanek, one of the Operation Reinhard camps. At the other extermination camps, engine exhaust was used in the gas chambers. Many of the victims were Jews and the Zyklon B gas became a central symbol of the Holocaust.

Zyklon B was used in the concentration camps initially for delousing to control typhus. The chemical used in the gas chambers was deliberately made without the warning odorant.[4]

In January or February 1940, 250 Gypsy children from Brno in the Buchenwald concentration camp were used as guinea pigs for testing the Zyklon B gas.[5] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz. The experiments lasted more than 20 hours.

According to Rudolf Höß, commandant of Auschwitz, bunker 1 held 800 people, and bunker 2 held 1,200.[6] Once the chamber was full, the doors were screwed shut and solid pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped into the chambers through vents in the side walls, releasing a toxic gas. Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to Höß, who estimated that about one third of the victims died immediately.[7] Joann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."[8] When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.[7]

[edit] Post-Holocaust legacy

After the war, two directors of Testa – Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher – were tried by a British military court and were executed for their part in supplying the chemical.

The use of the word Zyklon (German for cyclone) continues to prompt angry reactions from Jewish groups. In 2002, both Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte and Umbro were forced to withdraw from attempts to use or trademark the term for their products.[9]

Modern Holocaust deniers assert that Zyklon B gas was not used in the gas chambers, relying as evidence on the low levels of Prussian blue residue in samples of the purported gas chambers found by Fred A. Leuchter, which Leuchter dismissed as the results of general delousing of buildings. However, Leuchter's negative control, a sample of gasket material taken from a different building in the camp, registered as having no such cyanide residue.[10] The manager of the analytical laboratory hired by Leuchter states in an interview in Errol Morris' film Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., that Leuchter's thick samples of brick would have greatly diluted the cyanide residue, which forms only an extremely fine layer on the walls and cannot penetrate.

In 1994, the Institute for Forensic Research in Kraków re-examined this claim on the grounds that formation of Prussian blue by exposure of bricks to cyanide is not a highly probable reaction (Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit. Praca zbiorowa; B. Gallanda, J. Bailer, F. Freund, T. Geisler, W. Lasek, N. Neugebauer, G. Spenn, W. Wegner; Bundesministerium fuer Unterricht und Kultur Wien, 1991). Using more sophisticated microdiffusion techniques, they tested 22 samples from the gas chambers, delousing chambers (as positive controls), and living quarters (as negative controls), finding cyanide residue in both the delousing chambers and the ruins of the gas chambers but none in the ruins of the living quarters, thus refuting the Holocaust deniers' claims.[11]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Producer of Uragan D2 homepage.
  2. ^ How America inspired the Third Reich
  3. ^ Photographs are retained in the National Library of Medicine. WA 234AL6 no. 2
  4. ^ Van Husen, William H. Zyklon B. World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia. 1999.
  5. ^ 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)
  6. ^ Piper, Franciszek. "Gas chambers and Crematoria," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994, p. 162.
  7. ^ a b Piper, Franciszek. "Gas chambers and Crematoria," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994, p. 170.
  8. ^ Piper, Franciszek. "Gas chambers and Crematoria," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994, p. 163.
  9. ^ BBC NEWS | Business | Siemens retreats over Nazi name
  10. ^ Shofar FTP Archive File: cyanide.002 The Nizkor Project
  11. ^ A Study of the Cyanide Compounds Content in the Walls of the Gas Chambers in the Former Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps

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