Gas chamber

A gas chamber is a means of execution whereby a poisonous gas is introduced into a hermetically-sealed chamber. When the condemned breathes this gas, death follows. Gas chambers have been used for animal euthanasia in the past (along with vacuum chambers), but most jurisdictions no longer permit this. Hydrogen cyanide, or more rarely carbon monoxide, are the typical agents.

Capital punishment

Gas chambers have been used for capital punishment in the United States in the past to execute criminals, especially convicted murderers. Five states (Wyoming, California, Maryland, Missouri, and Arizona) technically retain this method, but all allow lethal injection as an alternative. A federal court in California has declared this method of execution as "cruel and unusual punishment". In fact, it is highly unlikely that any of these states will ever again utilize the gas chamber. The first person to be executed in the United States via gas chamber was Gee Jon, on February 8, 1924 in Nevada. The last person to be executed in the gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand, whom Arizona executed in March, 1999.

The punishment was instituted individually and publicly, behind the protective glass of a gas chamber, in full view of accredited journalists, legal and medical experts, and the prosecuting side. The gassed individual can see the poison, and is advised to take a deep breath after the gas is released, to speed unconsciousness rather than prolonging death. The gas used is hydrogen cyanide, and death from it is painful and unpleasant.

So-called "Euthanasia"

More notoriously, gas chambers were used in the Nazi Third Reich during the 1930s a part of the so-called "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people, and later the mentally ill. At that time, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide, often provided by the exhaust fumes of cars and trucks.

Genocide

Later, during the Holocaust, gas chambers were modified and enhanced to accept even larger groups as part of the Nazi policy of genocide against Jews, Gypsies, and others. Through experimentation in September 1941 Zyklon B (a crystalline form of hydrogen cyanide) gas was found to be most efficient. Nazi gas chambers in mobile vans and at least eight concentration camps (see also: extermination camp) were used to kill several million people between 1941 and 1945.

The American method may be contrasted with the method used in Nazi Germany, which was instituted en masse and secretly. The victims were apparently unaware of their fates; they died in the belief that they were entering the chambers to be cleaned and deloused.

Controversy

However, there is an ongoing controversy about whether the condemned knew what would happen to them. Some say they knew, but elected to live an extra few minutes rather than confront armed guards. Many regard such comments as an attempt to shift blame from Nazis to their victims, suggesting the death camp victims were cowards. While the guards were vastly outnumbered, the condemned were unarmed, often ill and emaciated, and were imprisoned in areas where the general populace was hostile, indifferent, or too fearful for their own lives to aid escaped prisoners.

Some prisoners called Sonderkommandos were forced to help the Nazis murder their fellow prisoners by leading prisoners to the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies.

Some Jews did resist, most notably in the 1944 Sonderkommando uprising at Auschwitz, during which one of the gas chambers was destroyed.