Especially that lead guy. Adolf or Adler or something, can’t quite remember.
You’d be right to.
From what I have read, death by Zyklon-B (which was an insecticide developed by a Jew at least 10 years before an enterprising young Nazi gave it a try on people) took between three and 15 minutes. I don’t recall the exact numbers, and I really don’t care to, but it was not instant, and it was absolutely excruciating. One of the people who used to usher to-be-gassed Jews into the chambers (which were outfitted with very thick glass protected on the chamber side by metal bars so nobody could break the glass and get some oxygen) one day tried to kill himself by getting in with all the Jews and trying to be shut in the chamber.
One of the soon-to-be-gassed said something like, “Why are you doing this? Yes, we will die, but you need to live so you can tell our story.”
A number of the victims of those gassings were said to have died with their eyes bugged out and their mouths wide open, with white powder (from the Zyklon-B) on their lips, trying to breathe above the reach of the gas.
Since I’m not trying to give anyone excruciating nightmares, I’ll stop there.
Oh, and Argent Towers and anyone else who would like to lay the blame for this at FDR’s feet might want to look into the extent to which countries not named Germany didn’t want another war so soon after the first one. Yes, more should have been done – by the U.S. and by other countries. Yes, the U.S.’ immigration policy essentially killed thousands and thousands of Jews, including the Frank family minus Otto. But things are not that simple. And up until the Holocaust, there was a terrible amount of anti-Jewish sentiment in this country and abroad.
Count me as another one who would much rather get an instant lethal injection than suffer in the gas chamber until the gas finally worked its way over to me (apparently one reason some people took a long time to die is because the gas chamber was so crowded they didn’t all get hit with the gas immediately).
Even though this is a horrible topic, I’m glad that it came up. I think we so often run into the whole “Godwin’s law” sort of thing (where people will portray any opponent that they disagree with as being JUST LIKE the Nazis) that we become desensitized to just how horrific the Nazis’ crimes really were. It’s really beyond comprehension that people can be so cruel.
Still, as a reminder that not all people were cruel or cowardly during that awful time in history, here’s a list of people who tried to help the Jews that goes beyond Schindler:
Interesting to read that Roosevelt apparently turned them away due to fears it might cause him to lose the 1940 election:
I don’t think the US was even in the war in 1939, was it?
Yup.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1946Hoess.html
The knowledge of what happened is empowering, but I wish this stuff didn’t exist to be known.
I don’t think “not being in the war” in 1939 precludes you helping people escaping the regime.
One thing- and maybe others could help me here- I always understood there was a significant difference between a concentration camp and a death camp or extermination camp- such as Treblinka.
Maybe the wording in Wiki could be a bit clearer- if I am correct.
Assuming you are sincere with this question, no. Even the Lend-Lease Act didn’t come until March 1941. And let’s not forget the presidential campaign slogan from 1916: “He kept us out of war.”
(Those Southern Democrats who weren’t in the mood for any friendliness to eventual Holocaust victims also made sure Southern hospitality to black people remained nonexistent.)
Your quote isn’t on that page.
Every time I am reminded of Unit 731 I die a little.
And on the subject of standing by and doing nothing (same source):
“MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare. The United States believed that the research data was valuable because the allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion…Some former members of Unit 731 became part of the Japanese medical establishment. Dr Masaji Kitano led Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company, the Green Cross. Others headed [to] U.S.-backed medical schools or worked for the Japanese health ministry. Shiro Ishii in particular moved to Maryland to work on bio-weapons research.”
Incref, I also can’t find the quote in the wiki entry.
IIRC, they initially used Zyklon B in the same form for gassing people as they did for delousing clothes. Namely, they opened cannisters of it which slowly released the gas over time, not all at once. They would frequently reopen the sealed area to find people still alive, in which case they would have to be shot or gassed again. This is from that BBC documentary Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State.
Incref’s quote is from a Wikipedia article about Japanese war crimes linked to from the Unit 731 page - Here.
I have read enough of that stuff for at least this year, so I will say only that I recall reading about multiple experiments conducted to figure out how most efficiently the delousing agent could be used to kill people.
The first experiments did indeed use a canister, which released the gas more slowly than did pellets dropped down a shaft in the middle of the room, a tactic later adopted, and for which I believe special rooms were built with the aforementioned shafts (which had holes at various heights for maximum exposure).
Those rooms also had coathooks and showerheads, I believe to give the soon-to-be-dead the impression that this was all legit, so they would not panic until everything was ready and panicking was useless.
Can you elaborate on why this was more efficient? I’m confused.
I hate to say that there’s any evil the Nazis wouldn’t engage in, but that one doesn’t make sense even on its own terms - that is, I don’t see any way that
[SPOILER] putting live children in crematoria could be the most efficient way to kill them, or dispose of their bodies. My understanding - which may be mistaken - is that other death-camp prisoners were often used to staff the crematoria. These would not be people in good health, to put it mildly, and it seems they’d be ill-suited to wrestling a screaming, struggling child into an oven. It also seems at odds with other things the Nazis did, like making their gas chambers resemble showers, which were designed to prevent exactly that kind of struggle.
[/SPOILER]
I’m not saying the Nazis weren’t evil enough to do this - they certainly were. But this seems like it would have been, much though I hate to use the word, “impractical”.
At a guess, because of extra fat content (yes, on an emaciated corpse, but still). However, I couldn’t find anything corroborating it, so I may well be conflating the actual practice of burning live children with the actual practice of burning adults.
The cite I provided in my first post in this thread backs up the practice of putting live children in the crematoria, presumably by Nazi officials, who would not have been being starved etc. and thus would have been able to handle anything a (rightfully) determined child could muster.
There would absolutely have been exceptions, and I’d be unsurprised to find out that the general practice of (relatively) immediately killing all those under 15 years of age (Anne Frank was not gassed because she was deemed old enough to work) might be excepted for the occasional particularly hardy teen/child, who … would have been good for some work, and which work and lack of food would have weakened.
Wow! I used to work with phenol in my old lab job and it was some nasty stuff…
depends on the concentration, it’s also in Chloraseptic sore throat spray.
Stupid question:
Do doctors nowadays use the information that the Nazis got, like what the body goes through while freezing for example?
It goes without saying that it’s horrible what he Nazis did but it seems like a real waste to not use the information.
They could have chosen cake.
Yes, at least to some small extent. Of course, as many people are quick to point out, the studies were not only reprehensible but often also scientifically problematic. However in some cases even less-than-rigorous anecdotal information is better than nothing.
My father is a cardio-vascular surgeon and he has developed an interest in warming up severely hypothermic people. He doesn’t do any scientific work on this topic. It started as a purely practical question but then he delved deeper into the question and has given seminars for EMTs and the like… Although he didn’t work with any Nazi publications, they are still referenced in the modern literature.