A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, 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, and also by the Independent State of Croatia at the Jasenovac concentration camp. The use of gas chambers has also been reported in North Korea.

Gas chambers have also been used for animal euthanasia, using carbon monoxide as the lethal agent. Sometimes a box filled with anaesthetic gas is used to anaesthetize small animals for surgery or euthanasia.

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 lethal gas was Gee Jon, on February 8, 1924. An unsuccessful attempt to pump poison gas directly into his cell at Nevada State Prison led to the development of the first makeshift gas chamber to carry out Gee's death sentence. In 1957, Burton Abbott was executed as the governor of California, Goodwin J. Knight, was on the telephone to stay the execution. Since the restoration of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, eleven executions by gas chamber have been conducted. 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."

During the April 6, 1992, execution of Donald Harding in Arizona, it took 11 minutes for death to occur. The prison warden stated that he would quit if required to conduct another gas chamber execution. Following Harding's execution, Arizona voted that all persons condemned after November 1992 would be executed by lethal injection.

Following the execution of Robert Alton Harris, a federal court declared that "execution by lethal gas under the California protocol is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual." 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 2010, 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. The gas chamber was formerly used in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon. Six states, Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri and Wyoming, authorize lethal gas if lethal injection cannot be administered, the condemned committed their crime before a certain date, or the condemned chooses to die in the gas chamber. In October 2010, New York governor David Paterson signed a bill rendering gas chambers illegal for use by humane societies and other animal shelters.

Method of use

When executions by gas chambers are conducted in the United States, the general protocol is as follows. First, the executioner will place a quantity of potassium cyanide (KCN) pellets into a compartment directly below the chair in the chamber. The condemned person is then brought into the chamber and strapped into the chair, and the airtight chamber is sealed. At this point the executioner will pour a quantity of concentrated sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄) down a tube that leads to a small holding tank directly below the compartment containing the cyanide pellets. The curtain is then opened, allowing the witnesses to observe the inside of the chamber. The prison warden then asks the condemned individual if he or she wishes to make a final statement. Following this, the executioner(s) throws a switch/lever to cause the cyanide pellets to drop into the sulfuric acid, initiating a chemical reaction that generates hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas:

:2KCN_(s) + H₂SO_4(aq) → 2HCN_(g) + K₂SO_4(aq)

The gas is visible to the condemned, and he/she is advised to take several deep breaths to speed unconsciousness in order to prevent unnecessary suffering. Accordingly, execution by gas chamber is especially unpleasant for the witnesses to the execution due to the physical responses exhibited by the condemned during the process of dying. These responses can be violent, and can include convulsions and excessive drooling.

Following the execution, the chamber is purged of the gas through special scrubbers, and must be neutralized with anhydrous ammonia (NH₃) before it can be opened. Guards wearing oxygen masks remove the body from the chamber. Finally, the prison doctor examines the individual in order to officially declare that he or she is dead and release the body to the next of kin.

One of the problems with the gas chamber is the inherent danger of dealing with such a toxic gas. Anhydrous ammonia is used to cleanse the chamber after cyanide gas has been used:

:HCN + NH₃ → NH₄⁺ + CN⁻

The anhydrous ammonia used to clean the chamber afterwards, and the contaminated acid that must be drained and disposed of, are both very poisonous.

Nitrogen gas or oxygen-depleted air has been considered for human execution, as it can induce nitrogen asphyxiation. It has not been used to date.

Nazi Germany

Gas chambers were used in the Third Reich as part of the "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people and political undesirables in the 1930s and 1940s. In June 1942 many hundreds of prisoners of Neuengamme concentration camp, amongst which 45 Dutch communists, were gassed in Bernburg. At that time, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide, often provided by the exhaust gas of gasoline-powered cars, trucks or army tanks.

During the Holocaust, gas chambers were designed to accept large groups as part of the Nazi policy of genocide against the Jews. Nazis also targeted the Romani people, homosexuals, physically and mentally disabled, intellectuals and the clergy. In early 1940, the use of hydrogen cyanide produced as Zyklon B was tested on 250 Roma children from Brno at the Buchenwald concentration camp. According to Nizkor Project (), 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. According to a website run by Jürgen Langowski, an anti-Nazi German activist, Carbon monoxide was also used in large purpose-built gas chambers, like chambers in Treblinka extermination camp. The gas was in exhaust gas from internal combustion engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report).

Gas chambers in vans, concentration camps, and extermination camps were used to kill several million people between 1941 and 1945. Some stationary gas chambers could kill 2,000 people at once. The use of gas chambers during the Holocaust was attested to by several sources including the Vrba-Wetzler report and testimony from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and other German soldiers.

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.

Gaswagen

Execution by exhaust gas was performed in specially modified vans, known as gaswagen (variously translated as "gas wagon", "gas van", or "gas car").

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, which would have been readily available from volcanoes in the area) was used to execute up to 100,000 rebellious slaves. These claims remain controversial.

References

Category:Infrastructure of the Holocaust Category:Execution methods Category:Execution equipment Category:Toxicology

ca:Cambra de gas cs:Plynová komora da:Gaskammer de:Gaskammer (Todesstrafe) et:Gaasikamber es:Cámara de gas eu:Gas ganbera fr:Chambre à gaz it:Camera a gas he:תא גזים hu:Gázkamra nl:Gaskamer ja:ガス室 no:Gasskammer nn:Gasskammer pl:Komora gazowa pt:Câmara de gás ru:Газовая камера simple:Gas chamber sr:Gasna komora fi:Kaasukammio sv:Gaskammare tr:Gaz odası yi:גאז קאמער zh:毒气室

name	Fred A. Leuchter
residence	Malden, Massachusetts, U.S.
birth name	Frederick A. Leuchter, Jr.
birth place	USA
known	Manufacturer of execution equipment; author of Holocaust denial literature
employer	}}

Frederick A. (Fred) Leuchter, Jr. (born 1944) is an American Federal Court qualified expert in execution technology and author of forensic Holocaust denial material. He claims to have improved the design of instruments for capital punishment and had execution equipment contracts with several states. Subsequently, Leuchter became known for his testimony in defense of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel in 1988. His study for Zündel's trial is referred to as the ''Leuchter report'' after it was published by Zündel as such and is often framed as a scientifically based work of Holocaust denial, though his research methods and findings have been refuted. An Errol Morris documentary on the controversy, entitled ''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'', was released in 1999.

Education and career

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Boston University in 1964 and later conducted post-graduate studies at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory. Leuchter holds patents for a geodetic instrument and an electronic sextant. Leuchter has said he is not an engineer and misled people about his expertise. According to the ''New York Times'', before selling execution equipment Leuchter was a former dealer in military surveillance equipment.

Fred Leuchter Associates

Leuchter started Fred Leuchter Associates in which he sold services to several states to help them maintain, improve, document, and ascertain the effectiveness of their equipment for administration of capital punishment. His initial work was with electric chairs, starting in Tennessee. Leuchter's broader claims are that his work in this area is "humanitarian", providing greater respect for both guards and those to be executed. He also claims that he offered his services at considerable economy: off-the-shelf parts, labor, and a 20% profit. By his own account, consultation between state government agencies spread his reputation from Tennessee to other states, and further assignments followed. Leuchter "aggressively solicited business" and in 1985 the state of New Jersey purchased Leuchter's proposal for a lethal injection system for $30,000.

On October 24, 1990 ''The New York Times'' described him as "self-proclaimed execution expert and manufacturer of death machinery" who "was charged today in a Middlesex County District Court with fraudulently practicing engineering." It quoted Dr. Edward A. Brunner, chairman of the anesthesia department at Northwestern University Medical School, as saying Leuchter's lethal injection system would indeed paralyze a condemned criminal with Pavulon, but far from being humane this paralysis would merely stop the prisoner from screaming at the "extreme pain in the form of a severe burning sensation" caused by the potassium chloride injection. (Potassium chloride is commonly used in judicial execution through lethal injection.) A subsequent article in the June 13, 1991 edition of ''New York Times'' details his agreement with prosecutors to "serve two years' probation for practicing engineering without a license."

Detractor of capital punishment

In 1990 ''Newsweek'' reported Alabama Assistant Attorney General Ed Carnes calling Leuchter's views on the gas chamber "unorthodox" and alleging that "Leuchter was running a death row shakedown scheme: if a state didn't purchase Leuchter's services, he would testify at the last minute for the condemned man that the state's death chamber might malfunction." The Associated Press quoted Carnes claiming that Leuchter made "money on both sides of the fence." In his memorandum to death penalty states, Carnes observed that in Florida and Virginia the federal courts had rejected Leuchter's testimony as unreliable. The court in Florida had found that Leuchter had "misquoted the statements" contained in an important affidavit and had "inaccurately surmised" a crucial premise of his conclusion.

In Virginia, Leuchter provided a death row inmate's attorney with an affidavit claiming the electric chair would fail. The Virginia court decided the credibility of Leuchter's affidavit was limited because Leuchter was "the refused contractor who bid to replace the electrodes in the Virginia chair."

Zündel trial and investigation at Auschwitz

In 1988 Leuchter was hired by Ernst Zündel, who was being tried in Canada for publishing works of Holocaust denial, to investigate and testify as an expert witness at his trial, at a salary of $30,000. Leuchter was recommended to Zündel by Bill Armontrout, warden for Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri. In his capacity as warden, Armontrout was personally responsible for carrying out executions by the use of cyanide gas. Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau to examine the structures identified by guards, prisoners, and investigators, as gas chambers, and concluded that they could not have been used for mass murder.

Zündel's Samisdat Publications published his findings as ''The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland'' (published in England as ''Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report - The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz'') which the court accepted only as evidentiary display and not as direct evidence; Leuchter was therefore required to explicate it and testify to the veracity of his findings under oath in the trial. His report was widely republished and translated by various denial organizations, and he has since lectured on it and his subsequent experiences. Protests were organized in response.

In 1988, Leuchter traveled to several sites of structures identified as gas chambers, where, although he did not have permission to do so, he collected samples from walls, ceilings and floors, using a chisel and hammer to chip and scrape off pieces of the masonry. He took copious notes about the floor plans and layout, and all of his actions were videotaped by a cameraman. (Leuchter, who had been married for about one month before the trip, told his wife that the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau was their honeymoon.) Leuchter then brought the samples back to Boston, where he presented them to Alpha Analytical Laboratories, a chemical laboratory, for testing. Leuchter told Alpha only that the samples were to be used as evidence in a court case about an industrial accident. The lab tested them for exposure to cyanide and found trace amounts in the crematoria, which Leuchter dismissed in his report:

Leuchter compares the low amounts in the Krema to the higher readings in his positive control sample.

Lab manager James Roth swore under oath to the results at the trial. It was only after he got off the stand that Roth learned what the trial was about. In an interview for Morris' film, Roth states that cyanide would have formed an extremely fine layer on the walls, to the depth of one-tenth of a human hair. Leuchter had taken samples of indeterminate thickness (he is seen in Morris' film hammering at the bricks with a rock hammer). Not informed of this, Roth had pulverized the entire samples, thus severely diluting the cyanide-containing layer of each sample with an indeterminate amount of brick, varying for each sample. Roth offers the analogy that the tests were like "analyzing paint on a wall by analyzing the timber that's behind it."

Leuchter did not examine the walls of the gas chambers until 50 years after they had been used; his critics note that it would have been virtually impossible to discover any cyanide at all using his method. In fact, tests conducted on ventilation grates immediately after the end of the war showed substantial amounts of cyanide. The chambers were demolished by the Nazis when they abandoned Auschwitz, and the facilities Leuchter examined were, in fact, partially reconstructed. Leuchter was unaware that part of the camp and chambers were reconstructed, so he had no way of knowing if the bricks he was scraping were actually part of the original gas chamber.

Many of Leuchter's conclusions are based on the assumption that it takes 20 to 30 hours to air a room disinfected with Zyklon-B; since far lower concentrations are required when gassing people than for delousing it actually takes 20 to 30 minutes to air out the room, and the forced ventilation systems used are more than adequate to allow the gas chambers to be operated without endangering the executioners. When questioned in court, Leuchter admitted he had not seen a document by the Waffen SS Commandant for construction issued when the gas chambers were constructed which estimated they had a 24-hour capacity of 4756 people, more than 30 times Leuchter's estimate of 156.

Leuchter's opposition to the possibility of gas chambers rests on the relatively low concentration of cyanide residue measured in his sample of the remains of the gas chambers in Auschwitz, compared to his sample of the "delousing chambers" in which clothes were deloused using the same gas, hydrogen cyanide. However, his report contains the assumption that lower concentrations are required for delousing than to kill humans and other warm blooded creatures; in fact, with their simpler structures and slower metabolisms, insects are more resistant to such gross metabolic poisons than mammals. Both toxicological study and practical experience demonstrate that it takes a much higher concentration of cyanide (16,000 parts per million) to kill insects than to kill humans (300 PPM), as well as an exposure time of many hours rather than only minutes. Leuchter also fails to explain his belief that Zyklon-B was used for delousing, in view of his belief that the product would present technical difficulties in ventilating and decontaminating such as to make it impractical for use in a gas chamber.

Aftermath

Protests were organized outside the court house in Canada, and near Leuchter's home in Malden, Massachusetts. However, despite the bad publicity Leuchter remained active until 1990, when his lack of qualifications to practice was exposed. In the late 1980s, following the Ernst Zündel trial, he was featured in both the ''Atlantic Monthly'' and ''Prime Time Live'' in items on capital punishment, neither of which mentioned his association with Zündel. Also following his involvement in the Zündel trial, Leuchter began giving lectures to Holocaust denial groups such as the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) about his research and continued belief in the conclusions to which he testified in the trial. A speech to the Eleventh IHR Conference in October, 1992, included the following remark:

In October 1990, the commonwealth of Massachusetts brought criminal charges against Leuchter for representing himself as an engineer without a license. Leuchter not only lacks an engineering license but has neither an engineering degree nor any other relevant professional certification or recognized credential - his education consists of a BA in history, which he completed in 1964. In 1991, the case was settled under the agreement that he will serve two years' probation for practicing engineering without a license. He admits to having no formal training in toxicology, biology or chemistry.

When he tried to sell parts of a lethal injection machine and other inventory from Fred Leuchter Associates, much of it items pending work for various states who refused to pay him for previously contracted or agreed work, he was again charged. Leuchter claims that the Massachusetts Attorney General had to explain that the sale of the offered equipment was not, in fact, illegal. His wife divorced him in this same period. Furthermore, states started to deny his contracts on the basis of his lack of qualifications.

Leuchter was arrested in and shortly thereafter deported from the United Kingdom in November 1991. He had been banned from entering the country by the Home Office and his entry and presence in the country was therefore considered illegal. Leuchter claimed that United States consulate personnel effectively refused him aid. He had been interrupted while giving an invited speech at Irving's instigation; his talk followed immediately one by Robert Faurisson. Leuchter has blamed criticism of his work on an "international cabal... those who have unjustly attacked me and violated my rights... the Klarsfelds, Shapiros, and Kahns of the world".

According to the Institute for Historical Review, Leuchter subsequently took employment as a "telephone solicitor."

Repetition of Leuchter's examination

In February 1990, Professor Jan Markiewicz, Director of the Forensic Institute of Cracow, redid the analysis. Markiewicz decided that the Prussian blue test was unreliable because it depended on the acidity of the environment, which was low in the gas chambers. Markiewicz and his team used microdiffusion techniques to test for cyanide in samples from the gas chambers, from delousing chambers, and from living areas elsewhere within Auschwitz. The living quarter samples (negative controls) tested negative, while cyanide residue was found in both the delousing chambers and the gas chambers. The amount of cyanide found had a great variability (possibly due to 50 years of exposure to the elements to varying degrees), but even so, the categorical results were that cyanide was found where expected in both the gas chambers and the delousing facilities, and not found in the living quarters, supporting the hypothesis that the gas chambers were exposed to high levels of cyanide like the delousing facilities, and not low levels for routine fumigation, like the living quarters.

Documentary

Leuchter is the subject of a 1999 documentary by Errol Morris, entitled ''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'' with Zündel and Irving.

Robert Jan van Pelt, who appears in ''Mr. Death'' to specify some of Leuchter's scholarly failures (e.g. not consulting the large documentation archive available at Auschwitz), served as the primary expert witness against David Irving at the libel trial of Deborah Lipstadt in 2000, relating to the court the strength of the physical and documentary evidence supporting the use of that camp for gassing.

See also

Jean-Claude Pressac

References

Material by Leuchter

Fred A. Leuchter, ''The Leuchter Report: The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz'', With a Foreword by David Irving, London, Focal Point Publications, 1989 (ISBN 1-872197-00-0).

Fred Leuchter & Robert Faurisson, ''The Second Leuchter Report'', The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 10, No.3 Fall, 1990.

Fred Leuchter, ''The Third Leuchter Report: A Technical Report on the Execution Gas Chamber at Mississippi State Penitentiary Parchman, Mississippi'', Toronto, Samisdat Publishers.

Fred A. Leuchter Jr., ''The Fourth Leuchter Report: An Engineering Evaluation of Jean-Claude Pressac's Book ''Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers''Hamilton, Ontario, History Buff Books and Video.

Fred A. Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, ''The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition'', Chicago, Theses & Dissertations Press, 2005 (ISBN 1-59148-015-9).

External links

Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, the complete Errol Morris documentary on Google Video.

The Chemistry of Auschwitz, an essay by Richard J. Green of the The Holocaust History Project debunking Leuchter's claims.

''The Leuchter Report'', Holocaust Denial and the Big Lie at the Nizkor Project, a site containing large amounts of information about Holocaust deniers.

''Mr. Death'' synopsis at, the film's director, Errol Morris' page.

Chemistry is Not the Science:Rudolf, Rhetoric & Reduction An analysis debunking the Rudolf Report from holocaust-history.org

Jean-Claude Pressac. Les carences et incohérences du Rapport Leuchter, Jour J., la lettre télégraphique juive, December 12, 1988

Category:1944 births Category:Capital punishment in the United States Category:Holocaust deniers Category:Living people Category:Boston University alumni Category:Harvard University people Category:Harvard University alumni Category:People from Malden, Massachusetts Category:People deported from the United Kingdom

de:Fred A. Leuchter es:Informe Leuchter pl:Fred A. Leuchter sv:Fred Leuchter uk:Фред Лейхтер