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Zyklon B (, also spelled Cyclon B) was the tradename of a cyanide-based insecticide notorious for its use by Nazi Germany to kill over one million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek during the Holocaust. It consisted of hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid), a stabilizer, and a warning odorant that were impregnated onto various substrates, typically small absorbant pellets, fiber discs, or diatomaceous earth. It was stored in airtight containers; when exposed to air, the substrates evolved gaseous hydrogen cyanide (HCN).
History and production Zyklon B was originally developed as a pesticide by Fritz Haber, a German Jew who was forced to emigrate 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, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung GmbH, 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 in the early 1920s. Degussa developed the process to manufacture Zyklon B in crystals, such 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 I.G. Farben, the warning agent from Schering AG and the prussic acid from Dessauer Schlempe and assembled them into the final product. This company extracted it from the waste products of the sugar beet refining process. From 1943 to 1945, the Kaliwerken, 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. Zyklon B is still in production in Czech Republic in Kolín under the tradename Uragan D2, sold for eradicating insects and rodents. 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. Use on humans The pesticide was used as a lethal chemical weapon by Nazi Germany 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.). The victims were primarily 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. 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. 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. 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. Modern Holocaust deniers assert that Zyklon B gas was not used in the gas chambers, as evidenced by the low levels of Prussian Blue residue in the chambers, as found by Fred A. Leuchter, for instance. In 1994, the Institute for Forensic Research in Krakow, however, reexamined 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 delousing chambers, alleged gas chambers, and living quarters, finding cyanide residue in both the delousing chambers and the ruins hypothesized as gas chambers, but none in the ruins of the living quarters, thus supporting the identification of the gas chambers as correct. (Leuchter did not test any samples from living quarters or other negative controls.) Zyklon A Zyklon A was also used as a pesticide, with methyl cyanoformate as the active agent. Its manufacture was banned under the Treaty of Versailles as it could be an intermediate in poison gas production. | ||||||||
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