Leaders of Arizona’s Jewish community are suing the state of Arizona to prevent it from using Zyklon B, a lethal gas that was used in the Holocaust to carry out the death penalty.
Nazis used Zyklon B during the Holocaust in the horrific gas chambers at Auschwitz and other notorious death camps. Zyklon B is a hydrogen cyanide formulation. In Arizona, hydrogen cyanide is used to carry out capital punishments, making it the same lethal gas that was used at Auschwitz.
Between 1943 and 1944, at the height of the death camps’ operations, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed every day at Auschwitz.
In Arizona, the state ended the use of lethal gas in executions in 1992. However, it allowed the use of gas who had already been sentenced before this date. This left 17 people on death row who remained potentially subject to legal gas executions. Two death row inmates are currently up for being executed in this manner currently.
In a strongly-worded statement, the former vice president and spokesperson for the Phoenix Holocaust Association Janice Friebaum said that the use of this gas in executions in the United States today is tantamount to approving of what the Nazis did.
Friebaum said that it is a very painful way to kill a human being and is fundamentally inhumane. She continued that the thought that this was used to murder millions of people is horrific enough, but to think that 70 or 80 years later it is still being used in America for capital punishment is “mind-boggling.”
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