Tests

Book Test #1

The book I read was Schindler’s List. This is the only book so far in my life that I found the film to be just as equal to the book, possibly because the book gives more of the story of Oskar Schindler, and the movie gives you an imagistic image of what you may not want to image while reading the book. The entire book is history based, and the author interviewed the few remaining survivors of the holocaust, that had personal interaction with Oskar Schindler.

Was there a purpose for gassing Jews instead of simply shooting them?

-          The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of mental patients (“euthanasia”). A Nazi euphemism, “euthanasia” referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed “unworthy of life” because of mental illness or physical disability.

-          After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children.

-          The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B (previously used for fumigation) by gassing some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941. Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz. At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.

I always wondered what the purpose was for using gas chambers to kill Jews during the holocaust, along with other groups of people. Through this quick research, I learned new things that I did not know about, along with some answers to my question. The basic idea of using gas to kill people was that the Nazis were simply looking for the quickest and cheapest way to kill the largest amount of people at one time. Manufacturing that many bullets for mass killing would have cost too much money. What I didn’t know about this is that the Nazis used mobile gas vans, which were meant to kill large amounts of people “on the go.”  This quick research really opens my mind to just how horrible this time period in history was.  The conclusion of this research is that sadly, the reason for the gassing was to kill as many people as possible.

Müller, Filip, and Helmut Freitag. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three

Years in the Gas Chambers. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.

Pressac, Jean-Claude. Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers.

New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989.

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