Imagine experiencing the most horrible death possible. Think of yourself drowning, starving to death, being shot, or being gassed. The prisoners in the Holocaust actually suffered through these formidable tortures. The "doctors" lied to them, tricked them, and humiliated them in front of millions of people.
One of the most commonly used forms of torture was the gas chamber. The prisoners were told to hang their clothes on hooks and to remember the number placed just above the hook. They were promised food after the shower and work after the food. The unsuspecting Greek Jews, clutching their soap and towels, rushed into the "showers."
There were two types of gas chambers in Auschwitz: those used for delousing clothes and those used for killing people on a massive scale.
The gas in the chambers was a very powerful gas, called Zyklon B, which was normally used to exterminate rodents and insects in enclosed spaces. It is a powerful insecticide, which serves as a carrier for the gas Hydrocyanic acid, or HCN. HCN is the cause of death following the application of Zyklon B. During a gassing Zyklon B was poured through both openings of the gas chamber at the same time. As the Zyklon B was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. Some claimed that the gas would need a lot of time to kill, because it would have to spread all over the chamber, but this wasn’t true. The gas chambers were not that large. Those in Krematoria II and III were about 210 square meters, and the Zyklon B was dropped from four openings. Since the concentration used was higher than the lethal one, death was very swift.
The German Air Force conducted experiments at Dachau and elsewhere dealing with survival and rescue, including research into the effects of high altitude, freezing temperatures, and the ingestion of seawater. The following is a letter from SS-Untersturmfuehrer Rascher to Reichfuehrer-SS Himmler written on April 5, 1942:
Highly Esteemed Reich Leader:
Enclosed is an interim report on the low-pressure experiments so far conducted in the concentration camp of Dachau…
Only continuous experiments at altitudes higher than 10.5 Km resulted in death. These experiments showed that breathing stopped after about 30 minutes, while in two cases the electrocardiographically charted action of the heart continued for another 20 minutes.
The third experiment of this type took such an extraordinary course that I called an SS physician of the camp as a witness, since I had worked on these experiments all by myself. It was a continuous experiment without oxygen at a height of 12 Km conducted on a 37-year-old Jew in good general condition. Breathing continued up to 30 minutes. After 4 minutes the experimental subject began to perspire and to wiggle his head, after 5 minutes cramps occurred, between 6 and 10 minutes breathing increased in speed and the experimental subject became unconscious; from 11 to 30 minutes breathing slowed down to three breaths per minute, finally stopping altogether.
Severest cyanosis developed in between and foam appeared at the mouth…
Cremation was used as a form of torture, but mostly as a way of disposing bodies. A Jewish inmate was caught revealing to newly arrived people what was in store for them in the "showers", and he was cremated alive. Bodies were sorted into combustibility categories in order to reduce fuel consumption. Well-nourished corpses were burned with emaciated ones in order to determine the most efficient combination. Three to four bodies were burned at a time, and different kinds of coke were used, then the results were recorded. Afterwards, all corpses were divided into the above-mentioned categories, the criterion being the amount of coke required to reduce them to ashes. It was then determined that the most economical and fuel-saving procedure would be to burn the bodies of a well-nourished man and an emaciated woman, or vice versa, together with that of a child. They did it in this way because as the experiments had established, in this combination, one they had caught fire, the dead would continue to burn without any further coke being required.
The scientifically planned crematoria should have been able to handle the total project, but they could not. The whole complex had 46 retorts, each with the capacity for three to five persons. The burning in a retort lasted about half an hour. It took an hour a day to clean them out. It was theoretically possible to cremate about 12,000 corpses in twenty-four hours or 4,380,000 a year.
The torture that those people went through is absolutely unimaginable. The prisoners suffered through all kinds of brutal torture. The cruelty of the Germans nearly caused an entire race of human beings to be wiped out. It is hard to believe that some of the prisoners actually survived this massive killing.