No, hardly any people could survive the gassing in concentration camps. Once you were sent there, it meant you’d be put to death.
The Nazis fooled the prisoners, especially newly admitted prisoners, into believing they were being taken for showering. They offered them work and food and even to ask them to note their memory on where they deposited their clothes so they could retrieve it in future after showering. Guards were smiling and even engaging in light conversations with the people to avoid increase in tensions.
After that, everybody undressed then they were gased inside the chambers. The doors were closed and barred securely. It was then those same people knew something was off. Panic spread quickly. Everyone screamed and knocked on the doors, but there was no chance to escape.
A special team from the SS arrived carrying cans containing crystals of the different cyanide called Zyklon B. They threw the crystals over the openings on the ceiling. It started floating from the ground, and that actually made the people scream even louder. They overlapped, everyone tried to get on top of the other in a bid to get to the highest level to breathe. The so much valued virtues turned into vices and the weaker ones children, the elderly, and the frail were crushed at the bottom in the emerging circumstances. Preferably within 15 to 30 minutes, they were all dead.
Once the gassing was completed the special teams known as the Sonderkommandos removed the corpses from the rooms they used for the purpose. To add the extreme inhumanity the Nazis would burn the dead in crematory ovens; the corpses were sorted according to size and fat deposits to make the fire more intense. To make the process faster, women’s bodies were engaged in the process of burning.
To elaborate, nobody who was sent to the gassings was expected to be alive to tell the story. If you survived the gas chamber you would be killed in the cremation oven. The Nazis left no one alive.
We know these things because a small number of people in Sonderkommandos lived through the war. One of them Filip Müller, who was a Jew from Slovakia and worked in the Auschwitz. He shared his experience in heartbreaking detail.
Crematorium for the people meant ‘Cleanliness is Health’ and ‘To the Disinfection Area’ upon arrival. Despite that, these signs were intended to deceive them. The guards said to them, ‘Place your clothes there by your shoes explaining that you will require them after you have taken your shower.’ The funny thing is people did not realize that they were walking to their own death.
People panicked when the gas was released. Some of the strongest tried to rise higher to grasp the fact that they could find more oxygen up there. This kept the weaker ones who included children right at the bottom. Later when the doors opened people were huddled together like blocks of stone. The last performance to which the author alludes was unforgettable.”
Some Nazis might not want to admit it but the occurrence did happen anyway. Perry Broad an SS man at Auschwitz said that guards used to encourage the victims so that they would not struggle. They greeted people, speaking to them familiarly, “Warm water is there,” they amiably treated the strangers until the last moments. However, when everyone had gotten into the room, the doors were shut tight, and the gas let in. There was no escape.
Zyklon B – the gas which was used by them was a pesticide. It was fired in small balls which on contact with air could transform into an extremely toxic gas. It means that thousands of people could be poisoned in minutes by just a few cans.
The gas chambers were one of the weapons used by the Nazis during the holocaust Era. Thus, millions of innocent people – men. women and children – were killed in this manner. It is one of the saddest chapters in human history which should be told because such cruelty ought not to be repeated.
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