Poisoning by cyanide gas

[Red3]

How easy would it have been in the 1940's to find out if someone had been gassed to death with cyanide? I have no idea if it would have been easy to tell. This seems a strange question I know, (I'm not planning on going back in time and killing anyone!) it's to try and debunk a claim about a pathologist at the concentration camps, allegedly saying non of the people there died of gassing. I don't even have a link the quote (i reckon it's been taken out of context) so I thought I'd start with this. Apparently there aren't really any specific autopsy findings of this type of poisoning but that's all I know.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Short answer: It sounds like you've got a Holocaust denier using their usual trick, which is to cherry-pick individual data points and present them as authoritative, while ignoring the vast mass of hard evidence pointing in the opposite direction. In this case, they're ignoring all the eyewitness reports and documentary evidence of cyanide use and acting as if one pathologist's claim is decisive.

I'm not sure why anyone would think there would be autopsies done on the victims of gassing in extermination camps anyway - why would the Nazis expend effort to "find out what killed them" when they knew exactly what killed them?

If they did have autopsy facilities, then it wouldn't surprise me if zero of the bodies sent to those facilities had been gassed though, for exactly the same reason.

To answer your actual question though, according to wikipedia cyanide poisoning gives the skin a pink colour due to the chemistry of the poisoning process, so it seems a fair guess that a competent pathologist would pick up on cyanide poisoning.

[Reality Check]

And then there are the eyewitnesses who noted the pink colour of the victims, e.g.
Holocaust (gas chambers)

Quote:

Joann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."[129] When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.[128]

[Red3]

The doctor in question is a U.S pathologist that came over at the end of the war and did a hand full of on-site autopsies and sent some liver/spleen/brain etc. samples to a parisian lab for further analysies. After a bit of reading I found out that he only sent a few samples from camps that were in question as to whether there were any gassings went on anyway. As for the pathalogical effects, by the time he got there, there wouldn't be any! The skin presumably would've been in a state of decomposition, and any cyanide could've quite possibly disappeared as it's concentration decreases and can disappear altogether after three weeks. So yeah, the whole thing is a moot point based on a tiny bit of cherry picked data that's used out of context.


Edit: Yeah, I'd already read that above testimony but decided on trying to point out possible errors in the quote they actually used.

[shadron]

In 1941 the testing for such would have been almost as easy as it is today. Organic chemistry has always been on of the fastest advancing sciences because of it's effects upon many consumer goods. Cyanide is closely related to a host of dyes (Prussian Blue), and was well known as a poison since antiquity - it occurs naturally in cassava and tapioca (and the infamous peach pit). It's action is upon the blood, specifically the oxygen-bearing heme, which is also responsible for blood's coloring, so it is immediately apparent, but, as you discovered, only for a while after death. When the heme begins breaking down it turns brown to black regardless of its bound molecules.

[brantc]

Originally Posted by Reality Check

And then there are the eyewitnesses who noted the pink colour of the victims, e.g.
Holocaust (gas chambers)

Wouldnt you die if you handled cyanide poisoned bodies? You would have to wait days(weeks). You couldnt be anywhere near to the gas chambers for a while. That stuff is really deadly.
It would be all over the walls etc. You would have a low cycle time.

Just purely from a curiosity stand point since I had to look at both sides of the debate. My question is "How come there are no pictures of the gas chambers in operation?" And what about the controversy when they rebuilt one of the chambers..... And the design of the chambers. None of this stuff was answered by anybody. And to bring it up got the worst reactions.

That whole situation was a terrible terrible thing but it, just like any other history, should be open to examination..

[Beanbag]

As far as handling bodies, I would guess the best practical information available would be from California and their gas chamber. They developed a specific procedure, primarily venting the chamber and passing air through. The amount of clothing the prisoner wore was controlled.

What you should remember is that Zyklon B produced cyanide gas, which was then inhaled. Absorption through the lungs allowed maximum intake with very low concentrations of the gas. Very little would be left on the bodies, and since they were usually sent into the chambers naked, there wouldn't be any clothing to contain residual gas.

Cyanide in the solid form is not as dangerous to handle as one would expect. Jewelers supply catalogs regularly sold cans of cyanide "eggs", used to clean gold castings by dissolving. Recommended procedures included "wear gloves, good ventilation, don't lick your fingers, wash afterwards." You certainly didn't want it to come in contact with any acid, which would give rise to gas. Considering the casual approach I've witnessed in some jewelers, if solid cyanide was truly "dangerous," then there would be a large history of jewelers poisoning themselves over the decades.

One technique for cleaning fresh gold castings was "bombing." Working outdoors, you'd boil the castings in a cyanide solution (usually on a Coleman camping stove). When the solution reached a good, rolling boil, the jeweler would approach with a turkey baster full of concentrated hydrogen peroxide. As they passed the boiling beaker, they would empty the baster into the solution and keep on walking. After maybe five to eight steps, there would be a loud noise, and when you turned back around, the beaker would be empty except for the castings, all showing a beautiful 24 karat gold surface left by the cyanide treatment. The cyanide solution just went up into the air.

Fortunately, you can't buy cyanide at the jewelers supply any more. Probably a good thing.

Beanbag

[shadron]

Originally Posted by brantc

Wouldnt you die if you handled cyanide poisoned bodies? You would have to wait days(weeks). You couldnt be anywhere near to the gas chambers for a while. That stuff is really deadly.
It would be all over the walls etc. You would have a low cycle time.

Just purely from a curiosity stand point since I had to look at both sides of the debate. My question is "How come there are no pictures of the gas chambers in operation?" And what about the controversy when they rebuilt one of the chambers..... And the design of the chambers. None of this stuff was answered by anybody. And to bring it up got the worst reactions.

That whole situation was a terrible terrible thing but it, just like any other history, should be open to examination..

Unlike a neurotoxin, cyanide is not primarily absorbed through skin, and more than microgram amounts are required. It attacks the ATP creation cycle in the cells it enters, preventing the conversion of sugars into high energy ATP compounds (I was wrong above about it entering the oxygen cycle; sorry for that). It will flush after a while, and there are a couple of antidotes hydroxocobalamin and sodium nitrite, and rhodanase, which combines serum cyanide with thiosulfate, producing comparatively harmless thiocyanate.

So, it's not as bad as Serin or even Mustard Gas, unless concentrations are high enough and it cannot be avoided.

[jasonpatterson]

Anyone who has taken a good organic chemistry lab has probably used a cyanide compound at one point or another; I know I did several times. Like most nasty substances, it's all about how you handle the stuff (good ventilation in this case.)

As far as pictures of the gas chambers in use, you can search google images for 'gas chamber' and get dozens of photos of piles of corpses outside of the things. I don't know that anyone ever stuck a camera inside during the gassing, but from the outside there wouldn't be much to see, they just dropped cans of zyklon b through holes in the roof of the building, as I recall.

[Red3]

Originally Posted by brantc

Just purely from a curiosity stand point since I had to look at both sides of the debate. My question is "How come there are no pictures of the gas chambers in operation?" And what about the controversy when they rebuilt one of the chambers..... And the design of the chambers. None of this stuff was answered by anybody. And to bring it up got the worst reactions.

That whole situation was a terrible terrible thing but it, just like any other history, should be open to examination..

One possible reason is that the gas chambers were presumably dimly lit and any photography undertaken would've been with flash. Zyklon b was explosive, and photographic flsh units in those days contained a tungstent filament and zirconium primer that ingnites.

As for the controversy around the rebuilding I have no idea. Don't know what you mean.

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by Red3

One possible reason is that the gas chambers were presumably dimly lit and any photography undertaken would've been with flash. Zyklon b was explosive, and photographic flsh units in those days contained a tungstent filament and zirconium primer that ingnites.

More likely that photos would have been forbidden, and any official photos would have been destroyed. The SS was ordered to destroy all evidence of these operations before abandoning the facilities to the Russian advance.

While ss totenkopf were theoretically 'trusted' individuals, that still didn't mean they were allowed to take a camera into their workplace due to the high level of secrecy within which the camps operated.

Originally Posted by Red3

As for the controversy around the rebuilding I have no idea. Don't know what you mean.

Possibly referring to the fact that the A-B structures in the monument that people visit as tourists are not the originals (although they are partly built with materials from the ruins of the originals). The SS attempted to destroy the facilities before the Russian forces arrived, so many of the the buildings were reduced to rubble and had to be rebuilt by the East German government when preparing the facility to become the monument we see today.

(This is why sample bricks stolen from the monument and tested offsite did not contain arsenic - David Irving makes too big a deal out of this, acting as if he didn't know the monument is partially reconstructed.)

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by Red3

How easy would it have been in the 1940's to find out if someone had been gassed to death with cyanide? I have no idea if it would have been easy to tell. This seems a strange question I know, (I'm not planning on going back in time and killing anyone!) it's to try and debunk a claim about a pathologist at the concentration camps, allegedly saying non of the people there died of gassing. I don't even have a link the quote (i reckon it's been taken out of context) so I thought I'd start with this. Apparently there aren't really any specific autopsy findings of this type of poisoning but that's all I know.

It'd also be important to get one piece of key information: where did these remains originate? ie: what facility?

The reason it's important is that it's entirely possible that the samples genuinely were not from victims who were murdered with cyanide - they may have been from a labour camp rather than a death camp. These victims could have been starved to death, or could have died of disease.

[BobG]

Originally Posted by brantc

Just purely from a curiosity stand point since I had to look at both sides of the debate.

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I wouldn't give any holacaust denier a forum in which to conduct an academic debate!

[brantc]

Originally Posted by BobG

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I wouldn't give any holacaust denier a forum in which to conduct an academic debate!

It looks like you have already made up your mind, which is not what science is about.

I read both sides of the story, not just one side. Sorry....

And just as a note, not everything is explained from the pro-holocaustians point of view. There many holes in the Holocaust story purely from a scientific standpoint.

As I said before it was a horrible thing but dont get self righteous on me.

[thrombus29]

Originally Posted by brantc

It looks like you have already made up your mind, which is not what science is about.

I read both sides of the story, not just one side. Sorry....

And just as a note, not everything is explained from the pro-holocaustians point of view. There many holes in the Holocaust story purely from a scientific standpoint.

As I said before it was a horrible thing but dont get self righteous on me.

Don't be such a tease, give us some holes in the Holocaust story.

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by blutoski

The SS attempted to destroy the facilities before the Russian forces arrived, so many of the the buildings were reduced to rubble and had to be rebuilt by the East German government when preparing the facility to become the monument we see today.

(smacks forehead) I meant the Polish government.

[Thunder]

Originally Posted by brantc

It looks like you have already made up your mind, which is not what science is about. .

actually, it appears that YOU..have already made up your mind.

unless you are the first actually open minded Holocaust denier to ever show up at JREF.

which I truly doubt. but you are more then welcome to prove me wrong.

We Jews do believe in miracles.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Originally Posted by brantc

It looks like you have already made up your mind, which is not what science is about.

I read both sides of the story, not just one side. Sorry....

And just as a note, not everything is explained from the pro-holocaustians point of view. There many holes in the Holocaust story purely from a scientific standpoint.

Hi Brantc.

The way this usually goes is that the Holocaust denier trawls a few web sites and presents alleged "holes" in the "Holocaust story" they found. Then the local JREF historians point out the reasons why those "holes" aren't actual holes in the story.

We repeat that a few times and usually the Holocaust denier gets upset and runs away to the comfort of a neo-Nazi web site where they won't have to check their beliefs against reality.

Occasionally the denier has an epiphany and starts to see the problems with the Holocaust denial narrative. There are a couple of ex-deniers floating around the board I believe, who eventually admitted to themselves that there were too many pieces of well-documented evidence that the Holocaust happened for them to explain away.

So let's get the process started. What do you think are the holes in the Holocaust story?

[Red3]

Originally Posted by BobG

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I wouldn't give any holacaust denier a forum in which to conduct an academic debate!

From my brief experience of the subject it's because they're incapable of having an academic debate...They concentrate on one or two pieces of evidence they think are paradigm altering - which are actually usually next to worthless - and blatantly ignore thousands and thousands of other pieces of evidence to the contrary.

This issue with the pathologist being a brilliant example: One man goes round a few camps, takes a few samples, does a few autopsies...There are no details provided as to where he did this work, or how long the bodies were laid there before he arrived, or indeed - as someone pointed out already - they may have not even been victims of gassings anyway, they could be camp workers who died from Typhus or similar. Then the H.D says this proves there's no evidence of gas poisoning! Not just is the basis for their assumption based on a really, really bad piece of evidence, there are hundreds of witness testimonies from all kinds of different people - Red Cross workers, prisoners, SS officers, camp guards, doctors, soldiers - that all say otherwise. Not to mention documents presented at the Nuremberg trials etc. There are 3000 tons of documents from the trials that quite well document the disturbing reign of the Nazi regime and there premeditated extermination programs.

One of the main reasons they do this is because they want the holocaust to be fake, because they hate Jews. They're desperate to strip away the victim status of the Jewish people and put them in the "under suspicion" category, where they think they should be. Every holocaust denier believes in some Jewish/Zionist agenda.

[BobG]

Originally Posted by Red3

Originally Posted by BobG

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I wouldn't give any holacaust denier a forum in which to conduct an academic debate!

From my brief experience of the subject it's because they're incapable of having an academic debate...They concentrate on one or two pieces of evidence they think are paradigm altering - which are actually usually next to worthless - and blatantly ignore thousands and thousands of other pieces of evidence to the contrary.

This issue with the pathologist being a brilliant example: One man goes round a few camps, takes a few samples, does a few autopsies...There are no details provided as to where he did this work, or how long the bodies were laid there before he arrived, or indeed - as someone pointed out already - they may have not even been victims of gassings anyway, they could be camp workers who died from Typhus or similar. Then the H.D says this proves there's no evidence of gas poisoning! Not just is the basis for their assumption based on a really, really bad piece of evidence, there are hundreds of witness testimonies from all kinds of different people - Red Cross workers, prisoners, SS officers, camp guards, doctors, soldiers - that all say otherwise. Not to mention documents presented at the Nuremberg trials etc. There are 3000 tons of documents from the trials that quite well document the disturbing reign of the Nazi regime and there premeditated extermination programs.

One of the main reasons they do this is because they want the holocaust to be fake, because they hate Jews. They're desperate to strip away the victim status of the Jewish people and put them in the "under suspicion" category, where they think they should be. Every holocaust denier believes in some Jewish/Zionist agenda.

Red3,

I understand completely what the story is.

But what I'm saying is "Talk to me. Don't talk to those bastards."

I wouldn't give them the courtesy of a dialogue!

In a situation like this, the best thing is for the moderater to close the thread and let the worm crawl away.
Bob

[Kevin_Lowe]

I have to disagree BobG. Sometimes Holocaust deniers do change their minds when shown the evidence, and quite possibly there are lurkers who have had some exposure to Holocaust denier ideas who benefit from the discussion.

Denial about historical atrocities is fairly common - many Japanese like to pretend the war crimes their nation committed in China never happened, many Turkish people are in denial about the Armenian genocide and so on. Shutting down discussion about these historical issues doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Much better to shine some light on them.

[ddt]

Originally Posted by Red3

This issue with the pathologist being a brilliant example: One man goes round a few camps, takes a few samples, does a few autopsies...There are no details provided as to where he did this work, or how long the bodies were laid there before he arrived, or indeed - as someone pointed out already - they may have not even been victims of gassings anyway, they could be camp workers who died from Typhus or similar.

Another thing is that not all camps used Zyklon-B. At Belzec, for instance, diesel exhaust was used:

Quote:

Wirth developed his own ideas on the basis of the experience he had gained in the "Euthanasia" program and decided to supply the fixed gas chamber with gas produced by the internal-combustion engine of a motorcar. Wirth rejected Zyklon B which was later used at Auschwitz. This gas was produced by private firms and its extensive use in Belzec might have aroused suspicion and led to problems of supply. He therefore preferred a system of extermination based on ordinary, universally available gasoline and diesel fuel.

and I think this holds for all Aktion Reinhart camps. And as the next sentence shows:

Quote:

For economic and transport reasons, Wirth did not make use here of industrial bottled carbon monoxide as in T-4

the Nazi "euthanasia" program used carbon monoxide.

So it is entirely dependent on which camp we're speaking about what method of gassing was used.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by brantc

Wouldnt you die if you handled cyanide poisoned bodies? You would have to wait days(weeks). You couldnt be anywhere near to the gas chambers for a while. That stuff is really deadly.
It would be all over the walls etc. You would have a low cycle time.

Well, the bodies were then handled by "sonderkommandos" (special units) of prisoners, so they not the guards would get any contamination there. AFAIK, they also got gask masks.

Also, the Sonderkommandos were executed and replaced regularly, since they knew what's going on. At any rate, they were only supposed to live another few weeks, so any effects of contamination just had to not kill them that fast.

[catbasket]

Originally Posted by BobG

In a situation like this, the best thing is for the moderater to close the thread and let the worm crawl away.

A few years ago I would have agreed but no longer ...

Originally Posted by Kevin_Lowe

I have to disagree BobG. Sometimes Holocaust deniers do change their minds when shown the evidence, and quite possibly there are lurkers who have had some exposure to Holocaust denier ideas who benefit from the discussion.

Indeed.


It seems we've had an influx of HD'ers here recently. Reading the replies to Holocaust Deniers here makes me much better equipped to counter any HD'er arguments I may counter in the future, whether on t'internet or in real life.

The HD'ers come here to spread their crap but don't seem to realise that as a result their less-knowledge opponents (such as me) become not only better armed to counter their crap, but also more knowledgable on the tactics they use. It's a huge waste of their time and it harms their cause.

Win/win for us, epic fail for them.

[Red3]

Originally Posted by catbasket

The HD'ers come here to spread their crap but don't seem to realise that as a result their less-knowledge opponents (such as me) become not only better armed to counter their crap, but also more knowledgable on the tactics they use. It's a huge waste of their time and it harms their cause.

Win/win for us, epic fail for them.

I'd second that...Holocaust denial is something relatively new to me and already there's a clear pattern emerging on their methods and beliefs.