A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used. Gas chambers were used as a method of execution for condemned prisoners in the United States beginning in the 1920s. During the Holocaust, large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program, and also by the Independent State of Croatia at the Jasenovac concentration camp. The use of gas chambers has also been reported in North Korea.
Read more about Gas Chamber: United States, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Napoleonic France, Livestock
Famous quotes containing the words gas chamber, gas and/or chamber:
“Papa died in the gas chamber,
slipping blue as an undressed minnow,
gulping in the shower to wash the Jew off him.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)