Jewish orgs. slam Arizona using Zyklon B gas chamber on death row inmates

• Author: JERUSALEM POST STAFF
• Published date: 15 June 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The state has had a gas chamber since 1949, and since then it has only been used twice, the most recent of which was in 1999 to execute German national Walter LaGrand.

The use of Zyklon B is seen by the state as being an "upgrade" of their preexisting gas chamber.

Jewish organizations have come out against this, however, and have drawn comparisons to its use in the Holocaust.

"Uniformly, Holocaust survivors and their descendants are nothing short of horrified of this form of execution being utilized," said Janice Friebaum, vice president of the Phoenix Holocaust Association whose family members were killed in the gas chambers at Treblinka, according to NBC News.

Friebaum condemned the gas chambers as an inhumane Nazi innovation. "To think our 'civilized society' today in the state of Arizona would utilize this Nazi innovation, I believe, is tantamount to giving posthumous approval to the evils conducted by the Nazis. We're basically saying what the Nazis did was OK," she explained, according to NBC News.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest Jewish advocacy groups in the US, also came out against the decision they said "defies belief."

"Whether or not one supports the death penalty as a general matter, there is general agreement in American society that a gas devised as a pesticide, and used to eliminate Jews, has no place in...