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

"We're basically saying what the Nazis did was OK," said Phoenix Holocaust Association vice president Janice Friebaum.

Major Jewish organizations have harshly condemned a recent measure by the US state of Arizona to execute death row convicts through the use of a Zyklon B gas chamber, the same poison used by the Nazis to kill Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust.

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 the administration of criminal justice," the AJC said in a statement, according to NBC News.

It remains unclear why exactly Arizona approved reviving the gas chamber as a means of execution, especially since under Arizona state law, it could only be used to execute death row convicts who committed their crimes before November 23, 1992, NBC News reported. This is because these criminals have the option to choose their means of execution, rather than having to use Arizona's default method: Lethal injection.

Despite this, Arizona already has a convict in mind: 65-year-old Frank Atwood, who was convicted of killing a child in 1984, though his legal team have been working to fight this.

Aside from Arizona, six other US states have gas chambers to be used for execution, though all use lethal injections as their primary method, as noted by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since 1976, when the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the legality of the death penalty, 11 people have been executed using gas chambers.

Source: jpost.com, Staff, June 15, 2021

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