known as "Zyklon B" to the registered trademark of a pesticide based on hydrogen cyanide , along with a stabilizer and an additive irritant and odorant, which makes the functions of warning.
Your job is very simple, it is stored in metal cans, fully sealed, which when they are opened, and the contact with water and atmospheric moisture, causing it to peel off the hydrogen cyanide gas.
Source americanwe Associate its employment to German concentration camps during the Second World War but there is evidence of a previous use, was in California at the end of the eighties of the NINETEENTH century.
There it was used as a pesticide to combat pests .
later –already in the 1920s– the u.s. Department of Migration used Zyklon B to disinfect the clothes of mexican immigrants that came to american soil.
Their use with a purpose of human annihilation was later. In September, 1941, the nazi doctors, hard-pressed by the extermination plan , and by its effectiveness proven, began to use it in the prison camps.
on 3 September of that year used it for the first time, was in the camp of Auschwitz (Poland) there gassed six hundred soviet prisoners of war. Unfortunately, from that time not stop using it until he finished the race .
Millions of prisoners were killed in gas chambers with Zyklon B as part of the "final Solution", the macabre plan with which the nazis led to the systematic genocide of the jewish population, as well as roma, homosexuals and opponents to the regime of the national socialist German.
especially Affected brain and heartThe lethality of the gas is very high, so are needed only four grams for causing the death of a human being , which means that with one ton could exterminate about two hundred and fifty thousand people.
The inhalation of Zyklon B, being lighter than air, penetrates the lungs and from there it spreads to the rest of the organism, affecting primarily two organs: brain and heart.
Their toxicity for humans is well known, causes extreme pain, convulsions, and, finally, cardiac arrest , all this in a matter of a few seconds, in the majority of the people exposed.
however, experts in toxicology coindicen to point out that in some people the agony could be prolonged during more than half an hour.
There is an important fact that it should be highlighted, the height of the victim is important, being lighter than air the Zyklon B was accumulated in spaces higher of the gas chamber , so that the death initially occurs in adults.
Enemy of the mitochondriaThe component poisonous this chemical compound for our body lies in the interference it causes with the proper functioning of mitochondria, the organelles responsible for cellular respiration.
The anions of the gas show a high affinity for compounds with high concentration of iron in its oxidized form, which can penetrate the mitochondria. There they bind to the cytochrome-oxidase disrupting the production of ATP, and leading to, finally, cell death .
it Is estimated that in the acmé of deportations were gassed at more than 12,000 jews daily in Auschwitz. Unfortunately, this measure was not unique to the Polish countryside, it is also employed in Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck, although they were not conceived in its beginnings as extermination camps.
Pedro Gargantilla is a internist in the Hospital of El Escorial (Madrid), and author of several popular books
Date Of Update: 14 September 2019, 09:01
