The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: camps/sachsenhausen/kaindl-testimony


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Subject: Anton Kaindl Testifies About Gas Chamber at Sachsenhausen
Organization: The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org

Anton Kaindl, commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp,
testifies about the gassing facilities used there:

Q. What extermination processes were used in your camp?

A. Up to the autumn of 1943, exterminations were carried out at
   Sachsenhausen by shooting or hanging.

Q. Did you make any change in this extermination technique or not?

A. About the middle of March 1943, I introduced the gas chamber as a
   means of mass extermination.

Q. On your own initiative?

A. In part, yes. The existing facilities were no longer sufficient
   for the exterminations planned. I held a conference, in which the
   head doctor, Baumkoetter, took part. He told me that the use of
   poison gas such as prussic acid [Zyklon-B] in chambers prepared
   for the purpose led to instantaneous death. That is why I
   considered the installation of gas chambers suitable, and also
   more humane, for mass executions.

Q. Who was responsible for the exterminations?

A. The commandant of the camp, personally.

Q. So it was you?

A. Yes.

                       Work Cited

E. Kogon, H. Langbein, and A. Rueckerl, Eds. "Nazi Mass Murder: 
A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas" Yale University 
Press, 1993, p. 184

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