Topic author: shy
Subject: Three In A Minute
Posted on: 29 August 2005 6:36:20 PM
Message:

In Auschwitz, starting in September, 1941, phenol injections were used to kill prisoners suffering from epidemic diseases such as typhus. Initially, phenol was injected into a victim's vein, maximizing the "medical" aura of the entire procedure. Before long, the technique was changed to injecting the phenol directly into the heart for greater killing efficiency. Patients injected by vein might linger for minutes or even an hour or more. However, a phenol injection of ten to fifteen milliliters into the heart caused death within fifteen seconds. During the procedure two Jewish prisoner assistants brought a victim into the room and positioned him or her on a footstool, usually so that the right arm covered the victim's eyes and the left arm was raised sideways in a horizontal position.

The idea was for the victim's chest to be thrust out so that the cardiac area was maximally acccessible for the lethal injection, and for him or her to be unable to see what was happening.

The person giving the injection filled his syringe from the bottle and then thrust the needle directly into the heart of the seated prisoner and emptied the contents of the syringe. Most prisoners fell dead almost immediately, but some lived for seconds or even minutes. The executioners boasted about their records. ("Three in a minute...") And they did not wait until the doomed person really died. During his agony he was taken from both sides under the armpits and thrown into a pile of corpses in another room opposite.

And the next took his place on the stool. Approximately fifty people could be killed using this method during one and a half to two hours.