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The pesticide was used as a lethal chemical weapon by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust gas chambers of the Auschwitz Birkenau and Majdanek extermination camps.
Zyklon B was used in the concentration camps initially for delousing to control typhus. In September 1941, the first experiments were performed in Auschwitz I to test the killing of humans with the poison. Zyklon B was provided by the German companies Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung GmbH) and Testa (Tesch und Stabenow, Internationale Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung m.b.h.), under license from patentholder IG Farben. The Nazis ordered Degesch to produce Zyklon B without the warning odorant, in breach of German law. After the war, two directors of Tesch were tried by a British military court and were executed for their part in supplying the chemical. In an example of twisted irony, Zyklon B was originally developed in the 1920s by Fritz Haber, a German Jew who was forced to emigrate in 1934.
The use of the word Zyklon (German for cycloneThis article is about the meteorological phenomenon. For other uses of the term see Cyclone (disambiguation). In meteorology, a cyclone refers to the rotation of a volume of air about an area of low atmospheric pressure. Cyclones are responsible for a wid) continues to prompt angry reactions from Jewish groups. In 2002 both Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte and Umbro were forced to withdraw from attempts to use or trademark the term for their products.
Zyklon A was also used as a pesticide, with methyl cyanoformate as the active agent. Its manufacture was banned under the Treaty of VersaillesThe Treaty of Versailles of 1919 is the peace treaty created as a result of the six-month-long Paris Peace Conference of 1919 which put an official end to World War I. The ceremonial signing of the treaty with Germany occurred June 28, 1919. The treaty wa as it could be an intermediate in poison gas production.