Container of the poison gas Zyklon B in the exhibition of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, 2001. The poison gas was used to murder prisoners, primarily in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, but also in the concentration camps Majdanek, Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen and Stutthof. When inhaled, the active ingredient hydrogen cyanide causes the respiration of the body’s cells to stop and leads to an agonising death by asphyxiation. At least 7,200 Sinti and Roma were murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and 1944.
