For Jews, Louisiana’s nitrogen gas execution law recalls the terrors of the Holocaust

Just a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel from New Orleans to Ukraine through my advocacy work. I rode trains throughout Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. 

As I traveled from city to city, I carried Eli Wiesel’s powerful Holocaust-related book “Night,” and imagined what my fellow European Jews had lived through 80-plus years ago when forced into cattle cars on their arduous and final journey to death camps most had never heard of. 

Now we know they will never be forgotten: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and of course Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I imagined the horrors of arriving at one of these camps in the middle of the night with dogs barking and Nazi officers shouting out cruel instructions. Innocent men, women and children, totally fatigued, hungry and thirsty, wondering what they had done wrong to be brought to this hell.

I imagined the horrors of being separated from their spouses, children and other loved ones, and forced to go through a selection process, where a Nazi doctor determined who shall live and who shall die.

I imagined the horrors and indignity of being told to strip naked so you could enter what the Nazi’s claimed were only shower rooms.

I imagined the fear and horrors of the doors being closed and locked behind you, people crying and praying as lethal poisonous gas, not water, came out of the shower heads. People fighting for a last gasp of air, knowing that this was the end of life for you and others you so dearly loved.

And, finally, I imagined the inhumanity and evil perpetrated upon these gassed victims whose only sin was to be Jewish as they were immediately carried away to the nearby crematoria for incineration.

For at least 3 million Jews, this was reality and the result of the “Final Solution” determined by Hitler and other Nazi leaders at the infamous Wannsee Conference in 1942. For the Nazis, it was not enough to just mass shoot Jews and other so-called undesirables by the Einsatzggruppen as happened throughout most of East Europe. 

Nor was it enough to later kill Jews through experimental gas vans designed for mass killing. No, the Nazi’s needed a way to kill Jews faster and to kill more of them: and thus the creation of gas chambers at the death camps.

It is hard for people of good conscience to even imagine today that such evil could exist amongst mankind. How could human beings perpetrate such evil upon other human beings? But, sadly, all of this madness occurred.

Yet, despite their best efforts to totally destroy the Jewish people, we survived and made new homes in Europe, South America, Australia, Israel and America. Many of these survivors coming to America made their way to New Orleans and elsewhere in the great state of Louisiana. 

They became leaders in their communities, adding a cultural richness wherever they lived, and contributing to all that makes Louisiana so great. Indeed, the bond and history between Louisiana and its Jewish communities has always been strong and a source of pride for all of us!

It is because of this historical bond that we believe using nitrogen or other forms of gassing should forever be removed as a method of execution. It is not only unnecessary but, for survivors and all Jewish people, brings back images of evil and horror which should never again see the light of day.

As a country founded upon the principles of democracy, we can freely debate the wisdom of bills coming from our legislative halls. But, as it relates to the topic of gassing as an allowed method of execution, there should truly be no debate in removing it from our current laws. 

Gov. Landry and the Louisiana Legislature, please do what is right, not only for Jews but for all the good people of our great state. 

Kein Y’hi Ratzon. May it be God’s will.