In response to Arizona refurbishing its gas chamber for executions, the American Jewish Committee said the “decision to employ Zyklon B gas as a means of execution defies belief. Whether or not one supports the death penalty as a general matter, there is general agreement in American society that a gas devised as a pesticide, and used to eliminate Jews, has no place in the administration of criminal justice.”

Janice Friebaum, vice president of the Phoenix Holocaust Association, which educates people about the Holocaust, told NBC News, “Uniformly, Holocaust survivors and their descendants are nothing short of horrified of this form of execution being utilized.” Friebaum said that the gas chamber was a “Nazi innovation, and it was positively inhumane. To think our ‘civilized society’ today in the state of Arizona would utilize this Nazi innovation, I believe, is tantamount to giving posthumous approval to the evils conducted by the Nazis. We’re basically saying what the Nazis did was OK.”