Title

Stock Certificate for Degussa and Dessauer (1000 Reichsmark)

Authors

Object ID

2019.2.10

Object Name

Certificate, Stock

Date

1-28-1942

Files

Description

Certificate, detailed markings within pink center and brown border inside a plain white border, "Reichsmark 1000.-" printed in top right corner.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

By 1942 the Jews of Europe were marked for total extermination and by 1942, when these stock certificates were issued, Zyklon-B had become the preferred means of industrial scale murder in the Third Reich. Ultimately more than one million people were murdered in gas chambers at extermination centers such as Auschwitz and Majdanek through the Nazis’ use of canisters of Zyklon-B. Death from dropping crystals of Zyklon-B down openings in the gas-chamber room was terrifying, painful and agonizingly slow, and was visited on men, women, and children. The canisters themselves - the Zyklon-B packaging system - were developed by Bruno Tesch and Walter Heerdt of Degusa, a German specialty chemical firm. Degusa had already purchased Degesch, the company that developed the hydrogen cyanide-based formula of Zyklon in 1922 for use as a pesticide. Degusa thus owned the chemical formula and the packaging system for Zyklon-B. By the year of these stock certificates [2019.2.10 and 2019.2.11] the Nazis, through a demonic matrix of major German industrial firms, were able to achieve the ultimate rationalization of the processes underlying the mass production of death: Dessauer produced and manufactured Zyklon-B; Degussa owned the formula; Degesch provided the labels and canisters; Tesch and Stabenow (Testa) distributed Zyklon-B for Degesch to the SS for its use in concentration camps; industrial conglomerate I.G. Farben, whose massive facilities at Auschwitz employed slave labor, controlled more than 40 percent of Degesch; and Topf and Sohne made the crematoria and its ventilation system. Bruno Tesch’s role in selling Zyklon-B to the SS with the certain knowledge of its use in murdering humans cost him his life: he was tried for his crimes and executed in 1946.>/p>

[Related item: 2019.2.11]

Dimensions

8 1/4 x 11 3/4"

Keywords

Degussa, Dessauer, Degesch, Zyklon B, Bruno Tesch

Subcollection

Concentration

Recommended Citation

"Stock Certificate for Degussa and Dessauer (1000 Reichsmark)" (1942). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2019.2.10.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1414