Editing Gas chamber (section)

==Soviet Union==
{{main|Gas van}}
The invention of mobile gas chambers, based on adapted vans with the storage compartment sealed and exhaust redirected inside, was attributed to Soviet [[NKVD]] officer [[:ru:Берг, Исай Давидович|Isai D. Berg]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1265324 |title=По пути следования к месту исполнения приговоров отравлялись газом |first1=Евгений |last1=Жирнов|date=11 September 2009 |issue=44 |pages=56 |via=Kommersant}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.novayagazeta.ru/apps/gulag/2389.html|title=Человек в кожаном фартуке|work=novayagazeta.ru|url-status=live|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150710173736/http://www.novayagazeta.ru/apps/gulag/2389.html|archivedate=2015-07-10}}</ref> Starting in 1937, he supervised execution of prisoners by gassing them in trucks.<ref name="merridale">Catherine Merridale. ''Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia''. [[Penguin Books]], 2002 {{ISBN|0-14-200063-9}} p. 200</ref><ref name="colton">Timothy J. Colton. ''Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis''. [[Harvard University Press#Related publishers, imprints, and series|Belknap Press]], 1998.  {{ISBN|0-674-58749-9}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=lXM2H6tWHskC&dq=gas+chamber+butovo&pg=PA286 p. 286], [http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1265324 Е. Жирнов. «По пути следования к месту исполнения приговоров отравлялись газом». Коммерсантъ Власть, № 44, 2007. ]</ref> Providing testimony of this when he was himself arrested by the NKVD in August 1938,<ref name="Lipkov">[https://magazines.gorky.media/continent/2005/123/ya-k-vam-travoyu-prorastu.html Александр ЛИПКОВ, "Я к вам травою прорасту…"], Alexander Lipkov, [[Kontinent]], N 123, 2005.</ref> Berg stated that he and a team of secret police officers suffocated batches of prisoners with engine fumes in camouflaged cars while transporting them from the [[Taganka Prison|Taganka]] or [[Butyrka prison|Butyrka]] prisons in Moscow<ref name="novgazet">[[Nikita Petrov]]. [https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2010/08/02/2213-chelovek-v-kozhanom-fartuke Н. Петров. «Человек в кожаном фартуке»]. ''[[Novaya Gazeta]]'' (ru:Новая газета, спецвыпуск «Правда ГУЛАГа» от 02.08.2010 № 10 (31)) {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100806171843/http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/gulag10/00.html |date=2010-08-06}}.</ref> to the [[Mass graves from Soviet mass executions|mass graves]] at the [[Butovo firing range]], where the prisoners were subsequently buried.<ref name="colton" /> Examining documents related to Berg, ''[[Kommersant]]'' reported that Berg had led of the administrative and economic department of the [[Moscow Oblast]] NKVD; Berg stated that he acted on orders from the higher NKVD administration.<ref name="kommersant">[https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1265324  On the way to the place of their execution, the convicts were poisoned with gas (Russian)], by Yevgeniy Zhirnov,  [[Kommersant]]</ref><ref name="two-hundred">[[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] [[Two Hundred Years Together]] (Двести лет вместе), volume=2, Москва, Русский путь, 2002, {{ISBN|5-85887-151-8}}, p. 297 According to [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], "I. D. Berg was ordered to carry out the orders of the [[NKVD troika]] of the Moscow Oblast, and he was decently carrying out this assignment: he was driving people to the executions by shooting. But, when he arrived at the Moscow Oblast, three troikas were carrying out their sessions simultaneously, the executioners could not cope with the load. They hit upon a solution: to strip the victims naked, tie them up, plug their mouths and throw them into a closed truck which was disguised as a bread van from the outside. During their transportation the fuel gases came into the truck, and when they were delivered to the farthest [execution] ditch the arrestees were already dead."</ref><ref name="novgazet" />

Gas vans were also reportedly used in other parts of the Soviet Union.<ref>[http://old.kr-eho.info/index.php?name=News&op=article&sid=8849 Газовые душегубки: сделано в СССР (Gas vans: made in the USSR)] by Dmitry Sokolov, ''Echo of Crimea'', 09.10.2012</ref> According to high-ranking NKVD officer [[:ru:Шрейдер, Михаил Павлович|Mikhail Schreder]], they were used in the city of [[Ivanovo]] similar to that in Moscow: "When a closed truck arrived at the place of execution, all convicts were dragged out of cars in an unconscious state. On the way, they were almost killed by exhaust fumes redirected through a special tube into the closed cargo compartment of the truck."<ref>[https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2047681 Хроника событий 1937 года (Chronicle of the events of the year 1937)], by Evgeniy Zhirnov, [[Kommersant]], №42, 22.10.2012, page 10.</ref><ref>Шрейдер М.П. (Shreider M.P.) [http://www.urantia-s.com/library/shreider/nkvd НКВД изнутри: Записки чекиста. (NKVD from within. Notes by Chekist )], Moscow: Возвращение, 1995. – p. 78, [https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=book&num=940 full text online]</ref> Soviet dissident [[Petro Grigorenko]] described in his memoirs a story told by his close friend and former prisoner of Gulag Vasil Teslia. He described killings of "[[kulak]]s" in a prison in [[Omsk]]. According to him, more than 27 people were loaded to a truck, which moved away from the prison, but soon returned back. "When the doors were opened, black smoke poured out and corpses of people rained down." The corpses were then placed into the basement. Teslia watched such executions during whole week.<ref>Григоренко П.Г. В подполье можно встретить только крыс… ([[Petro Grigorenko]], "In the underground one can meet only rats") — Нью-Йорк, Издательство «Детинец», 1981, page 403, [https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=page&num=9485 Full text of the book (Russian)]</ref>