Jewish community in Louisiana protests gas executions on death row, drawing parallels to historical persecution and genocide of Jewish people.
Young Leo Lewis' grandmother paid him a heart-wrenching visit before he was sent to a forced labor camp by the Nazis. She warned him, "I won't be here when you return," but she also prophesied, "You'll survive this." True to her words, Leo and his future wife, Zelda, were the sole survivors of their families during the Holocaust.
Now, Leo is a member of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, a New Orleans-area group that opposes the state's efforts to use nitrogen gas for executions. This method, they argue, grimly recalls the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany, with nearly half killed using poison gas in death camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Jews Against Gassing Coalition, though not universally opposed to the death penalty, believes the use of nitrogen gas as a means of execution in present-day Louisiana is an equally repugnant practice. "To reintroduce a method that was state-sanctioned murder and genocide of millions... in the 21st century appears equally abhorrent," Naomi Yavneh Klos, a member of the group and a professor at Loyola University New Orleans, asserted.
Originally intended for Jessie Hoffman, the first person to be executed using nitrogen gas, the procedure was halted this week by a federal judge due to concerns about the inmate's "psychological pain, suffering, and terror." State officials have appealed this decision.
Critics argue that the method causes unnecessary suffering, evidenced by inmates allegedly shaking during recent gas executions in Alabama, the only other state that has used the method. Despite Hoffman's case taking its course, the Jews Against Gassing Coalition remains staunchly against nitrogen gas executions.
"As Jewish people carrying the legacy and trauma of the Holocaust, the use of gas as a form of state-sponsored murder is anathema to what we believe in," Yavneh Klos stated. "It's sadistic and unusual punishment, and it also reflects the procedures of a totalitarian, genocidal state."
The Jews Against Gassing Coalition formed in response to the Louisiana legislature's authorization of nitrogen hypoxia as a legal execution method during a special session on crime called by Governor Jeff Landry in early 2024. While some saw the method as painless and reliable, it horrified members of the Jewish community, who sued to block its implementation. However, their efforts to pass a bill to overturn its inclusion ultimately failed.
Growing up in Buffer, New York, and attending a Jewish day school, Sara Lewis, a descendant of survivors, was intimately familiar with the horrors of the gas chambers. "I think some legislators just didn't realize that this also affected people who were technically their constituents," she expressed. In her view, the link between nitrogen gas executions and the murder of millions of Jews was undeniable.
- Sara Lewis, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, expressed her concern about the Louisiana legislature's authorization of nitrogen hypoxia as a legal execution method, stating, "I think some legislators just didn't realize that this also affected people who were technically their constituents."
- Young Leo Lewis, a survivor of the Holocaust along with his future wife, Zelda, is now a member of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, a group that opposes the use of nitrogen gas for executions in Louisiana.
- The Jews Against Gassing Coalition, including member Naomi Yavneh Klos, argues that the use of nitrogen gas as a means of execution in present-day Louisiana is an "equation of abhorrence" due to its grim similarities with the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews were murdered using poison gas in death camps.
