Gas Chamber

Meidner’s charcoal drawing of a gas chamber was probably produced prior to the spring of 1945. Following the liberation of the extermination camps, numerous photos and eyewitness accounts circulated documenting the fact that in the majority of the death camps the gas chambers were disguised as shower blocks, complete with shower heads, in order to prevent panic among those being sent to their deaths. This detail, intriguing in its perfidy, does not appear in Meidner’s depiction, suggesting that the drawing was produced before such photos and accounts were published.