In the May 2026 episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Dr. Naomi Yavneh Klos (pic­tured), Dean of the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, and a promi­nent schol­ar of the Holocaust. Dr. Yavneh Klos is a found­ing mem­ber of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, a New-Orleans area group formed to oppose the use of nitro­gen gas as a method of exe­cu­tion in Louisiana. She joins DPI’s pod­cast dur­ing Jewish American Heritage Month to dis­cuss the his­tor­i­cal ties between lethal gas exe­cu­tions and the use of gas as a tool of geno­cide dur­ing the Holocaust. 

Dr. Yavneh Klos describes her path from Renaissance schol­ar­ship to Holocaust edu­ca­tor, explain­ing that her work with the Anne Frank House and the exhib­it Anne Frank: A History for Today led her to explore how empa­thy and com­pas­sion can be cul­ti­vat­ed in stu­dents. That same com­mit­ment to his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry and human dig­ni­ty has also shaped her advo­ca­cy work. Dr. Yavneh Klos explains that the Jews Against Gassing Coalition was formed after Louisiana passed leg­is­la­tion in 2024 autho­riz­ing nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions, and that while the Jewish com­mu­ni­ty holds divid­ed views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself, oppo­si­tion to exe­cu­tion by gas was one area of unan­i­mous agree­ment — what she describes as ​“vehe­ment opposition.” 

Addressing the his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion direct­ly, Dr. Yavneh Klos empha­sizes that the coali­tion does not equate the exe­cu­tion of a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er with the Holocaust but main­tains that using lethal gas a method of state-sanc­tioned exe­cu­tions is insep­a­ra­ble from using the same method to mur­der approx­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple in Nazi gas cham­bers. She traces the his­to­ry of gas as a method of exe­cu­tion from ear­ly Nazi exper­i­men­ta­tion tar­get­ing peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, to mobile gas vans, and to the exter­mi­na­tion camps at Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka. In Dr. Yavneh Klos’ view, even those who sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should find exe­cu­tion by gas deeply trou­bling because of its lega­cy, and she argues that the legal con­cept of ​“crimes against human­i­ty” was itself a response to pre­cise­ly these kinds of killings. 

Dr. Yavneh Klos also rais­es human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns about how nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out, not­ing that wit­ness­es to nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions in Alabama have report­ed pris­on­ers strug­gling and writhing for min­utes. She push­es back on the argu­ment that the his­tor­i­cal use of gas exe­cu­tions jus­ti­fies today’s use, not­ing that ​“there are lots of prece­dents in American his­to­ry that don’t need to be per­pet­u­at­ed.” On the treat­ment of death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, Dr. Yavneh Klos is straight­for­ward: ​“They’re already dying. We don’t need to make them suf­fer. That’s not jus­tice.” She more broad­ly argues that a community’s stature is dimin­ished ​“when we claim we are enact­ing jus­tice using the meth­ods of a geno­ci­dal authoritarian system.” 

Although the coalition’s bill seek­ing to reverse the use of nitro­gen gas in exe­cu­tions failed to make it out of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Dr. Yavneh Klos reflects on the efforts of her coali­tion as mean­ing­ful. For Dr. Yavneh Klos, the coali­tion unit­ed Jewish com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with sharply dif­fer­ing views on the death penal­ty, and that expe­ri­ence, she says, offers ​“a pow­er­ful mod­el for nav­i­gat­ing in today’s polit­i­cal­ly divid­ed soci­ety,” and gives her hope ​“that we as mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ties can find com­mon ground on which to move forward.”

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Listen to Naomi Yavneh Klos on Gas Executions, Holocaust Memory, and Common Ground