Rudolf Hoess

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Template:Distinguish Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß (in English commonly Hoess or Höss; November 25 1900 – April 16 1947) was a senior Nazi official, member of the SS and Waffen-SS (with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer) and commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. Image:Rudolf höß 2.jpg

Höß was born on November 25 1900 in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. Despite his father's wishes that he become a priest, he voluntarily joined the German army during World War I in 1915 immediately after his father's death. He was transferred to Turkey, where he rose to the rank of Sergeant and garnered the Iron Cross first and second class.

After the end of the war, Höß became a fighter for the Freikorps Roßbach in Upper Silesia, in the Baltic area and in the Ruhr basin. He joined the NSDAP in 1922, and was sentenced to ten years in jail in 1923 after his involvement in the murder of Walther Kadow; his accomplice Martin Bormann received a mere one year in prison. Hoess was released in 1928 again following a general amnesty and joined the völkisch Artamanen-Gesellschaft ("Artaman Society") in 1929.

Höß applied for SS membership in 1933 at a request from Heinrich Himmler and was accepted in 1934; he also became a member of the Totenkopfverband ("Death's Head Unit") on December 1. The same year, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was given the office of "Blockführer" ("block leader") in 1935.

In 1938, he received a promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer and became an adjutant in the Sachsenhausen camp. After joining the Waffen-SS in 1939, he became the commandant of Auschwitz in 1940, a position in which he stayed until he was ordered back in late 1943. During the time spent at Auschwitz, Höß organized the administrative side of the mass murders of the "Endlösung".

Image:Rudolf höß.jpg After being replaced as the Auschwitz commander by Arthur Liebehenschel on December 1 1943, Höß assumed Liebehenschel's former position as the chairman of Amt D I in Amtsgruppe D of the SS Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), where he introduced Zyklon B as a means to carry out the camp's mass murders; he also was appointed deputy of WVHA leader Richard Glücks.

On May 8 1944, however, Höß returned to Auschwitz at Heinrich Himmler's personal request to carry out the so-called "Aktion Höss" – the preparation of the death machinery in Auschwitz II Birkenau for the murder of the Hungarian Jews.

Höß was captured on March 11 1946 by British military police. During the Nuremberg trials he appeared as a witness in the trials of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Oswald Pohl and the IG Farben corporation. On May 25 1946, he was handed over to Poland and sentenced to death by hanging on April 2 1947. The sentence was carried out on April 16 in front of the entrance of the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp (see Auschwitz Trial).

In his autobiography, which was published in 1958 as Rudolf Hoess: Kommandant in Auschwitz and later as Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, he portrayed himself as having grown up with a "strong sense of duty" and avowed himself as a follower of the "high virtue of military obedience". In this book, he wrote:

"I reported the number of the Jews who were brought to Auschwitz to be killed as 2.5 million. This number comes from Eichmann, who gave it to Commander Glücks shortly before the destruction of Berlin. I myself never knew the real number, and I do not have possibilities to find out. I consider the number of 2.5 million much too high. Even Auschwitz was not able to do that."

Höß was married and had five children.

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Cultural references

Höß has been portrayed in the BBC television series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the "Final Solution" (2005) and by Colm Feore in the Canadian miniseries Nuremberg (2002). He was also briefly portrayed in the film Schindler's List (1993) as the SS officer at Auschwitz bribed by Schindler with a pouch of diamonds. He is the main character (as Rudolf Lang) in the novel La mort est Mon Métier (Death is My Trade, 1952) by French writer Robert Merle.

Höß (Günther Maria Halmer) also featured prominently in the miniseries "War and Remembrance".

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Quote

"These so-called ill-treatments and torturing in concentration camps, stories of which were spread everywhere amongst the people, and particularly by detainees who were liberated by the occupying armies, were not, as assumed inflicted methodically, but by individual leaders, sub-leaders and men who laid violent hands on them."
Rudolf Höß, post-war testimony

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