Hoss biography

Nazi commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp (1901–1947)

"Höss" and "Hoess" redirect here. This article is about the commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. For the surname, see Höss (surname). For the Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler, see Rudolf Hess.

Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; German:[hœs]; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust.

Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed.

Höss was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. During his imprisonment, at the request of the Polish authorities, Höss wrote his memoirs, released in English under the title Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.

Early life

Höss was born in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. He lived with his parents, Lina (née Speck) and Franz Xaver Höss. Höss was the eldest of three children and the only son. He was baptized Rudolf Franz Ferdinand on 11 December 1901. Höss was a lonely child with no companions of his own age until he entered elementary school; all of his associations were with adults. Höss claimed in his autobiography that he was briefly abducted by Ro

Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was the Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Höss was born on November 25, 1900, in Baden-Baden, a town in southwest Germany. In high school, he trained for the priesthood yet his father’s death and the outset of World War I changed those career plans. In 1916, he joined the German army where he would be wounded three times and was twice awarded the Iron Cross. In 1920, Hoss joined the East Prussian Free Corps (Freikorps) and took part in the suppression of disturbances in Latvia and in quelling workers who were staging a revolt in the Ruhr. It was through the Freikorps, in early 1922, that Hoss was first introduced to Adolf Hitler.

Hoss immediately joined the Nazi Party and renounced his affiliation with the Catholic Church. When France and Belgium entered and occupied the Upper Rhine region in January 1923, Höss participated in the assassination of Freikorpsman Walter Kadow and was captured and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 1928 as part of the general amnesty.

In 1933, Hoss joined the SS and, in 1934, he was attached to the SS at Dachau. On August 1, 1938, Hoss was appointed as adjutant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until his appointment as Kommandant of the newly-built camp at Auschwitz in early 1940.

In May 1941, SS commander Heinrich Himmler told Höss that Hitler had given orders for the final solution of the Jewish question and that "I have chosen the Auschwitz camp for this purpose." Höss converted Auschwitz into an extermination camp and installed gas chambers and crematoria that were capable of killing 2,000 people every hour. Counting corpses with the cool dedication of a trained bookkeeper, he went home each night to the loving embrace of his own family who lived on the camp grounds.

Watching millions of innocent human beings dissolve in the gas chambers, burn in the crematoriums and their teeth melt into gold bars, Höss wrote poetry about the  of Au

Rudolf Hoss has been called the greatest mass murderer in history. As the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz, he supervised the killing of more than 1.1 million people. Unlike many of his Nazi colleagues who denied either knowing about or participating in the Holocaust, Hoss remorselessly admitted, both at the Nuremberg war crimes trial and in his memoirs, that he sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers, frankly describing the killing process. His "innovations" included the use of hydrogen cyanide (derived from the pesticide Zyklon B) in the camp's gas chambers. Hoss lent his name to the 1944 operation that gassed 430,000 Hungarian Jews in 56 days, exceeding the capacity of the Auschwitz's crematoria.

This biography follows Hoss throughout his life, from his childhood through his Nazi command and eventual reckoning at Nuremberg. Using historical records and Hoss' autobiography, it explores the life and mind of one of history's most notorious and sadistic individuals.