On April 16, 1947, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoss–the Kommandant of the
most infamous death camp–Auschwitz-Birkenau–was hanged after a
lengthy trial in Warsaw, Poland, for “crimes committed against the
Polish people.” The gallows were erected just a few steps away from
Auschwitz Crematoria I, the first gas chamber to use Cydon B gas. By
the judgment of history and by his own admission, Rudolf Hoss is the
greatest mass murderer of all time. He was the founder and driving
force in the development of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex and the
more than thirty subcamps of the sprawling Auschwitz complex.
Hundreds of books and stories about camp life in Auschwitz have been
written describing the prisoners’ experiences, but only one SS
officer wrote at length about the camp from the SS viewpoint. These
memoirs of Rudolf Hoss narrate the development and administration of
the largest killing center ever created.
The memoirs, profiles, and letters of Kommandant Rudolf Hoss were
written between October 1946 and April 1947 at the suggestion of Jan
Sehn, the prosecuting attorney for the Polish War Crimes Commission
in Warsaw. Hoss wrote explanations of the camp regulations,
described his impressions of various personalities with whom he
dealt, and wrote at length about the implementation of the Final
Solution. The initial descriptions were written to help Hoss recall
events that were brought up during his trial.
The translated documents that constitute Death Dealer, with the
exception of the appendices, were written by Rudolf Hoss with pencil
on low-grade paper. When he completed a section, he wrote the month,
the year, and his signature. Often he would just sign his last
name–Hoss, or just simply H. He wrote on one side of each sheet of
paper, then turned the sheet over and continued on the back,
numbering only the first page, designating it as page 1. Page 2
would really indicate that there were four sides written about each
topic. The briefest account was a half page about the SS tattoos.
The longest section is about his life, which consists of 114 sheets
of paper, or 228 pages. The penciled writings usually begin with
sharp clarity, deteriorating to a flattened-out scrawl. This tends
to indicate that Hoss was not allowed to keep a knife to sharpen the
pencil.
From a careful review of the actual handwritten documents, one can
deduce that Hoss reread what he wrote, because he added phrases
between the written lines to help clarify what he was attempting to
explain. He also retraced a weakly written word or phrase with a
newly sharpened pencil to make the words more legible. In some
cases, the aging of the paper has made the task of reading the
penciled writings more difficult, but by no means impossible.
The archival assembly of Hoss’s writings are twice numbered, once by
Hoss himself at the top or upper-left-hand corners, such as -42-, and
once again in the lower-right or lower-left corner, such as a 356
circled in red pencil. Mr. Tadeusz Iwaszko, the original archivist
from the very beginning of the Auschwitz Museum in 1948, stated that,
“It was necessary to put the manuscript in an order to facilitate
microfilming and photocopying. Since the memoirs of Hoss’s life were
the most requested, they were placed first, even though it was the
last section Hoss wrote.” The section entitled “The Final Solution to
the Jewish Question at KL Auschwitz” was placed second. The
personalities he described follow.
As Jan Sehn and Hoss became more comfortable with each other, Sehn
asked Hoss to write about some of the people and try to recall some
of the documents that had been destroyed when Auschwitz was being
evacuated because of the approaching Soviet armies. Sehn also asked
Hoss to write about some of the people who were responsible for the
major decisions concerning the founding and construction of
Auschwitz-Birkenau, such as Himmler, Pohl, and Eicke. The others
were added as requested by Sehn. Many have never been published
anywhere before. After Hoss had completed the anecdotal sections, he
remarked to Sehn one day that there was nothing to do in his jail
cell in Cracow. This comment spurred Sehn to suggest that Hoss write
about himself. This section is often referred to by historians as
the “Autobiography of Rudolf Hoss.” Ho”ss’s last writings are two
letters to his wife and children and the request that his wedding
ring be sent to his wife after his execution. These have also never
before been published in the United States and are presented in this
book to provide the reader with a deeper look into Ho”ss the human
being rather than Ho”ss the zealous Nazi who followed orders without
question.
Just after his capture in 1946, the British Security Police were able
to extract a statement from Ho”ss by beating him and filling him with
liquor. Ho”ss states in his autobiography that he doesn’t remember
what was in that statement. It does not differ in any great degree
from the section entitled, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question
in KL Auschwitz.” The later section, however, does contain more
detail than the original forced statement to the British
interrogators.
There are fanatical groups in the United States, France, and even
Australia who call themselves “The Revisionist Historians.” They
actually propose that Ho”ss never wrote these documents–that they
are a fraud. They also state that even if the documents were written
by Ho”ss, they were obviously done under duress from the “Communist
authorities” in Poland.
The “research” and the conclusions of these “historians” are absolute
rubbish. The documents written in Poland, the personal interviews
given to psychiatrist G. Martin Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials,
and Rudolf Ho”ss’s blunt testimony during the trial itself are
consistent with each other to such a degree that we can safely
believe that the memoirs written in Poland are an elaboration of the
Nuremberg testimony containing much more detail. The documents in
Death Dealer are consistent with other statements made by SS Corporal
Pery Broad and the diary of SS Dr. Kremer, who also were at
Auschwitz, and with personal accounts by prison- ers in the essential
facts. They differ only when Hoss attempts to recall exact dates and
numbers of prisoners. They also differ when Ho”ss writes about his
part in the Final Solution. Ho”ss maintains that he was only
following orders and being a good Nazi, and that he did this with no
thought or regard to moral consequences because “Befehl ist
Befehl”–” orders are orders,” therefore, they must be followed. It
is only at the end of his autobiography, written almost two years
after the war ended, that the moral implications of what Ho”ss did
occurred to him and began to affect him consciously. The two final
letters to his wife and his children reveal the heavy burden of guilt
that he was experiencing. Where Ho”ss does consciously lie is in
regard to his wife, Hedwig, and her knowledge of the mass killings,
in order to protect her and their children from the inevitable
postwar stigma and finger-pointing. This is evident by examining the
statements made to psychiatrist Gilbert in 1945 and his last
statements in 1947. Ho”ss revealed to Gilbert that one day at a
party hosted at the Ho”ss villa, his wife overheard comments made by
the Gauleiter of Silesia, Fritz Bracht, about the mass gassings
occurring at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later that evening in their
bedroom, she questioned him about what she had heard. Ho”ss told
Gilbert that he answered his wife’s questions. He said that this was
the only time he broke Himmler’s order about absolute secrecy and
discussed the Final Solution with anyone. Only Ho”ss and his wife
know what took place that evening and what the contents of the
conversation were. Thereafter, Frau Ho”ss refused to sleep in the
same bed with her husband “and physical intimacy between the couple
was rare. They became emotionally estranged from each other.”
Kommandant Ho”ss also pleads that he personally was unable to stop
the brutality at Auschwitz-Birkenau because his staff officers often
went against his orders. The truth is that he did nothing to prevent
it. When SS Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Liebehenschel became
Kommandant of Auschwitz after Ho”ss’s promotion, he ordered all the
SS and the Kapos in charge of prisoners to stop the random beatings.
Some Kapos thought that he was joking and continued this practice.
When Liebehenschel found out, he demoted them to ordinary prisoners
and they were put in a work Kommando where they had to do physical
labor. The beatings at Auschwitz stopped. Therefore, the truth is
that Ho”ss allowed the beatings and the terror to continue because it
served his purpose of maintaining camp discipline in the tradition
of Theodore Eicke. Although Ho”ss writes negatively about the
punishments Eicke inflicted on the prisoners, he fails to mention
that the camp regulations and punishments were formulated by Ho”ss
himself. He also fails to mention the executions of prisoners found
after escaping, or the “Stehbunker,” a punishment cell about three
feet square in which prisoners could only stand or crouch and into
which one to five prisoners were crammed with no food, no water, no
light, and only the air that filtered through the cracks in the
closed wooden door at floor level. The reader need only compare what
Ho”ss wrote to the chronology at the back of this book to see where
Ho”ss tries to protect himself. Ho”ss also hides the fact that he
and his family never had to sacrifice their wants or needs because of
the enormous treasure of food and clothing that the trainloads of
Jews brought to Auschwitz. In the midst of starvation, disease, and
death the Ho”ss family had everything. “Paradise” is what Frau Ho”ss
called Auschwitz. Even after her husband was promoted to Berlin,
Frau Ho”ss stayed in her villa at Auschwitz.
Despite these and other omissions, the Ho”ss memoirs are remarkable
in their graphic portrayal of many of the events at Auschwitz.
Ho”ss’s descriptions of the entire gassing procedure leave one
shaking one’s head and wondering how he could retell (and in many
cases psychologically relive) these gruesome stories, especially
since he was the cause of it all. Ho”ss acknowledges his part and
simply states, “History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of
all time.” He never denies that he is, but simply attempts to report
that, in spite of everything, “I still had a heart.”
There is no doubt that from the very beginning of his capture Ho”ss
realized that he would be executed. He states this in his
autobiography. Therefore, no serious argument can be made that Ho”ss
concocted the gassing stories to help the Allies find the major Nazi
war criminals guilty, as some claim. (Paskuly, 19-22)
Work Cited
Paskuly, Steven J., Ed. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at
Auschwitz, by Rudolph Ho”ss. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992
Archive/File: people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.intro.01
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac – The Memoirs of Rudolf Ho”ss – Authentic?
Summary: The editor of “Death Dealer,” the memoirs of Rudolf Ho”ff, the
Kommandant of the Auschwitz death camp, speaks in response to
those who would claim the memoirs are not authentic.
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: soc.history
Organization: The Old Frog’s Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Ho”ss
Archive/File: people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.intro.02
Last-modified: 1993/09/23
XRef: index holocaust/auschwitz
holocaust/auschwitz auschwitz.faq1
holocaust/auschwitz auschwitz.faq2
The text which follows constitutes the second half of Steven Paskuly’s
introduction to the Ho”ss memoirs, which he edited. (Those who would like to
consider the entire introduction are invited to send the following message
to [email protected]: GET HOLOCAUST HOESS.INTRO.01) These
comments deal specifically with charges that the Ho”ss memoirs are either
fakes, or were extracted under duress or torture.
The Ho”ss memoirs have always been a thorn in the side of Holocaust denial,
which is precisely why we should give them serious consideration, in my
opinion. The evidence they present is damning in the extreme, and cannot be
denied by reasonable men.
Note that Paskuly speaks frankly about the British treatment of Ho”ss – that
is gratifying and significant, since it is a point often raised by the IHR
and other apologists for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” What
the denial set carefully neglects to mention, for reasons which should be
obvious to dispassionate observers, forms the basis for this initial
paragraph:
“Just after his capture in 1946, the British Security Police were able
to extract a statement from Ho”ss by beating him and filling him with
liquor. Ho”ss states in his autobiography that he doesn’t remember
what was in that statement. It does not differ in any great degree
from the section entitled, ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Question
in KL Auschwitz.’ The later section, however, does contain more
detail than the original forced statement to the British interrogators.
There are fanatical groups in the United States, France, and even
Australia who call themselves ‘The Revisionist Historians.’ They
actually propose that Ho”ss never wrote these documents–that they
are a fraud. They also state that even if the documents were written
by Ho”ss, they were obviously done under duress from the ‘Communist
authorities’ in Poland.
The ‘research’ and the conclusions of these ‘historians’ are absolute
rubbish. The documents written in Poland, the personal interviews
given to psychiatrist G. Martin Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials,
and Rudolf Ho”ss’s blunt testimony during the trial itself are
consistent with each other to such a degree that we can safely
believe that the memoirs written in Poland are an elaboration of the
Nuremberg testimony containing much more detail. The documents in
Death Dealer are consistent with other statements made by SS Corporal
Pery Broad and the diary of SS Dr. Kremer, who also were at
Auschwitz, and with personal accounts by prisoners in the essential
facts. They differ only when Hoss attempts to recall exact dates and
numbers of prisoners. They also differ when Ho”ss writes about his
part in the Final Solution. Ho”ss maintains that he was only
following orders and being a good Nazi, and that he did this with no
thought or regard to moral consequences because “Befehl ist
Befehl” — “orders are orders,” therefore, they must be followed. It
is only at the end of his autobiography, written almost two years
after the war ended, that the moral implications of what Ho”ss did
occurred to him and began to affect him consciously. The two final
letters to his wife and his children reveal the heavy burden of guilt
that he was experiencing. Where Ho”ss does consciously lie is in
regard to his wife, Hedwig, and her knowledge of the mass killings,
in order to protect her and their children from the inevitable
postwar stigma and finger-pointing. This is evident by examining the
statements made to psychiatrist Gilbert in 1945 and his last
statements in 1947. Ho”ss revealed to Gilbert that one day at a
party hosted at the Ho”ss villa, his wife overheard comments made by
the Gauleiter of Silesia, Fritz Bracht, about the mass gassings
occurring at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later that evening in their
bedroom, she questioned him about what she had heard. Ho”ss told
Gilbert that he answered his wife’s questions. He said that this was
the only time he broke Himmler’s order about absolute secrecy and
discussed the Final Solution with anyone. Only Ho”ss and his wife
know what took place that evening and what the contents of the
conversation were. Thereafter, Frau Ho”ss refused to sleep in the
same bed with her husband “and physical intimacy between the couple
was rare. They became emotionally estranged from each other.”
Kommandant Ho”ss also pleads that he personally was unable to stop
the brutality at Auschwitz-Birkenau because his staff officers often
went against his orders. The truth is that he did nothing to prevent
it. When SS Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Liebehenschel became
Kommandant of Auschwitz after Ho”ss’s promotion, he ordered all the
SS and the Kapos in charge of prisoners to stop the random beatings.
Some Kapos thought that he was joking and continued this practice.
When Liebehenschel found out, he demoted them to ordinary prisoners
and they were put in a work Kommando where they had to do physical
labor. The beatings at Auschwitz stopped. Therefore, the truth is
that Ho”ss allowed the beatings and the terror to continue because it
served his purpose of maintaining camp discipline in the tradition
of Theodore Eicke. Although Ho”ss writes negatively about the
punishments Eicke inflicted on the prisoners, he fails to mention
that the camp regulations and punishments were formulated by Ho”ss
himself. He also fails to mention the executions of prisoners found
after escaping, or the “Stehbunker,” a punishment cell about three
feet square in which prisoners could only stand or crouch and into
which one to five prisoners were crammed with no food, no water, no
light, and only the air that filtered through the cracks in the
closed wooden door at floor level. The reader need only compare what
Ho”ss wrote to the chronology at the back of this book to see where
Ho”ss tries to protect himself. Ho”ss also hides the fact that he
and his family never had to sacrifice their wants or needs because of
the enormous treasure of food and clothing that the trainloads of
Jews brought to Auschwitz. In the midst of starvation, disease, and
death the Ho”ss family had everything. “Paradise” is what Frau Ho”ss
called Auschwitz. Even after her husband was promoted to Berlin,
Frau Ho”ss stayed in her villa at Auschwitz.
Despite these and other omissions, the Ho”ss memoirs are remarkable
in their graphic portrayal of many of the events at Auschwitz.
Ho”ss’s descriptions of the entire gassing procedure leave one
shaking one’s head and wondering how he could retell (and in many
cases psychologically relive) these gruesome stories, especially
since he was the cause of it all. Ho”ss acknowledges his part and
simply states, “History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of
all time.” He never denies that he is, but simply attempts to report
that, in spite of everything, “I still had a heart.”
There is no doubt that from the very beginning of his capture Ho”ss
realized that he would be executed. He states this in his
autobiography. Therefore, no serious argument can be made that Ho”ss
concocted the gassing stories to help the Allies find the major Nazi
war criminals guilty, as some claim.” (Paskuly, 19-22)
Work Cited
Paskuly, Steven J., Ed. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at
Auschwitz, by Rudolph Ho”ss. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992
