“HOESS, RUDOLF FRANZ (1900-1947)… In 1934 he was attached to the SS
at Dachau … 1940 given rank of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer in command at
the Auschwitz camp. [He] was responsible for the execution of more
than 2.5 million inmates, not counting a half million who were allowed
to starve to death. He performed his job so well that he was commended
in a 1944 SS report that called him “a true pioneer in this area
because of his new ideas and educational methods.” He was sentenced to
death at Warsaw and was executed several days later at Auschwitz.
At the fulcrum of the extermination system in Poland were the camps at
Auschwitz, Maidanek, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, and Sobibor….
Auschwitz was the most notorious of the extermination centers. At the
height of its activity Auschwitz could house more the 100,000 men and
women and could provide for the gassing and incineration of 12,000
prisoners a day…. The .. gas chambers could accommodate 2,000
prisoners at one time. Rudolf Hoess testified at Nuremberg: ‘When I
set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Zyclon B which
was crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into the death-chamber
from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people
in the death-chamber, depending on climatic conditions. We knew when
the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually
waited for half-an-hour before we opened the doors and removed the
bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos
[‘Sonderkommandos’ made up of prisoners who were partially trusted]
took off the rings and extracted the gold teeth of the corpses.’
‘We tried to fool the victims into believing that they were going
through a delousing process. Of course, at times they realized our
true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties.
Frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but we
found them and we sent the children to be exterminated. We were
required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but the foul
and nauseating stench from the continued burning of bodies permeated
the whole area and all the people living around Auschwitz knew what
was going on.'” (Snyder)
“The gassing was carried out in the detention cells of Block 11.
Proctected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded
cells, death came instantaneously the moment the Zyklon B was thrown
in. A short, almost smothered cry, and it was all over…. I must
even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass
extermination of the Jews was to start soon, and at that time neither
Eichmann nor I was certain as to how these mass killings were to be
carried out. In would be by gas, but we did not know which gas and how
it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a
procedure.” (Museum, 92-95)
Work Cited
Museum w Oswiecimu. KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS Hoess, Broad, Kremer,
Second edition, Museum w Oswiecimu, 1978.
Snyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon
House, 1989. ISBN 1-55778-144-3
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Hoess – “A True Pioneer”
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog’s Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Dachau,Hoess
Archive/File: camps/auschwitz hoess.01 people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.01
Archive/File: holocaust/germany/hoess hoess.01
Last-Modified: 1992/10/17
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Hoess – Captured on the run….
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Old Frog’s Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Hoess,I.G. Farben,Kaltenbrunner
Archive/File: camps/auschwitz hoess.02 people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.02
Archive/File: holocaust/germany/hoess hoess.02
Last-Modified: 1992/10/17
“…He joined the Nazi party in 1922 and, in the next year, was implicated
in the murder of a school teacher. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was
release in a general amnesty in 1928, into the arms, as it were, of Adolf
Hitler. He was trained in apprenticeship positions at Dachau and
Sachenhausen and, in 1940, having amply demonstrated his loyalty, he was
given the commandant’s post at Auschwitz. He managed its murder machine
until December 1943, when his record earned him appointment as chief of the
Central Administration for Camps.
As the inevitability of the German defeat became clear even to the Nazi
elite, the concern to escape retributive punishment that overwhelmed the
Nazis in the other camps took priority at Auschwitz too. It was imperative
to destroy all implicating evidence and simultaneously kill off as many
inmates as possible. The rest were to be shipped to camps that had not yet
been endangered by the Allied sweep. As early as November 1944, the gas
chambers that had choked out the lives of millions were closed and blown
up. Incriminating documents were shredded and burned. In his autobiography,
written later in prison, Hoess described how, having been promoted to an
office in Berlin, he had tried to get back to Auschwitz to help supervise
the transport of the Jews. Thwarted, or perhaps realizing the folly of
moving toward the Russians, Hoess joined in the exodus toward the
Schleswig-Holstein border of Denmark on the northwest. He wrote: `It was
a gruesome journey, from one clump of trees to the next, as the enemy’s low
flying planes continually machine-gunned the escape route.’ <2> The roads
were clogged with dying prisoners, disoriented civilians, and deflated SS
warriors and soldiers. En route, the villages were pillaged for food; but
the civilian inhabitants, fully aware that they could expect no quarter
from the Russians, had already turned tail, loaded down with whatever they
could carry. When the news was flashed that the Fuehrer himself had
committed suicide, all discipline collapsed.
Hoess was captured in May 1945, along with several hundred thousand Germans
and collaborators. He escaped early recognition and took work on a farm
near Flensburg, but was rearrested by the British some months later. He had
carried, as did all high-ranking Nazis, a poison phial, but claimed it had
been broken, and so he was denied the honorable exit of suicide.
Hoess was a key witness in Nuremberg at the trial of one of his chiefs,
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was to be convicted and executed in October 1946.
He also testified at the trial of the tycoons of I.G. Farben, Germany’s
leading industrial firm, indicted for their slave labor activities during
the war. In may he was delivered to the Poles, who had been waiting
impatiently to deal with him.
Hoess’s incarceration lasted almost a year. He used this enforced leisure
to write a ramblinb autobiography in which, though he denied responsibility
for many crimes attributed to him, he damned himself out of his own mouth.
He claimed to have been a `cog in the wheel of the great extermination
machine created by the Third Reich.’ Occasionally in the narrative there
were expressions of astonishment at the mild treatment he experienced from
his captors and at the fairness of his judges, `though they were nearly all
Jews.’ There was also recognition that his acts were not benevolent, as
when he described the gassing of nine hundred Russians with Zyklon B. `It
made me uncomfortable: I shuddered.'<3>
Hoess took pride in his exemplary family life, the devotion to his children
and his pets. He recalled, wistfully, how he had been obliged to tear
himself away from a Christmas gathering to attend to duties at the gas
chambers. The daily death quota then was still a mere 1,500, but he was
eager to make sure it was met. When one of his lieutenants was condemned to
death for his part in the Auschwitz murders, Hoess and his family lamented
`Such a compassionate man, too. When his pet canary died, he tenderly put
the body in a small box, covered it with a rose, and buried it under a rose
bush in the garden.'<4>
The evidence given at Hoess’s trial repeated, in good measure, what he had
written. He described, with the dispassion of a robot, how he had gradually
stepped up executions, beginning with a few hundred a day and then, as
methods were perfected, rising to 1,200. By mid-1942, facilities had been
sufficiently enlarged to dispatch 1,500 people over a twenty-four-hour
period for the smaller ovens, and up to 2,500 for the larger ones. By 1943,
when the Hungarian Jews were shipped in, a new daily peak of 12,000 was
achieved. Hoess described the final routines of the extermination process.
These were assigned to squads of Jewish prisoners, the Sondercommandos.
They marched the victims to the gas chambers, helped to undress them,
removed the corpses after the gassing, extracted gold from their teeth and
rings from their fingers, searched the orifices of their bodies for hidden
jewelry, cut off the hair of the women, and then carted the bodies to the
crematoria. Usually after several weeks of such service they were executed,
first because they were Jews but also so that they would not be witnesses
if ever testimony were required. One of the survivors, Dora Klein, who
served as a nurse, wrote 1I had a feeling that I was in a place which was
half hell and half lunatic asylum.'”
Hoess was tried in Warsaw, in March of 1947, and condemned to death. He was
hanged on April 7.
<2> Hoess, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz: Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.
p. 190
<3> Ibid., p. 24
<4> ibid., p. 25
Extracted from—————————————————
“THE REDEMPTION OF THE UNWANTED”, Abram L. Sachar (New York: St.
Martin’s/Marek, 1983.
—————————————————————–
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Ho”ss Speaks
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog’s Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Dachau,Auschwitz,Hoess
Archive/File: camps/auschwitz hoess.03 people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.03
Archive/File: holocaust/germany/hoess hoess.03
Last-Modified: 1994/05/05
[Ed. note: The following article was originally posted to the net as
<[email protected]> in July, 1992.]
I hate to flog a dead horse, but I thought those interested in the Holocaust
and Holocaust revisionism might want to read an account by Rudolf Hoess, “a
member of the NSDAP since 1922; a member of the SS since 1934; a member of
the Waffen-SS since 1939” and “a member from 1 December 1934 of the SS Guard
Unit, the so-called Deathshead Formation [Totenkopf Verband].”
“I have been constantly associated with the administration of concentration
camps since 1934, serving at Dachau until 1938; then as Adjutant in
Sachenhausen from 1938 to May 1, 1940, when I was appointed Commandant of
Auschwitz. I commmanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that
at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing
and burning…. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately
20,000 Russian prisoners of war,…100,000 German Jews, and great numbers
of citizens…from…other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian
Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944….
Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer of 1941 and
continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz
until the first of December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties
…that these mass executions continued as stated above.
The “final solution” of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination
of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities
at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the general
government three other extermination camps; Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek.
…[W]hen I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B,
which was a crystallized prussic acid [prussic acid is simply HCN, hydrogen
cyanide. -Ed R.] which we dropped into the death chamber from a small
opening. It took 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber….
We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.
[More deleted for brevity]
“I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are
true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion;
after reading over the statements, I have signed and executed the same
at Nuremberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess”
Taken as reproduced in Aspects of Western Civilization (sic), edited by
Perry M. Rogers, pp.385-387.
