“It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless, the reasons behind the extermination program seemed right to me. I did not reflect on it at the time: I was given an order, and I had to carry it out… To this day, I cannot understand how I was able, in complete calm, to give the order to shoot…”.
Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess – one of the most important autobiographical documents written by a perpetrator of the Holocaust himself – the Nazi SS officer and commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp, who was responsible for the murder of millions of Jews and hundreds of thousands of victims of other nations at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, and one of the senior officials directly involved in carrying out the “Final Solution.” Published by The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York, 1959 – first English edition. Foreword by Lord Russell of Liverpool.
Rudolf Höss – commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp from 1940 to 1943, where the Nazis murdered approximately three million Jews. From its establishment in 1940 (he was responsible for its construction) until the end of 1943 – the peak year of mass extermination, he was the man who knew more than anyone else, both firsthand and as administrator, about the greatest crime committed by Nazi Germany. At the end of the war, Höss was found and captured by the British, handed over to the Polish authorities, tried, sentenced to death, returned to Auschwitz, and hanged there. During the period between his trial and execution, he was ordered to write this autobiography. Höss wrote it during his imprisonment in a Polish jail in the months of January–February 1947, after the preliminary investigations had been completed and before his sentence was carried out.
Höss was held under strict but relatively reasonable conditions, as the Polish authorities recognized the documentary value of his testimony. After intensive interrogations, he was asked to write the story of his life in his own words, with the goal of documenting the Auschwitz camp system from the perspective of its executor and chief administrator. Unlike other Nazi criminals, Höss did not deny his actions. On the contrary, he described in detail and with chilling composure his role as commandant of Auschwitz, the methods of extermination, and the orders he received. The investigators were struck by his ability to recall logistical details, names, numbers, and data as if he were drafting an administrative report. He wrote with full awareness that he was facing execution, as he knew the prosecution possessed ample evidence of his responsibility for the crimes. Nevertheless, he attempted to give the impression that he had been forced to carry out the murder orders by his superiors, and that his personal nature was entirely repulsed by the monstrous process he oversaw day after day.
He wrote the autobiography in a fluent and chronological manner, describing events from his youth, his joining of the Nazi Party, and his rise through the ranks of command. However, throughout the text, he inserted, almost incidentally, arguments intended to prove his innocence, aiming to portray himself as a warm-hearted individual and to absolve himself of guilt. His central claim was that in committing the grave crimes he carried out, he was merely executing orders given from above, in a manner that left him with no possibility of resistance.
He describes his early conditioning in obedience already at the beginning of the autobiography, noting that even in his youth he was accustomed to following orders: “From my early childhood I was raised with a strong sense of duty. In my parents’ home, it was insisted that every task be carried out precisely and with dedication.” Later, recounting his time in the German prison in Leipzig (in the 1920s he was sentenced to ten years in prison for involvement in the murder of Walter Kadow, a teacher suspected of collaborating with the French occupation authorities in the Ruhr), he writes: “From childhood I had been taught to be completely obedient, clean, and meticulously orderly; so in these matters I had no difficulty complying with the strict discipline of the prison. I carried out my clearly defined duties with dedication. I completed the work assigned to me, and usually more, to the satisfaction of the work supervisor…”.
In September 1933, he was accepted into the SS, and in 1934, according to him, was asked by Himmler to join the Death’s Head Units (SS-Totenkopfverbände), and indeed enlisted in December of that year. These units, composed of fervent Nazis, later became the human reservoir for operating the concentration camps and the entire mechanism of Jewish extermination. Höss was stationed at the Dachau concentration camp as a Blockführer (block commander) – “This was a position I did not want to fulfill at all, ” he writes. Here too, it is evident that his words are written from the perspective of an accused man attempting to cleanse his name. He describes his time at Dachau as a block commander as “difficult, ” because he could not bear to witness the punishments inflicted on prisoners by his fellow officers: “I felt rather embarrassed when I stood before the prisoners who had been assigned to forced labor under my supervision, ” he adds. He describes those fellow officers defensively: “They do not know the meaning of mercy or any warm feelings of empathy. They exploit every opportunity to intimidate the prisoners placed in their care.”
Höss adds: “And here, in fact, begins my guilt. It was clear to me that I was not suited for this kind of service… My sympathy for the prisoners was too great, since I had lived their lives for too long and had personally experienced their needs. I should have gone at that time to Eicke or to the Reichsführer-SS and explained that I was unfit for service in a concentration camp because I felt too much sympathy for the prisoners. I could not find the courage to do so. I did not want to make a fool of myself. I did not want to expose my weakness… Although I became accustomed to everything in the camps that could not be changed, I never became indifferent to human suffering. I always saw it and felt it. But since it was unthinkable to show weakness, I wanted to appear tough, lest I be seen as weak, and I had to suppress such feelings…”. In this way, he effectively laid the groundwork for the passages in which he would describe giving execution orders, always, according to him, carrying out his superiors’ commands and always “against his will.” Thus, for example, when he was appointed block commander at Dachau in the 1930s and was responsible for the execution of prisoners, he always “followed orders”: “The day before, we had sat together in the dining room of our officers’ quarters and discussed executions. Now a similar fate was about to take place, and I was the one forced to carry out the order! It was too much even for my superior. After the execution, we went on a long, quiet walk around the camp, trying to calm our emotions… To this day, I cannot understand how I was able, in complete calm, to give the order to shoot.”
The most significant sections of the autobiography are those documenting the period in which Höss commanded Auschwitz in the early 1940s. Even here, he writes in a tone clearly aimed, though often incidentally, at cleansing his name. After being appointed commandant of Auschwitz, he describes how he did everything in his power to choose officers and commanders who would treat prisoners fairly. According to him, he “personally arranged” food trucks for the prisoners, since the supplies did not arrive in sufficient quantities. He claims to have done all he could to select fair kapos, though he was subject to the decisions of those who assigned them to the camp. Throughout his tenure, he received orders from “his superiors”, and although, emotionally, he could not bear them, he carried them out unwillingly. This, he claims, caused him psychological distress and led to alcohol addiction. He writes that during all the years he commanded Auschwitz, he did all he could to prevent killings and to assign as many prisoners as possible to labor, in order to contribute to the German war effort. He constantly tried to improve the economic conditions but the incessant influx of prisoners made this impossible. He opposed the practice of commanders setting dogs on prisoners, but claims he had no control over it, since he was busy with camp administration: “I had many problems with the Hundestaffel personnel, and numerous confrontations with the guard battalion commander on this matter, ” he writes, adding that in his view there was no need for a dog unit in the camp at all.
Although by that time sufficient evidence had already been gathered to convict him of the most serious crimes, he removes from himself any direct responsibility for carrying them out: “When, in the summer of 1941, the order was given to prepare facilities at Auschwitz in which mass exterminations could be carried out, and to personally carry out these exterminations, I had no idea of their scale or of their consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless, the reasons behind the extermination program seemed right to me. I did not reflect on it at the time: ” I was given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not, I could not allow myself to form an opinion on it, since I lacked the necessary broad perspective… There is no doubt that many SS officers complained and grumbled about some of the harsh orders that came from the Reichsführer-SS, but they still always carried them out…”.
Höss continues to describe the extermination process:
“While I was away, my deputy, Fritzsch, the commander of the detention camp, attempted for the first time to use gas for these killings. It was a preparation of prussic acid, called Zyklon B, which was used in the camp as a pesticide and was always kept in stock. Upon my return, Fritzsch reported it to me, and the gas was used again for the next transport. The gassing was carried out in the detention cells of Block 11. Protected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded cells, death came immediately once the Zyklon B was thrown in. A short, almost stifled cry – and it was all over. During this first experience of killing people with gas, I did not fully grasp what was happening, perhaps because I was too overwhelmed by the entire procedure. I have a clearer memory of the gassing of 900 Russians that took place shortly afterwards in the old crematorium, since using Block 11 for this purpose had caused too many problems while the transport was being handled. Holes were drilled into the earth-and-concrete roof of the morgue. The Russians were ordered to undress in the anteroom; then they entered the morgue quietly, as they were told they would be deloused. The entire transport filled the morgue to capacity. Then the doors were sealed, and the gas was thrown in through the holes in the roof. I do not know how long this killing lasted. For a short time there was a humming sound. When the Zyklon was released, there were cries of ‘Gas!’ – then a great roar, and the trapped prisoners hurled themselves against the two doors. But the doors held. They were opened several hours later so the area could be ventilated. That was the first time I saw people killed by gas, as a group… I had to look through the inspection hole of the gas chambers and watch the death process myself, because the doctors wanted me to see it.”
After Höss describes the extermination process in the gas chambers – horrifying and extremely difficult to read, as he personally witnessed it in chilling detail: the screams of the victims, the cries of mothers trying to save their children, the madness that gripped the gas victims seconds before their death, the unending flow of Jewish transports arriving at the camp, he writes: “Was it really necessary that we do all this? Was it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children be exterminated? I, who deep inside myself asked this question countless times, could only ignore them and try to comfort them by repeating that it was being done on Hitler’s orders. I had to tell them that this extermination of the Jews had to happen, so that Germany and our descendants would be freed forever from their eternal enemies. There was no doubt in any of our minds that Hitler’s order had to be obeyed under all circumstances, and that it was the duty of the SS to carry it out. And yet, all of us were tormented by secret doubts.”
Höss goes on to describe how the arch-murderer Adolf Eichmann was wholly consumed by the mission of annihilating the Jewish people: “I held many detailed discussions with Eichmann regarding all matters connected to the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question, ‘ the head of the Gestapo office in the Katowice district, where Auschwitz was located, though without revealing my inner anxieties. I tried in every possible way to discover Eichmann’s innermost and truest beliefs about this ‘solution.’ Yes, in every possible way. But even when we were alone together and the drinks were flowing freely, so that he was in the highest of spirits, he showed himself to be completely obsessed with the idea of exterminating every Jew he could lay his hands on. Without mercy and in cold blood, we must complete this extermination as quickly as possible. Any compromise, even the slightest, would have to be paid for bitterly at a later date…”.
Höss continues, describing on the one hand the atrocities he committed, and on the other, how he allegedly did not wish to be part of them: “In July 1942, the Reichsführer-SS visited the camp. I accompanied him on a tour of the entire Gypsy camp. He conducted a very thorough inspection of everything, noting the overcrowded barracks huts, the unhygienic conditions, and the overcrowded hospital building. He saw the patients suffering from infectious diseases and the children afflicted with noma, something that always made me shudder… He saw everything, in detail, exactly as it was, and he ordered me to exterminate them. Those fit for labor were first to be separated from the others, as were the Jews.”
In line with his ongoing attempt to absolve himself of guilt, Höss writes that he opposed the venomous antisemitism displayed in Der Stürmer, and that he had always believed German ideas should be presented in a way that attracted the German public without the need to denounce Judaism. He describes how Kristallnacht was staged by Goebbels as revenge for the shooting of vom Rath:“That was when I got to know the Jews, ” he writes.
Rudolf Höss’s autobiography was first published in a Polish translation in 1951 under the title Wspomnienia, by Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warsaw. The German text was published in 1958 under the title Kommandant in Auschwitz, by Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. The English translation presented here is based on the German edition. After the war, Höss was tried and convicted of genocide as a war criminal and was executed by hanging in 1947, inside the Auschwitz camp. The photographs included in the book, documenting the early stages of the extermination of the Jews upon their arrival at Auschwitz, were taken on the “ramp” (the train unloading platform) at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. They were selected from a collection of photographs discovered after the liberation in Czechoslovakia, in a town that had formerly been part of the Sudetenland. The original photos were in the possession of an SS officer who had lived there and served at Auschwitz. He had taken the photographs for the purpose of “scientific racial research.” For this, he was given special permission to photograph, since SS personnel were generally forbidden from taking photos in the camp. A Jewish woman who later moved into the house where the SS officer had lived found the photos and sold them to the Jewish Museum in Prague. They remained there, unnoticed, for a long time. Eventually, they were discovered by chance by a former Auschwitz prisoner named Bash, who identified the origin of the photographs and handed them over to the International Auschwitz Committee.
285 pp. Hardcover with the original dust jacket, all complete. Wear to the dust jacket. Good condition.
