Rudolf Hoess- a commander of Auchwitz

This post is going to be about Rudolf Hoess, a commander of Auchwitz. Read on to find out his story.

Who?   Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess was born in Baden-Baden in the Black Forest in 1900 to Catholic parents. His father was very domineering and demanded unquestioning obedience.
In the 1st world war he was the youngest non-commissioned officer and was awarded the Iron Cross, then in 1922 joined the Nazi party. He was imprisoned in 1923 for his right wing beliefs and for killing someone.

In 1934 he arrived to serve at Dachau Concentration Camp in Bavaris as a guard after Himmler invited him to join the SS.

He believed in re-educating prisoners and showing no sympathy for them so he became a role model and was promoted to Assistant to the Commander.  In 1938 he was made Lieutenant and transferred to Sachsenhausen  Concentration Camp. He was here when war broke out.

What did he do in the war?  In 1940 he was made Commandant of Auschwitz, which was a new camp. He supervised it when it was expanded to provide slave labour for oil and rubber factories. The camp was also expanded for Russian prisoners although some were killed in early experiments with gas and insecticide. He watched, these deaths along with many others of those unfit for work.

He felt it was better for his men not to have to shoot prisoners.

By 1943  he had built a new camp 2 miles away at Aushwitz-Birkenau with specially built gas chambers attached to crematoria to make it more efficient. He experimented with sulphuric acid and carbon monoxide until he found Zyklon B (cyanide) was most efficient.

These gas chambers, as well as starvation and illness,  were responsible for the death of 2.5 million people, mostly Jews, including women and children. He planned and organised the camp to make this very efficient and believed that it was the right thing to do.

Under his command none of his guards refused to kill but the biggest punishments for them were for stealing from the camp.

1943: He became Inspector of Camps and tried to make them all as efficient as Aushwitz.

After the war:  When the Soviet Army got nearer he ran away and hid under the name Franz Lang. He was hunted down and arrested in 1946 and put on trial.

He showed no remorse for all that he had done. He said that it had been difficult pushing  screaming children into the gas chambers but he saw that as a sign of weakness in himself.

He was hanged on 16 April 1947 outside one of the gas chambers and buried in an unmarked grave.

He was described as calm and organised and very ordinary – like a grocery clerk keeping records of the deaths. At home he was a loving father and he, his wife and 4 children lived as an ordinary middle class German family in a house near to one of the gas chambers and crematoria.

When he was sentenced to death he asked to be allowed to write to his family.