Rudolf Höß
Encyclopedia : R : RU : RUD : Rudolf Höß
- Not to be confused with Rudolf Hess.
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß (in English commonly Hoess or Höss; November 251900 – April 161947) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Colonel) and from May 4, 1940 to November of 1943 was commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp where he was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
Early life and World War I
Höß was born on November 25 1900 in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. Despite his father's wishes that he become a priest, he voluntarily joined the German army during World War I in 1915 immediately after his father's death. He was transferred to Turkey, where he rose to the rank of Feldwebel and garnered the Iron Cross first and second class.
After the end of the war, Höß became a fighter for the Freikorps Roßbach in Upper Silesia, in the Baltic area and in the Ruhr basin. He joined the NSDAP in 1922, and was sentenced to ten years in jail in 1923 after his involvement in the murder of Walther Kadow; his accomplice Martin Bormann received a mere one year in prison. Höß was released in 1928 again following a general amnesty and joined the völkisch Artamanen-Gesellschaft ("Artaman Society") in 1929.
Nazi Party and the SS
Höß became an early member of the Nazi Party, becoming involved with the group in the late 1920s and holding membership number 3240. After the Nazis came to power, Höß applied for SS membership and on 20 September 1933 he was appointed as an SS-Anwärter. In April of the next year, at the permission of Heinrich Himmler, he was accepted as an SS member, appointed to the rank of SS-Mann and assigned the SS number 193616.
During the mid 1930s, Höß served in several Concentration Camp positions and a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände ("Death's Head Unit"). He began as an ordinary SS-guard, then was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was given the office of "Blockführer" ("block leader") in 1935. Due to his experience of being in prison himself, Höß excelled in his duties and was recognized by his superiors for further responsibility and promotion.
Commissioned an SS-Untersturmführer in 1936, in 1938 Höß received a promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and became an adjutant in the Sachsenhausen camp. After joining the Waffen-SS in 1939, he became the commandant of Auschwitz in 1940 until he was ordered back in late 1943. During his time at Auschwitz, Höß organized the administrative side of the mass murders of the "Endlösung" (Final Solution).
After being replaced as the Auschwitz commander by Arthur Liebehenschel on December 1 1943, Höß assumed Liebehenschel's former position as the chairman of Amt D I in Amtsgruppe D of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), where he introduced Zyklon B as a means to carry out the camp's mass murders; he also was appointed deputy of WVHA leader Richard Glücks.
On May 8 1944, however, Höß returned to Auschwitz at Heinrich Himmler's personal request to carry out the so-called "Aktion Höss" – the preparation of the death machinery in Auschwitz II Birkenau for the murder of the Hungarian Jews.
Summary of SS Career
Dates of Rank
- SS-Anwärter: 20 September 1933
- SS-Mann: 1 April 1934
- SS-Sturmmann: 20 April 1934
- SS-Unterscharführer: 28 November 1934
- SS-Scharführer: 1 April 1935
- SS-Oberscharführer: 1 July 1935
- SS-Hauptscharführer: 1 March 1936
- SS-Untersturmführer: 13 September 1936
- SS-Obersturmführer: 11 September 1938
- SS-Hauptsturmführer: 9 November 1938
- SS-Sturmbannführer: 30 January 1941
- SS-Obersturmbannführer: 18 July 1942
- Iron Cross (First and Second Classes)
- SA Sports Badge
- German Sports Badge
- Totenkopfring (Dead head's ring)
Capture, trial, and execution
Höß was captured on March 11 1946 by British military police. During the Nuremberg trials he appeared as a witness in the trials of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Oswald Pohl and the IG Farben corporation. On May 25 1946, he was handed over to Poland and sentenced to death by hanging on April 2 1947. The sentence was carried out on April 16 in front of the entrance of the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp (see Auschwitz Trial).
In his autobiography, which was published in 1958 as Rudolf Höß: Kommandant in Auschwitz and later as , he portrayed himself as having grown up with a "strong sense of duty" and avowed himself as a follower of the "high virtue of military obedience". In this book, he wrote:
"I reported the number of the Jews who were brought to Auschwitz to be killed as 2.5 million. This number comes from Eichmann, who gave it to Commander Glücks shortly before the destruction of Berlin. I myself never knew the real number, and I do not have possibilities to find out. I consider the number of 2.5 million much too high. Even Auschwitz was not able to do that."
Höß was married and had five children.
Cultural references
Höss has been portrayed in the BBC television series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the "Final Solution" (2005) and by Colm Feore in the Canadian miniseries Nuremberg (2002). He was also briefly portrayed in the film Schindler's List (1993) as the SS officer at Auschwitz bribed by Schindler with a pouch of diamonds. He is the main character (as Rudolf Lang) in the novel La mort est mon métier (Death is My Trade, 1952) by French writer Robert Merle.Höß was a prominent character in William Styron's best-selling novel, Sophie's Choice (1979). Günther Maria Halmer played the role of Höß in the movie version of the novel (1982), as well as in an unrelated mini-series "War and Remembrance" (1988).
Quote
The two big crematoria I and II were built in the winter 1942-1943, and started to be used in the Spring of 1943. They had 5 ovens of 3 rooms each, and they were able to cremate, in 24 hours, about 2,000 corpses each. For technical reasons it wasn't possible to increase their capacity, and the various attempts we made damaged the buildings, which in many cases were put completely out of service. A machine would move the corpses to the ovens that were located high. The gas chambers had a capacity of about 3,000 people each, but those figures were never reached, because the single transports were never numerous enough.— Rudolf Höß, autobiography
Sources
- Autobiography, edited by Steven Paskuly:
- S.S. Personnel Service Record of Rudolf Höß, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland
External links
- [Auschwitz.dk: Rudolf Höß, death dealer of Auschwitz]
- [deathcamps.info: Rudolf Höß]
- [Jewish Virtual Library: Rudolf Höß]
- [Modern History Sourcebook: Rudolf Höß, Commandant of Auschwitz: Testimony at Nuremberg, 1946]
- [Rudolf Höß - biography in German]
- Auschwitz the Nazis and the 'Final Solution' (2005) by Laurence Rees inevitably devotes much attention to the biography and misdeeds of Rudolf Höß. The first and second chapters are particularly insightful.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.