Rudolf Höß should not be confused with the other prominent Nazi, Rudolf Hess.

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Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß (in English, Hoess without or Höss with the umlaut) (November 25 1900 – April 16 1947) was a senior Nazi official, member of the SS and Waffen-SS (with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer) and commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

Höß was born on November 25 1900 in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. Despite his father's wishes that he would become a priest, he voluntarily joined the German army during World War I in 1915, right after his father's death; he was transferred to Turkey, where he rose to the rank of a sergeant until 1917 and garnered the 1st and 2nd class Iron Cross.

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 Walter 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.

Höß applied for SS membership in 1933 at a request from Heinrich Himmler and was accepted in 1934; he also became a member of the Totenkopfverband ("Death's Head Unit") on December 1. The same year, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was given the office of "Blockführer" ("block leader") in 1935.

In 1938, he received a promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer and became an adjutant in the Sachsenhausen camp, and, after joining the Waffen-SS in 1939, finally overtook as the commander of Auschwitz in 1940, a position in which he stayed until he was ordered back on late 1943. During the time spent at Auschwitz, Höß organized the administrative side of the mass murders of the "Endlösung".

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 Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (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.

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. On May 25 1946, he was handed over to Poland and sentenced to death by hanging on April 2 1947, a sentence which was carried out on April 16 in front of the entrance of the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp.

In his autobiography, which was published in 1958 as "Rudolf Höß - Kommandant in Auschwitz", 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 millon much too high. Even Auschwitz was not able to do that.

Höß was married and had five children.

Works

• Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz

External links

• Auschwitz.dk: Rudolf Höß, death dealer of Auschwitz (http://www.auschwitz.dk/hoess.htm)
• deathcamps.info: Rudolf Höß (http://www.deathcamps.info/Nazis/page_7.htm)
• Jewish Virtual Library: Rudolf Höß (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/Hoess.html)
• Modern History Sourcebook: Rudolf Höß, Commandant of Auschwitz: Testimony at Nuremberg, 1946 (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1946hoess.html)
• Rudolf Höß - biography in German (http://www.bad-bad.de/gesch/hoess.htm)

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