Rudolf Hoss And The Holocaust

“I commanded Auschwitz and estimate, at least 2.5 million victims were executed and exterminated by gassing and burning, and another half a million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about 3 million” (Source 1) calmly explained Rudolf Hoss, an Auschwitz Nazi commander. Hoss was the leader of the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1941 to 1943. He ordered to kill millions of people and inflicted pain and suffering upon the Jews. He did whatever it took to protect his leader, Adolf Hitler. For Hoss, mass murder was a daily routine. Rudolf Hoss was an inhumane Auschwitz Nazi commander who ordered to massacre thousands of innocent Jewish people using fatal punishment and violent killing methods.

Rudolf Höss became the leader of the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp. Höss was about to become a priest until his father died, which is when he renounced his affiliation with the church. This is ironic because he became a part of the Nazi party in 1920, becoming the 16th member. After Höss had his first meeting with Adolf Hitler, he felt ‘overcome by a vision’ (Source 1). Höss served for several years as Hitler’s secretary. Meanwhile, he was a guard at two other concentration camps and waited three years until he was promoted Commander of Auschwitz. Höss was a guard at the concentration camps Dachau and Sachsenhausen. Since he worked at these concentration camps, he had tons of experience, new ideas, and massive changes for Auschwitz.

Once Höss became the commander of Auschwitz, he made several changes. One of the major changes he made was converting Auschwitz into an extermination camp. Hoss also installed gas chambers and crematoria. They were capable of killing two thousand people every hour. Höss recorde...

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...s after witness, document after document produced irrefutable evidence of the crimes committed, and no witness was more shocking than Rudolf Höss, who calmly explained how he had come to exterminate 2.5 million people” (Source 2).

After the Red Army found out what Hoss did to millions of Jews, Hoss fled to Germany and changed his name to Franz Lang. A year later, a man named Hanns Alexander was able to track down Hoss. He caught Hoss and brought him to the military police in Poland. In 1947, Hoss was sentenced to death and hung in his own death camp. Hoss ruined the lives of many Jews and destroyed their families. He showed no remorse for his crimes and admitted that he did not feel guilty for all the atrocities he had committed. As a result of Hoss’ killing tactics, millions of Jews suffered and lost their lives, which proves that he was an inhumane leader.