Rudolph H�ss Research Paper

Though the sands of time are ever shifting, there remain some events in human history that should never be forgotten. One such event is the Holocaust, and one of the most infamous objects to come out of the Holocaust was the death camp known as Auschwitz. Auschwitz open in 1940 and would become the largest concentration camp under the Third Reich. During World War II, more than 1 million people would lose their lives in that camp. The first Commandant of this horrible killing center would be Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss.
Rudolph Höss was born on November 25th, 1900 in the town of Baden-Baden. His parents were Lina and Franz Xaver Höss; he had 2 younger sisters. He grew up in a strict Catholic household and had no playmates. He allegedly was briefly abducted by gypsies as a child. Throughout his high school career, Höss trained to be a Catholic priest. His trajectory would change with the death of his father. In 1916, Höss joined the German Army. There he was injured three times and received the Iron Cross twice. In 1920, Höss joined the Freikrops and helped to suppress dissidents in Latvia. It was through the Freikrops that Rudolph Höss would be introduced to Adolph Hitler.
In 1933, Rudolp Höss joined the SS. He worked at the Dachau concentration camp starting in 1934. On August 1, 1938, he was

moved to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he would remain until his appointment as Commandant at Auschwitz in 1940. In May 1941, Höss was given orders by SS commander Heinrich Himmler to use the Auschwitz camp for the Final Solution, the extermination of all Jews. Höss oversaw the implementation of gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz that could kill up to 2,000 people an hour.
He also would count the corpses. At first, Höss killed his victims through sulfuric acid, a very gruesome and graphic method. Adolph Eichmann describes in his Prison Memoirs that “Hoess, the Kommandant, told me that he used sulfuric acid to kill. Round cotton wool filters were soaked with this poison and thrown into the rooms where the Jews were assembled. The poison was instantly fatal. He burned the corpses on an iron grill, in the open air. He led me to a shallow ditch where a large number of corpses had just been burned.” However, such methods were inefficient at killing large swaths of people quickly. So, Höss introduced Zyclon B. It was with the introduction of Zyklon B that Auschwitz could kill so efficiently. Höss himself recalls his emotions as Zyklon B was implemented as a part of the Final Solution. He recalls that “The gassing was carried out in the detention cells of Block 11. Proctected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded cells, death came instantaneously the moment the Zyklon B was thrown in. A short, almost smothered cry, and it was all over... I must even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon, and at that time neither Eichmann nor I was certain as to how these mass killings were to be carried out. It would be by gas, but we did not know which gas and how it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a procedure.” It is estimated that 1.1 million to 15 million, the majority Jews, were killed at Auschwitz. Prisoners were not only gassed. Those who avoided the gas chambers were put to forced labor. They suffered from malnutrition and became very emaciated. Executions and torturing happened arbitrarily in front of prisoners. One such prisoner who was killed under Höss at Auschwitz was Maximillian Kolbe. To set an example, the SS would kill other prisoners if other prisoners escaped or killed themselves. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of someone else who was selected.
Rudolph Höss also allowed German doctors to perform medical experiments on the victims. Some experiments include putting victims in pressure chambers, drug testing, castration, and being frozen. An infamous doctor who Höss allowed free reign at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.” Some of his experiments include injecting serums into the eyes of children and injecting chloroform into the hearts of twins.
In late 1943, Höss was appointed chief inspector and worked hard to improve the camp’s efficiency. He did such a good job that in 1944 he was commended in a SS report that said the he was “a true pioneer in this area because of his new ideas and educational methods.”
In 1945 as the Red Army approached Auschwitz, Rudolph Höss fled while the camp was being liquidated and went into hiding in Germany under the alias Franz Lang. Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who fled Berlin in the 1930’s, tracked down Höss. In 1946, the Allied military police force captured and arrested Höss and turned him over to the Polish authorities. The Polish government tried and sentenced him to death in 1947. He was to be hanged at Auschwitz outside the entrance to the gas chambers. Höss was hanged in the morning of April 16, 1947. In his last words, Rudolph Höss acknowledges the atrocities he committed and takes responsibility for them. He verifies that Jews were gasses and cremated. He also verifies that he allowed prisoners to be experimented on. Höss did however express a bit of distaste towards his gassing of children. He recalled before his execution that “I did, however, always feel ashamed of this weakness of mine after I talked to Adolf Eichmann. He explained to me that it was especially the children who have to be killed first, because where was the logic in killing a generation of older people and leaving alive a generation of young people who can be possible avengers of their parents and can constitute a new biological cell for the reemerging of this people.”
In the Post-War Nuremburg War Crimes Trial, it is written is Rudolph Höss’ signed testimony that he worked in concentration camps, allowed the gassing and execution of at least 2.5 million people.

He also states that the Final Solution was a plan to exterminate all Jews and that he was a part of this plan. He also states that he did use carbon monoxide poisoning and Zyklon B tablets in order to exterminate the Jews. Höss also states that prisoners were experimented on by German doctors. He recalls that SS doctors killed some prisoners with lethal injections of benzene, and he recalls experiments involving the forced sterilization of women that often led to

cancer.
Rudolph Höss has gone down in infamy due to his important role as the Commandant of Auschwitz during the Holocaust. While he is not a household name in the way Hitler or Himmler may be, he is no the less a very important player in the Holocaust. The atrocities that were committed under his command at Auschwitz should never be forgotten. The victims or family of victims will always suffer due to his actions. They will never forget the name Rudolph Höss. Höss along with other influential players in the Holocaust should never be forgotten so that history may never repeat itself.