Rudolf Höß (German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz) Add a review

Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; German: [hœs]; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust.

Höss joined the Nazi Party in 1922, joined the SS in June 1934, and began his career in the Nazi concentration camp system in November of the same year. Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). As a convinced Nazi, he demonstrated not only total obedience to Heinrich Himmler's orders, but also he tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed.

Höss was arrested by British troops on 11 March 1946. Höss testified at the Nuremberg trials, then was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland from 11 March to 2 April 1947. Finally Höss was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. During his imprisonment, at the request of the Polish authorities, Höss wrote his memoirs, released in English under the title Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.