Rudolf Höss statement
Extent and Medium
folder
1
Creator(s)
- Rudolf F. Höss
Biographical History
Rudolf Franz Höss (1900-1947), Commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp from 1940 to 1943, became a member of the NSDAP between 1922 to 1923, but was arrested with Martin Bormann for the murder of Walther Kadow soon after joining. He was released from prison in 1928 as part of a general amnesty, and remained active in the party. In 1934, Heinrich Himmler recruited Höss into the SS, and gave him the position of block and mustering chief in the Dachau concentration camp. He was transferred to Sachsenhausen in 1938 and promoted to SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer. On May 1, 1940, he became commandant of Auschwitz, which he gradually built into the largest extermination camp in Europe. Höss introduced Zyklon-B to gas inmates because he considered it more humane than random shooting and beating. He was relieved of duty in 1943 to work in the Economic-Administration Main Office overseeing concentration camps under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Richard Gluecks, but he returned to Auschwitz in 1944 to oversee the extermination of four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews. He became Glueck's deputy in 1945, but he was captured by the British on March 11, 1946, using the name Franz Lang. Somewhere over one million people, primarily Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz, but during the Nuremberg trials, Hoess testified that two million people were killed there. Höss was extradited to Poland and condemned to death on April 2, 1947, but while in prison he wrote his memoirs in which he recalled his childhood lessons on obedience, and claimed gassings were reassuring to him because the victims supposedly sufferred less than if they had been shot. He was hanged on April 16, 1947, in front of his villa in Auschwitz.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Joseph Maier
Joseph Maier donated the Rudolf Höss statement to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992.
Scope and Content
The papers consist of a statement regarding the Jews killed at Auschwitz concentration camp signed by Rudolf Höss at Nuremberg, Germany, on May 15,1946.
People
- Höss, Rudolf, 1900-1947.
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946.
- Holocaust victims.
Genre
- Document
- Statements.