COMMANDANT OF AUSCHWITZ

by Rudolph Hoess ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 1960

With an excellent introduction by Lord Russell of Liverpool and brilliantly translated from the German by Constantine FitzGibbon, this autobiography of Rudolph Hoess, for two and a half years commandant of the Nazi prison camp at Auschwitz, (Oswiecism) Poland, was written while the author was awaiting execution as a war criminal in 1946. Trained by Himmler, who sent him to Auschwitz with orders to make it ""The greatest human extermination center of all time"", Hoess did exactly that: of the more than five million Jews who died in German concentration camps at least three million were killed at Auschwitz, usually by gas, sometimes by less humane means. Stating that ""At Auschwitz I truly had no reason to complain that I was bored"", Hoess tells of the mass executions, most of which he witnessed, and the harvesting of teeth, hair and valuables of the victims, of the burning of the bodies and the stench which pervaded the whole district. After watching Jewish children die in the gas chambers he went home to his own flower-surrounded house, his devoted wife and his four children. Written without compulsion and dripping self-righteousness, this appalling book holds a compulsive fascination by reason of its very coldbloodedness; one of the most historically valuable documents to emerge from the War, it should be enforced reading for all Nazi and Fascist apologists.

Pub Date: March 14, 1960

ISBN: 1842120247

Page Count: -

Publisher: World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1960

Categories: NONFICTION