The Commandant Rudolf Hoss The Creator of Auschwitz

 

The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the location of the single biggest mass murder in history. Over one million men, women and children were stripped of their clothes and belongings and herded into gas chambers, where they were ultimately stripped of their lives. Others were condemned to a much slower and more painful death as the ravages of disease and malnourishment finally took their toll. Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, ran the camp from the time of its inception to its eventual maturation into Europe's most efficient killing centre. Höss, who has come to be seen as the very embodiment of evil, was responsible for ordering the murder of hundreds of thousands of so-called undesirables of the Third Reich. Yet beneath his cold and brutal exterior lay a devoted husband and father who left the horrors of the camp behind him every evening to return to the loving embrace of his family. The Commandant chronicles Höss's early life and his ascension through the ranks of the Nazi Party to become one of the key administrators of the Final Solution to the `Jewish question'. Drawing on both published and unpublished material, as well as the handwritten memoirs of the commandant himself, this book attempts to unravel the complex motivations and influences that combined to make Höss one of the greatest mass murderers of all time.

 

Ian Baxter

Hardcover 311pp

Book Code:  AW0669