12 Administration Command Staff (Holocaust: Auschwitz)
Description
This article is from the Holocaust FAQ, by Ken McVay kmcvay@nizkor.org with numerous contributions by others.
12 Administration Command Staff (Holocaust: Auschwitz)
Fritsch, Hauptsturmfu"hrer (Credited with the first use of Zyklon-B
as means of exterminating human subjects. See Breitman, 202)
Grabner, Maximillian. Head of Political Department
Hoess, Rudolf Franz (1900-1947). Hoess joined the Nazi party in
1922. In 1923, he was implicated in a murder and imprisoned to serve
a life sentence. He was released as a result of a general
amnesty, in 1928. After training during service at Dachau and
Sachsenhausen, he was rewarded for his loyalty with a promotion to the
rank of SS-Hauptsturmfu"hrer (see Glossary) and the commandant's job
at Auschwitz, where he remained until December of 1943, when he was
promoted to chief of the Central Administration for Camps. (Sachar.
http://ftp.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand/hoess.01
http://ftp.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand/hoess.02
http://ftp.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand/hoess.03)
According to Snyder, " He performed his job so well that he was
commended in a 1944 SS report that called him "a true pioneer in this
area because of his new ideas and educational methods."
Hoess was captured on March 11, 1946, and was a key witness at Nuremberg
(Kaltenbrunner, I.G. Farben et al). On May 25, he was extradited
to Poland. During this period, he wrote his autobiography, "Commandant
of Auschwitz: Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess." (Cleveland: World
Publishing, 1959) His statement is available in the original German
text, and in English translation. (Get
http://ftp.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand/hoess.statemen)
According to Sachar, he, "...took pride in his exemplary family life,
the devotion to his children and his pets. He recalled, wistfully,
how he had been obliged to tear himself away from a Christmas
gathering to attend to duties at the gas chambers. The daily death
quota then was still a mere 1,500, but he was eager to make sure it
was met. When one of his lieutenants was condemned to death for his
part in the Auschwitz murders, Hoess and his family lamented `Such a
compassionate man, too. When his pet canary died, he tenderly put
the body in a small box, covered it with a rose, and buried it under
a rose bush in the garden.'(Hoess, 25)(Sachar)
During his trial, the evidence "...repeated...what he had written..."
in his autobiography. "He described, with the dispassion of a robot,
how he had gradually stepped up executions, beginning with a few
hundred a day and then, as methods were perfected, rising to 1,200.
By mid-1942, facilities had been sufficiently enlarged to dispatch
1,500 people over a twenty-four-hour period for the smaller ovens,
and up to 2,500 for the larger ones. By 1943, ... a new daily peak
of 12,000 was achieved. Hoess described the final routines of the
extermination process. These were assigned to squads of Jewish
prisoners, the Sondercommandos. They marched the victims to the gas
chambers, helped to undress them, removed the corpses after the
gassing, extracted gold from their teeth and rings from their
fingers, searched the orifices of their bodies for hidden jewelry,
cut off the hair of the women, and then carted the bodies to the
crematoria. Usually after several weeks of such service they were
executed, first because they were Jews but also so that they would
not be witnesses if ever testimony were required." (Sachar)
Hoess was tried in Warsaw, in March, 1947, and condemned to death.
(Hanged on April 16, 1947, at Auschwitz.)
Kramer, Josef. Commandant at Birkenau.
Mandel, Maria. Head of the women's camp at Auschwitz after serving
at Ravensbruck.
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