Rudolph Hoess

About the Author

Rudolf Hoess (1901-1947) was a German SS officer and the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, overseeing the systematic extermination of over a million people. Born in Baden-Baden, he joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming a key figure in the implementation of the Final Solution. Captured by Allied forces after World War II, Hoess was tried and executed by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in 1947. His autobiography, Commandant of Auschwitz, written while awaiting trial, provides a chilling firsthand account of the camp's operations, bureaucratic machinery of genocide, and his own unrepentant rationalizations, offering invaluable historical insight into the Nazi regime's atrocities despite its self-serving tone.