JacobTender

Humanities 221

Reading Response: Rudolph Höss, Memoirs

November 10, 2017

Does Hoss come off as an “evil” person? Does he seem “extraordinary” in any way? Given his
participation in the Holocaust as Commandant at Auschwitz, how does one explain the evil in him?

To what extent was he responsible for the deaths at Auschwitz? With whom, or what, does he share
that responsibility? Should he then have been sentenced to death? If so, what about “war crime”
perpetrators at Sand Creek, or My Lai, e.g.?

What lessons can we draw from this?

In his written memoirs, Rudolph Höss documented his experience as Commandant of Auschwitz, the

deadliest of all Third Reich concentration camps. These written accounts give direct insight into one of

Nazi Germany’s most guilty and, perhaps, most evil as well.

Is Höss evil? In my opinion, yes. There’s is no equivocating his role in the Holocaust to anything noble or

decent. Under his command, millions died. Three million men, women, and children, mostly Jews,

entered his camps to die or work until their death. In the opening paragraphs of the selection presented

in Overfield, Höss says plainly that he did not hate the Jews, but it’s made clear throughout the

document that he agreed with their destruction. To him and his fellows in the Nazi party, anti-semitism

was a core belief. The Jews, according to Hitler and those that served his cause, saw the Jews as the

enemy of the German people and of the world. The horrors of concentration camps that Höss oversaw

were a means to the end of the Jewish people. The Commandant took this duty very seriously and thus

millions of lives were lost.

To call him “extraordinary” would be fair. It takes a extraordinary man to stomach the atrocities he

ordered at Auschwitz. While his role put him in a place of command, he admits here that he was present

on a regular basis to the execution of German prisoners at his camp. “Day and night, hour upon hour I

had to witness all that happened. I had to watch…” Höss had an aversion to the “bloodbaths” of firing

squad killings, which lessened as gassing became the more prevalent method of murder, but his

language here is misleading. He “had to” he says, but did he? I believe all men have a choice and his was

made to the detriment of innocent lives. In an alternate reality, if Höss had abstained, he would have

certainly been killed and another would have written these memoirs from their own recollection, but

that doesn’t free him from guilt. The choice was his and he chose evil over good.

That guilt, that choice, they are shared equally by every officer, soldier, and bystander in Germany. They

share complicity. Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and other leaders may be the most recognizable names in

history books, but they were not alone in the ideas and actions that wrecked Europe in the 1940s. It’s

unfathomable to me how a man can witness mother’s comforting their children in the face of death

within a gas chamber and return to his own family at night. The only regret that his accounts for in this

memoir is that he didn’t spend more time with his family. It’s unconscionable for a man like himself to

say something like that considering the families that he tore apart on a daily basis.

Before his death, he sent a letter to his son. In it, he writes, “Keep your good heart. Become a person

who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity.” (Hughes, John Jay, A Mass Murderer

Repents: The Case of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz). I believe that it’s possible for a man to

realize and regret his sins. I don’t think, however, that all men can be absolved of it—from God or

otherwise. His death sentence was fair.

Drawing comparisons of Nazi Holocaustic practices to those of American soldiers in times of war is fair.

The United States were seen as heroes in the wake of WWII, but that doesn’t absolve our people either
of truly terrible things. I think that’s important to remember at home and abroad even now. Looking

back at history, we can find many instances of inhumanity and we don’t have to look far. The accounts

of the massacres at Sand Creek in Colorado (1864) or My Lai in Vietnam (1968) are horrendous and

unforgivable. Our country was built on terrible actions at the expense of non-whites. The punishment in

both of these cases were either too trivial or non-existent in contrast to the terror left in American

soldier’s wakes.

Rudolph Höss and the Nazis at large committed some of modern history’s most heinous acts, but

genocide still happens today. Evil still exists and it’s important to remember that, even in the most

modern of societies. Here in the United States, we are privileged to be removed from most war-time

conflict. Across the seas, American and foreign military powers are actively engaged in conflict at all

times. In the new sat home we read stories about bombings, executions, and worse. In each of those

cases there are victims to mourn and killers to hate. Domestically, we deal with terrorism on a monthly

basis. Police violence, mass shootings, bomb plots, and serial killers fill up evening news blocks with

violent images. Hateful rhetoric spills from positions and civilians alike, striking fear in different ways.

Racism, homophobia, and bigotry are ever present dangers in our society. It’s hard for some to feel safe

in their own homes, but if America is the moral leader of the free world, where else can these people

go? The rise of Adolf Hitler may have been struck down by allied forces in the 1940s, but ideas of hatred

and evil persist in others still. Everyone has their own idea of “the enemy” and so long as that is true,

conflict is bound to exist.

What scares me most when thinking about the presence of conflict is that technology continues to

advance. The United States murdered 160,000 people in mere moments at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in

1945. Since then, we’ve amassed thousands of nuclear warheads capable of as much, if not more

destruction and loss of human life. There are many lessons to be learned from history, but the most
important revolve around humanity and war. If we as human beings, regardless of race or creed can’t

learn from generations of death, what’s the point of anything at all?