The Commandant: An Account by the First Commanding Officer of Auschwitz

by Rudolf Hoess, Jürg Amann (Editor), Ian Buruma (Introduction)

Overview

This chilling memoir presents “a graphic and compelling self-portrait” of the Nazi war criminal who oversaw Auschwitz concentration camp (Jewish Book World).

SS officer Rudolph Hoess was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. The amoral sensibility Hoess displayed regarding all that went on in the charnel factory where the industrialization of death was practiced—where probably three million people were literally worked to death, shot or gassed—is still almost beyond belief today.

Editor Jurg Amann has taken Hoess's text and produced a work of vital historical importance. The Commandant presents an excruciating insight into Hitler's Final Solution and the nature of evil itself through the prism of the Nazis' totalitarian system, one Hoess and so many others felt no need to question. Ian Buruma's introduction sets this frightening work within a both moral and historical context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468300918
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	08/16/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	109
Sales rank:	175,617
File size:	307 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Rudolf Hoess (1900-1947) was the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. He was found guilty of murder and executed by hanging at Auschwitz on April 16, 1947. Jurg Amann was born in Switzerland in 1947, and his writings include plays, poetry, essays, and literary criticism. He has received the Ingeborg Bachman, the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and the Schiller Prize. Ian Buruma writes about a broad range of political and cultural subjects, most frequently for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He lives in New York. He is the recipient of the international Erasmus Prize and the Shorenstein Journalism Award, and he was twice voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Foreign Policy/Prospect.

Editorial Reviews

"Its brevity makes it no less stomach churning. The monolog describes Hoess's rise in the SS directly under Heinrich Himmler's tutelage and shows Himmler as the most brutally efficient of functionaries, so vile and so lacking human sensibilities as to be in danger of being rendered as a cartoon character." — –Library Journal

"Amann, via his editorial craftsmanship, is able to capture an utterly soulless individual whose respect for life and capacity for authentic love were destroyed at a very early age . . . Jurg Amann has done a great service by making Hoess's memoir available to students of the Holocaust but, most importantly, to the young of the current and future generations. The Commandant is a must read for all social scientists and clinicians seeking a graphic and compelling self portrait of the evolution of ideological and bureaucratic sociopathy." — Jewish Book World

From the Publisher

"Amann, via his editorial craftsmanship, is able to capture an utterly soulless individual whose respect for life and capacity for authentic love were destroyed at a very early age . . . Jurg Amann has done a great service by making Hoess's memoir available to students of the Holocaust but, most importantly, to the young of the current and future generations. The Commandant is a must read for all social scientists and clinicians seeking a graphic and compelling self portrait of the evolution of ideological and bureaucratic sociopathy."

Jewish Book World

In this monolog, Swiss playwright and poet Amann distills the 400-plus-page memoir of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess—not to be confused with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess—published in the United States as Death Dealer, which Hoess wrote after his capture and as he awaited execution in Poland in 1947. Its brevity makes it no less stomach churning. The monolog describes Hoess's rise in the SS directly under Heinrich Himmler's tutelage and shows Himmler as the most brutally efficient of functionaries, so vile and so lacking human sensibilities as to be in danger of being rendered as a cartoon character—for all that, though, he also appears as a midlevel manager. VERDICT In his afterword, journalist Ian Buruma notes that Amman has provided "the right tone of utter bleakness" in this monolog, which was originally conceived as a radio play (no translator is credited). Radio is probably the best way to present this script; it's difficult to imagine a paying audience sitting through a performance. It would be a useful source for acting exercises or as a supplementary text for Holocaust classes.—Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead

Library Journal