Architect of Death at Auschwitz: A Biography of Rudolf Hoss

by John W. Primomo

Overview

Rudolf Hoss has been called the greatest mass murderer in history. As the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz, he supervised the killing of more than 1.1 million people. Unlike many of his Nazi colleagues who denied either knowing about or participating in the Holocaust, Hoss remorselessly admitted, both at the Nuremberg war crimes trial and in his memoirs, that he sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers, frankly describing the killing process. His "innovations" included the use of hydrogen cyanide (derived from the pesticide Zyklon B) in the camp's gas chambers. Hoss lent his name to the 1944 operation that gassed 430,000 Hungarian Jews in 56 days, exceeding the capacity of the Auschwitz's crematoria.

This biography follows Hoss throughout his life, from his childhood through his Nazi command and eventual reckoning at Nuremberg. Using historical records and Hoss' autobiography, it explores the life and mind of one of history's most notorious and sadistic individuals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476681467
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	07/30/2020
Pages:	251
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John W. Primomo is a retired United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments deletevi
Preface
Introduction
I. Escape and Capture
II. Early Years
III. The SS
IV. Creation of Auschwitz
V. The Code of Barbarism
VI. Entrance Into Hell
VII. Life Within the Wire
VIII. Crystal Death
IX. Property, Corruption and the Inspectorate
X. Justice
XI. Responsibility and Atonement
XII. Execution
XIII. Conclusion
Appendix I: Höss Statement of March 14, 1946
Appendix II: Höss Affidavit of April 5, 1946
Appendix III: Photos of Child Victims
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A marvelously rigorous account of a notorious war criminal, edifying and moving.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-11-02
A biography offers an analysis of the role played by the commandant of Auschwitz in the abuse and murder of its Jewish prisoners.

Not much in Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss’ youth presaged his infamous career as a Nazi—he grew up in a strict Roman Catholic household led by a father who wished him to become a priest. Nevertheless, he was the commandant of Auschwitz in southwestern Poland—a concentration camp that was central to Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of Jews—and “superintended the destruction of more than a million human beings,” becoming the “greatest mass murderer in history.” Primomo chronicles Höss’ early life and his ambitiously fast ascendancy up the SS ranks. The author focuses on the Nazi’s command of Auschwitz, which he turned, through ruthless efficiency, into a labor and extermination camp. When the Germans were finally defeated, Höss changed his name and fled, but he was eventually hunted down, captured, and testified in Nuremberg. His testimony, which the author meticulously examines, was invaluable to prosecutors. Höss was later tried for murder and executed in Poland. Primomo also assesses the commandant’s memoirs and his insistent claim that he never intentionally mistreated prisoners and even tried to stop whatever abuse occurred. But Höss relates with chilling impassivity the mass exterminations and refers to “the sight of the dead Jews scientifically as if they were nothing more than experimental lab rats.” The author scrupulously undermines Höss’ moral defense of himself and exposes him for the remorseless killer he was. Höss had intimate knowledge of Auschwitz’s barbaric conditions and how the “tormented life imposed on Auschwitz inmates was destroying their souls.” Primomo’s biography is unflinchingly painstaking and, while often disturbing to read, bears an important journalistic witness to some of the darkest atrocities in human history.

A marvelously rigorous account of a notorious war criminal, edifying and moving.

Kirkus Reviews