Rudolf Höss

Schutzstaffel (SS) Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1901–1947 ✕ Executed

Rossbach Freikorps veteran and SS officer who, as Auschwitz’s longest-serving commandant, carried out mass extermination

As commandant of Auschwitz he tested ways to speed up the extermination of the Jews. On a subordinate’s initiative he introduced Zyklon B to the gas chambers, where over a million people were killed.

Born in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family, he went to war at fifteen and fought alongside the Ottoman army. In 1919 he joined Freikorps Rossbach, fighting in the Baltic, the Ruhr and Upper Silesia, and in 1922 he joined the Nazi Party. In 1923, at Martin Bormann’s instigation, he and fellow Freikorps men beat the teacher Walther Kadow to death, for which he was imprisoned. He joined the SS in 1934, moved to the Death’s Head units and served under Theodor Eicke at Dachau and Sachsenhausen. As commandant of Auschwitz from May 1940 to November 1943 and again from May 1944 to January 1945 he introduced Zyklon B to the gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed. Hiding under a false name after the war, he was caught by the British, handed to Poland and hanged in 1947 after trial before the Supreme National Tribunal.

Also known as: Rudolf Hoess · Rudolf Höß · Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss