Commandant of Auschwitz

by Rudolf Hoess

  My invariable answer was that the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler’s orders could only be obtained by a stifling of all human emotions. Each of these gentlemen declared that he was glad the job had not been given to him.

  Even Mildner[83] and Eichmann, who were certainly tough enough, had no wish to change places with me. This was one job which nobody envied me.

  I had many detailed discussions with Eichmann concerning all matters connected with the “final solution of the Jewish question,” but without ever disclosing my inner anxieties. I tried in every way to discover Eichmann’s innermost and real convictions about this “solution.”

  Yes, every way. Yet even when we were quite alone together and the drink had been flowing freely so that he was in his most expansive mood, he showed that he was completely obsessed with the idea of destroying every single Jew that he could lay his hands on. Without pity and in cold blood we must complete this extermination as rapidly as possible. Any compromise, even the slightest, would have to be paid for bitterly at a later date.

  In the face of such grim determination I was forced to bury all my human considerations as deeply as possible.

  Indeed, I must freely confess that after these conversations with Eichmann I almost came to regard such emotions as a betrayal of the Führer.

  There was no escape for me from this dilemma.

  I had to go on with this process of extermination. I had to continue this mass murder and coldly to watch it, without regard for the doubts that were seething deep inside me.

  I had to observe every happening with a cold indifference.

  Even those petty incidents that others might not notice I found hard to forget. In Auschwitz I truly had no reason to complain that I was bored.

  If I was deeply affected by some incident, I found it impossible to go back to my home and my family. I would mount my horse and ride, until I had chased the terrible picture away. Often, at night, I would walk through the stables and seek relief among my beloved animals.

  It would often happen, when at home, that my thoughts suddenly turned to incidents that had occurred during the extermination. I then had to go out. I could no longer bear to be in my homely family circle. When I saw my children happily playing, or observed my wife’s delight over our youngest, the thought would often come to me: how long will our happiness last? My wife could never understand these gloomy moods of mine, and ascribed them to some annoyance connected with my work.

  When at night I stood out there beside the transports or by the gas chambers or the fires, I was often compelled to think of my wife and children, without, however, allowing myself to connect them closely with all that was happening.

  It was the same with the married men who worked in the crematoriums or at the fire pits.

  When they saw the women and children going into the gas chambers, their thoughts instinctively turned to their own families.

  I was no longer happy in Auschwitz once the mass exterminations had begun.

  I had become dissatisfied with myself. To this must be added that I was worried because of anxiety about my principal task, the never-ending work, and the untrustworthiness of my colleagues.

  Then the refusal to understand, or even to listen to me, on the part of my superiors. It was in truth not a happy or desirable state of affairs. Yet everyone in Auschwitz believed that the commandant lived a wonderful life.

  My family, to be sure, were well provided for in Auschwitz. Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted them. The children could live a free and untrammeled life. My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers. The prisoners never missed an opportunity for doing some little act of kindness to my wife or children and thus attracting their attention.

  No former prisoner can ever say that he was in any way or at any time badly treated in our house. My wife’s greatest pleasure would have been to give a present to every prisoner who was in any way connected with our household.

  The children were perpetually begging me for cigarettes for the prisoners. They were particularly fond of the ones who worked in the garden.

  My whole family displayed an intense love of agriculture and particularly for animals of all sorts. Every Sunday I had to walk them all across the fields, and visit the stables, and we might never miss the kennels where the dogs were kept. Our two horses and the foal were especially beloved.

  The children always kept animals in the garden, creatures the prisoners were forever bringing them. Tortoises, martens, cats, lizards: there was always something new and interesting to be seen there. In summer they splashed in the wading pool in the garden, or in the Sola.[84]

  But their greatest joy was when Daddy bathed with them. He had, however, so little time for all these childish pleasures. Today I deeply regret that I did not devote more time to my family. I always felt that I had to be on duty the whole time. This exaggerated sense of duty has always made life more difficult for me than it actually need have been. Again and again my wife reproached me and said: “You must think not only of the service always, but of your family too.”

  Yet what did my wife know about all that lay so heavily on my mind? She has never been told.

  When, on Pohl’s suggestion, Auschwitz was divided up, he gave me the choice of being commandant of Sachsenhausen or head of DI.[85]

  It was something quite exceptional for Pohl to allow any officer a choice of jobs. He gave me twenty-four hours in which to decide. It was really a kindly gesture in good will, a recompense, as he saw it, for the task I had been given at Auschwitz.

  At first I felt unhappy at the prospect of uprooting myself, for I had become deeply involved with Auschwitz as a result of all the difficulties and troubles and the many heavy tasks that had been assigned to me there.

  But then I was glad to be free from it all.

  On no account did I wish to have another camp. I had truly had enough of the life, after a total of nine years in camp service, of which three and a half years had been spent at Auschwitz.

  So I chose the position of chief of DI. There was nothing else for me to do. I was not allowed to go to the front. The Reichsführer SS had twice and firmly forbidden this.

  I did not at all care for an office job, but Pohl had told me that I could organize the department as I saw best.

  When I took up my post, on December 1, 1943, Glücks also gave me a completely free hand. Glücks was not pleased with my appointment, which brought me, of all people, so closely in contact with himself. Nevertheless, he bowed to the inevitable, since this was Pohl’s wish.

  I had to regard my job, if I were not to look upon it as a nice, easy billet, as one in which I was primarily concerned to assist the commandants, and I saw all my functions from the point of view of the camps themselves. In fact I intended that the activities of the DI should be precisely the reverse of what they had hitherto been.

  Above all I wanted my office to be in close and permanent contact with the camps and by personal visits I intended to form a firsthand judgment of their difficulties and grievances, so that I would be in a position to exert pressure on the higher authorities concerning what could and should be done for them.

  In my new office I could now, thanks to the documents, orders, and entire correspondence filed there, follow the development of all the camps since Eicke’s inspectorate and obtain a complete picture.

  There were many camps of which I had no personal knowledge at all. The entire correspondence between the Inspector of Concentration Camps and the camps themselves, unless solely concerned with the distribution of labor or with matters of health or administration, was filed in the DI offices. It was thus possible to gain a bird’s-eye view of all the camps. But no more than that. What actually happened in the camps, what they looked like was not to be found in the documents and archives. That could only be discovered by walking through the camps oneself and keeping one’s eyes open. And this was what I proposed to do.

  I spent a lot of time traveling on duty. Thi
s was usually at Pohl’s request, for he regarded me as an expert on what went on inside the camps.

  I was thus able to see the reality in the camps, the hidden defects, and shortcomings. Maurer of DII[86] was Glucks’s deputy and virtually the Inspector, and he and I were able to put right much that was wrong. But by 1944 it was too late for drastic change. The camps became increasingly overcrowded, with all the usual by-products that followed this state of affairs.

  It is true that tens of thousands of Jews were moved from Auschwitz for the new armaments project, but this was only a question of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Knocked together with great speed and under unbelievably difficult conditions, the buildings, constructed by officials exactly in accordance with the principles laid down in the manuals, presented a picture of unrelieved squalor. In addition there was the heavy work to which the prisoners were unaccustomed and the ever diminishing scale of rations. The prisoners would have been spared a great deal of misery if they had been taken straight into the gas chambers at Auschwitz. They soon died, without making any substantial contribution to the war effort and often without having done any work at all.

  I drafted numerous reports on the subject, but pressure on the part of the Reichsführer SS (“more prisoners for armaments”) was too strong. He was intoxicated by the weekly rise in the figures of prisoners employed. And he no longer looked at the mortality rate. In past years a rise in the death rate had always infuriated him. Now he said nothing.

  If Auschwitz,had followed my constantly repeated advice, and had only selected the most healthy and vigorous Jews, then the camp would have produced a really useful labor force and one that would have lasted, although it is true that it would have been numerically smaller. As it was, the numbers on paper were high, but a majority percentage had to be subtracted to obtain a true picture. The sick cluttered up the camps, depriving the able-bodied of food and living space and doing no work, and in fact their presence made many of those who could work incapable of it.

  No slide rule was necessary to calculate what the final result would be. But I have already said enough about this, and have written a detailed account in my descriptions of the various persons concerned.[87]

  By reason of my appointment I was now in more immediate and direct contact with the Reich Security Head Office. I got to know all the influential officials in the various departments responsible for the concentration camps.

  Their views, however, varied from office to office. I have already given a detailed account of the chief of Amt IV[88], but I was never able to discover his own real opinions, since he hid behind the Reichsführer SS.

  Subsection IVb (Protective Custody) was still bogged down in its old, prewar routine.[89]

  A great deal of energy was devoted to fighting the paper war and far too little to the actual requirements of the real war. Many officials in this subsection should have been dismissed from their posts.

  In my opinion, the arrest, on the outbreak of the war, of those public officials who had hitherto been antagonistic to the regime was a mistake. It only served to create more enemies for the state. Those who were considered untrustworthy could have been arrested much earlier, for there was plenty of time during the years of peace. But the protective custody subsection was bound by the reports of the controlling offices.

  I had many struggles with this subsection, despite the fact that I was personally on good terms with its chief.

  The subsection that was concerned with the Western and Northern territories, including special prisoners from these areas, was very difficult to deal with, because these territories were of direct interest to the Reichsführer SS. The greatest caution was needed here. The prisoners were to be given special consideration and employed so far as possible on lighter work, etc.

  The subsection concerned with the Eastern territories was less troublesome. Eastern prisoners, apart from the Jews, formed the majority in all the camps. It was therefore they who provided the main labor force for use in the armaments program.

  Execution orders came in an unending stream. Today I can see more clearly. My requests for help in remedying the deficiencies of Auschwitz by putting a stop to new deliveries were shelved by the Reich Security Head Office, since they would not, or perhaps did not wish to, show any consideration for the Poles. All that mattered was that the actions of the Security Police should be completed. What happened to the prisoners afterward was a matter of indifference to the Reich Security Head Office, since the Reichsführer SS attached no particular importance to it.

  The subsection concerned with the Jews, controlled by Eichmann and Günther, had no doubts about its objective. In accordance with the orders given by the Reichsführer SS in the summer of 1941, all Jews were to be exterminated. The Reich Security Head Office raised the strongest objections when the Reichsführer SS, on Pohl’s suggestion, directed that able-bodied Jews were to be sorted out from the rest.

  The Reich Security Head Office was always in favor of the complete extermination of all Jews, and saw in the creation of each new work camp and in every further thousand Jews selected for work the danger that circumstances might arise that would set them free and keep them alive.

  No department had a greater interest in raising the Jewish death rate than the Jewish subsection of the Reich Security Head Office.

  As against that, Pohl had been authorized by the Reichsführer SS to provide as many prisoners as possible for the armaments industry. Accordingly he laid the greatest emphasis on the delivery of the maximum number of prisoners, and this also meant that as many Jews capable of work as possible were to be removed from the transports earmarked for extermination.

  He also attached the greatest importance to the preservation of this labor force alive, although without much success.

  The Reich Security Head Office and the Economic Administration Head Office were thus at loggerheads.

  Nevertheless, Pohl appeared to be the stronger, for he was backed by the Reichsführer SS who, bound in his turn by his promises to the Führer, was constantly and ever more urgently demanding prisoners to work in the armaments factories.

  On the other hand the Reichsführer SS also wished to see as many Jews as possible destroyed.

  From 1941 onward, when Pohl took over the concentration camps, the camps were incorporated into the Reichsführer SS’s armaments program.

  As the war situation grew ever more total, the Reichsführer SS’s demands for prisoner labor became more ruthless.

  The bulk of the prisoners were those from the East and, later, the Jews. They were mainly sacrificed to the armaments program.

  The concentration camps were a hone of contention between the Reich Security Head Office and the Economic Administration Head Office.

  The Reich Security Head Office delivered prisoners with the object of destroying them. It was a matter of indifference to them whether this objective was realized straight away by execution or by way of the gas chambers, or rather more slowly through diseases brought about by the unwarrantable conditions in the concentration camps, which were deliberately not put right.

  The Economic Administration Head Office wanted the prisoners preserved for the armaments industry. Since, however, Pohl allowed himself to be led astray by the Reichsführer SS’s continual demands for ever more labor, he unintentionally played into the hands of the Reich Security Head Office. For because of his insistence on the fulfillment of these demands, thousands of prisoners died at their work, since virtually all the basic necessities of life for such masses of prisoners were lacking.

  I guessed at the time that this was happening, but was reluctant to believe it.

  But today I can see the picture more clearly.

  I have now described what was the true and only background to it all, the dark shadows that lay behind the concentration camps.

  Thus the concentration camps were intentionally, though sometimes unintentionally, transformed into huge-scale extermination centers.

  The Reich Sec
urity Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and the organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples. For example, if, during the construction of a canal, the inmates of one camp were expended, thousands of fresh kulaks or other unreliable elements would be produced, who after a time would be expended in their turn.

  Was the purpose of these reports to accustom the commandants gradually to their new task? Or was it to render them insensitive to the conditions gradually developing in their own camps?

  As DI one of my regular jobs was to undertake distasteful inquiries in the various concentration camps, and even more often in the work camps. These were not always pleasant for the commandants. I was also responsible for the necessary changes in personnel, as for example at Bergen-Belsen. Up till then the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps had paid no attention to this camp. It was used by the Reich Security Head Office mainly for the so-called “delicate” Jews, and it was only regarded as a temporary transit camp. The commandant, Sturmbannführer Haas, a grim, taciturn man, directed and governed the place as he saw fit. He had actually been for a time at Sachsenhausen, in 1939, as commander of the protective custody camp, but he came from the General SS and had not much knowledge of concentration camps.

  He made no attempt to improve the state of the buildings or the grim hygienic conditions prevailing at Bergen-Belsen, which was an old prisoner-of-war camp taken over from the army. He had to be relieved of his post in the autumn of 1944 because of the way he neglected the camp and carried on with women, and I had to go there and install Kramer, previously commandant of Auschwitz II, in his place.[90]