Rudolf Hoss
1901 – 1947 German Commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp
Longtime Auschwitz commandant who oversaw the murder of more than a million people.
- Religion
- Raised in a strict Catholic home and once destined for the priesthood; he renounced the church in 1922 and turned to Nazi ideology, later calling himself a Gottglaubiger.
- Affiliations
- Nazi Party; SS. No occult ties; earlier a member of Freikorps units and the Artamanen agrarian movement.
Hoss commanded Auschwitz for most of its existence, introducing Zyklon B gassing and expanding it into the largest killing center of the Holocaust. He testified in detail at Nuremberg and wrote a chilling memoir in captivity. Tried in Poland, he was hanged at Auschwitz in 1947.
Connections
- associate of Adolf Eichmann — Coordinated the arrival of deportation transports with Eichmann.
- associate of Adolf Eichmann — Coordinated transports to Hoss's Auschwitz camp.
- associate of Heinrich Himmler — Received orders and inspection visits from Himmler.
- associate of Josef Mengele — Mengele served as a doctor at his camp.
- associate of Josef Mengele — Served at Auschwitz under commandant Hoss.
- associate of Walther Darre — Both came through the Artaman agrarian movement.