Publisher's Synopsis
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 23. Chapters: Auschwitz Trial executions, Rudolf Hoss, Arthur Greiser, Bronislav Kaminski, Amon Goth, Albert Forster, Jurgen Stroop, Hans Aumeier, Maria Mandel, Josef Buhler, Karl Mockel, Ludwig Plagge, Arthur Liebehenschel, Ludwig Fischer, Maximilian Grabner, Hans Biebow, Ewa Paradies, Therese Brandl, Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff, August Bogusch, Paul Gotze, Josef Kollmer, Ernst Boepple. Excerpt: Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoss (also spelled Hoss, sometimes spelled in English as Hoess; 25 November 1900 - 16 April 1947) was an SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer (Lieutenant Colonel), and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered. Hoss joined the Nazi Party in 1922, the SS in 1934. He was hanged in 1947 following his trial at Warsaw. Rudolf Hoss was born in Baden-Baden into a strict Catholic family. In his early years, according to his autobiography, he was a lonely child with no playmates his own age, until he entered elementary school, and all of his companionship came from adults. His father, a one-time army officer who served in German East Africa, ran a tea and coffee business; he raised his son on strict religious principles and with military discipline, having decided that young Rudolf would enter the priesthood. Hoss grew up with an almost fanatical belief in the central role of "duty" in a moral life. Hoss began turning against religion in his late teens, after an episode in which, he said, his own priest broke the Seal of the Confessional by telling his parents about an event at school that young Rudolf had described during confession. Soon afterward, Hoss' father died, and Hoss began moving toward a military life. When World War I broke out, Hoss served briefly in a military hospital and then, at the..."