Book dossier

Kommandant in Auschwitz

by Rudolf Höss

Rudolf Hoess was the notorious Commandant of Auschwitz. Imprisoned and awaiting execution after the war, Hoess wrote a long memoir, a self-serving account of his life and approaches to management. The amoral sensibility Hoess displayed regarding all that went on in the charnel factory where the industrialization of death was practiced--where probably 3 million people were literally worked to death, shot or quickly gassed--is still almost beyond belief today. Here, noted writer Jürg Amann has distilled Hoess' memoir into an illuminating new work. The Commandant is a book Hoess would certainly not have approved--a chilling insight into Hitler's Final Solution and the nature of evil itself through the prism of the Nazis' totalitarian system, one Hoess and so many others felt no requirement to question. Ian Buruma's afterword sets this frightening excerpt within a broader moral and historical context.--From publisher description.