The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: imt/nca/nca-06/nca-06-3868-ps


Archive/File: imt/nca/nca-06/nca-06-3868-ps
Last-Modied: 1999/12/13

                                         TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3868-PS

                                                              [Page 787]
                                                                        
                          AFFIDAVIT
                              
I, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, being first duly sworn, depose and say
as follows:

1. I am forty-six years old, and have been a member of the NSDAP since
1922; a member of the SS since 1934; a member of the Waffen-SS since
1939. I was a member from 1 December 1934 of the SS Guard Unit, the
so-called Deathshead Formation [Totenkopf Verband].

2. 1 have been constantly associated with the administration of
concentration camps since 1934, serving at Dachau until 1938 ; then as
Adjutant in Sachenhausen from 1938 to May 1, 1940, when I was appointed
Commandant of Auschwitz. I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943,
and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and
exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half
million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about
3,000,000. This figure represents about 70 % or 80 % of all persons sent
to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used
for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the
executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war
(previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who
were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular
Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims
included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens,
mostly Jewish from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000
Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

3. WVHA (SS Main Economic and Administration Office), headed by
Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl, was responsible for all administrative
matters such as billeting, feeding and medical care, in the
concentration camps. Prior to establishment of the RSHA, Secret State
Police Office (Gestapo) and the Reich Office of Criminal Police were
responsible for arrests, commitments to concentration camps, punishments
and executions therein. After organization of the RSHA, all of these
functions were carried on as before, but, pursuant to orders signed by
Heydrich as Chief of the RSHA. While Kaltenbrunner was Chief of RSHA,
orders for protective custody, commitments, punishment, and individual
executions were signed by Kaltenbrunner or by Mueller, Chief of the
Gestapo, as Kaltenbrunner's deputy.

4. Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer 1941 and
continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised execu-

                                                              [Page 788]

tions at Auschwitz until the first of December 1943 and know by reason
of my continued duties in the Inspectorated of Concentration Camps WVHA
that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass
executions by gassing took place under the direct orders, supervisions,
and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these
mass executions directly -- from RSHA.

5. On 1 December 1943 I became Chief of AMT I in AMT Group D of the WVHA
and in that office was responsible for coordinating all matters arising
between RSHA and concentration camps under the administration of WVHA. I
held this position until the end of the war. Pohl, as Chief of W VHA,
and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of RSHA, often conferred personally and
frequently communicated orally and in writing concerning concentration
camps. On 5 October 1944 I brought a lengthy report regarding Mauthausen
Concentration Camp to Kaltenbrunner at his office at RSHA, Berlin.
Kaltenbrunner asked me to give him a short oral digest of this report
and said he would reserve any decision until he had had an opportunity
to study it in complete detail. This report dealt with the assignment to
labor of several hundred prisoners who had been condemned to death --
so-called "nameless prisoners."

6. The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete
extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish
extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there
were already in the general government three other extermination camps;
Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek. These camps were under the
Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to
find out how they carried out their extermination. The Camp Commandant
at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of
one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the
Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think
that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination
building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized prussic
acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It
took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber
depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead
because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour
before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were
removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold
from the teeth of the corpses.

7. Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we

                                                              [Page 789]

built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time. whereas
at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each.
The way we selected our victims was as follows:
we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming
transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the
doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were
fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to
the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably
exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work.
Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka
the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at
Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were
to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized
our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to
that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the
clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in
to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations
in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the
continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the
people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations
were going on at Auschwitz.

8. We received from time to time special prisoners from the local
Gestapo office. The SS doctors killed such prisoners by injections of
benzine. Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and
could put down any reason at all for the cause of death.

9. From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women inmates,
including sterilization and experiments relating to cancer. Most of the
people who died under these experiments had been already condemned to
death by the Gestapo.

10. Rudolf Mildner was the chief of the Gestapo at Kattowitz and as such
was head of the Political Department at Auschwitz which conducted third
degree methods of interrogation, from approximately March 1941 until
September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for
incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions.
The Gestapo Court, the SS Standgericht, which tried persons accused of
various crimes, such as escaping Prisoners of War, etc., frequently met
within Auschwitz, and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons,
who usually were executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. I
showed Mildner throughout the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he
was directly interested

                                                              [Page 790]

in it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at
Auschwitz.

I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are
true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion;
after reading over the statement, I have signed and executed the same at
Nurnberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.

                                        [signed] Rudolf Hoess
                                        RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HOESS
                                        
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 5th day of April 1946, at
Nurnberg, Germany.
[signed] Smith W. Brookhart Jr.
SMITH W. BROOKHART, JR.,
LT. COLONEL, IGD.


Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor

© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and to combat hatred. Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.