Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history Subject: Holocaust Almanac - The Memoirs of Rudolf Ho"ss - Authentic? Summary: The editor of "Death Dealer," the memoirs of Rudolf Ho"ff, the Kommandant of the Auschwitz death camp, speaks in response to those who would claim the memoirs are not authentic. Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca Followup-To: soc.history Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Auschwitz,Ho"ss Archive/File: people/h/hoess.rudolf.ferdinand hoess.intro.02 Last-modified: 1993/09/23 XRef: index holocaust/auschwitz holocaust/auschwitz auschwitz.faq1 holocaust/auschwitz auschwitz.faq2 The text which follows constitutes the second half of Steven Paskuly's introduction to the Ho"ss memoirs, which he edited. (Those who would like to consider the entire introduction are invited to send the following message to listserv@oneb.almanac.bc.ca: GET HOLOCAUST HOESS.INTRO.01) These comments deal specifically with charges that the Ho"ss memoirs are either fakes, or were extracted under duress or torture. The Ho"ss memoirs have always been a thorn in the side of Holocaust denial, which is precisely why we should give them serious consideration, in my opinion. The evidence they present is damning in the extreme, and cannot be denied by reasonable men. Note that Paskuly speaks frankly about the British treatment of Ho"ss - that is gratifying and significant, since it is a point often raised by the IHR and other apologists for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem." What the denial set carefully neglects to mention, for reasons which should be obvious to dispassionate observers, forms the basis for this initial paragraph: "Just after his capture in 1946, the British Security Police were able to extract a statement from Ho"ss by beating him and filling him with liquor. Ho"ss states in his autobiography that he doesn't remember what was in that statement. It does not differ in any great degree from the section entitled, 'The Final Solution to the Jewish Question in KL Auschwitz.' The later section, however, does contain more detail than the original forced statement to the British interrogators. There are fanatical groups in the United States, France, and even Australia who call themselves 'The Revisionist Historians.' They actually propose that Ho"ss never wrote these documents--that they are a fraud. They also state that even if the documents were written by Ho"ss, they were obviously done under duress from the 'Communist authorities' in Poland. The 'research' and the conclusions of these 'historians' are absolute rubbish. The documents written in Poland, the personal interviews given to psychiatrist G. Martin Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials, and Rudolf Ho"ss's blunt testimony during the trial itself are consistent with each other to such a degree that we can safely believe that the memoirs written in Poland are an elaboration of the Nuremberg testimony containing much more detail. The documents in Death Dealer are consistent with other statements made by SS Corporal Pery Broad and the diary of SS Dr. Kremer, who also were at Auschwitz, and with personal accounts by prisoners in the essential facts. They differ only when Hoss attempts to recall exact dates and numbers of prisoners. They also differ when Ho"ss writes about his part in the Final Solution. Ho"ss maintains that he was only following orders and being a good Nazi, and that he did this with no thought or regard to moral consequences because "Befehl ist Befehl" -- "orders are orders," therefore, they must be followed. It is only at the end of his autobiography, written almost two years after the war ended, that the moral implications of what Ho"ss did occurred to him and began to affect him consciously. The two final letters to his wife and his children reveal the heavy burden of guilt that he was experiencing. Where Ho"ss does consciously lie is in regard to his wife, Hedwig, and her knowledge of the mass killings, in order to protect her and their children from the inevitable postwar stigma and finger-pointing. This is evident by examining the statements made to psychiatrist Gilbert in 1945 and his last statements in 1947. Ho"ss revealed to Gilbert that one day at a party hosted at the Ho"ss villa, his wife overheard comments made by the Gauleiter of Silesia, Fritz Bracht, about the mass gassings occurring at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Later that evening in their bedroom, she questioned him about what she had heard. Ho"ss told Gilbert that he answered his wife's questions. He said that this was the only time he broke Himmler's order about absolute secrecy and discussed the Final Solution with anyone. Only Ho"ss and his wife know what took place that evening and what the contents of the conversation were. Thereafter, Frau Ho"ss refused to sleep in the same bed with her husband "and physical intimacy between the couple was rare. They became emotionally estranged from each other." Kommandant Ho"ss also pleads that he personally was unable to stop the brutality at Auschwitz-Birkenau because his staff officers often went against his orders. The truth is that he did nothing to prevent it. When SS Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Liebehenschel became Kommandant of Auschwitz after Ho"ss's promotion, he ordered all the SS and the Kapos in charge of prisoners to stop the random beatings. Some Kapos thought that he was joking and continued this practice. When Liebehenschel found out, he demoted them to ordinary prisoners and they were put in a work Kommando where they had to do physical labor. The beatings at Auschwitz stopped. Therefore, the truth is that Ho"ss allowed the beatings and the terror to continue because it served his purpose of maintaining camp discipline in the tradition of Theodore Eicke. Although Ho"ss writes negatively about the punishments Eicke inflicted on the prisoners, he fails to mention that the camp regulations and punishments were formulated by Ho"ss himself. He also fails to mention the executions of prisoners found after escaping, or the "Stehbunker," a punishment cell about three feet square in which prisoners could only stand or crouch and into which one to five prisoners were crammed with no food, no water, no light, and only the air that filtered through the cracks in the closed wooden door at floor level. The reader need only compare what Ho"ss wrote to the chronology at the back of this book to see where Ho"ss tries to protect himself. Ho"ss also hides the fact that he and his family never had to sacrifice their wants or needs because of the enormous treasure of food and clothing that the trainloads of Jews brought to Auschwitz. In the midst of starvation, disease, and death the Ho"ss family had everything. "Paradise" is what Frau Ho"ss called Auschwitz. Even after her husband was promoted to Berlin, Frau Ho"ss stayed in her villa at Auschwitz. Despite these and other omissions, the Ho"ss memoirs are remarkable in their graphic portrayal of many of the events at Auschwitz. Ho"ss's descriptions of the entire gassing procedure leave one shaking one's head and wondering how he could retell (and in many cases psychologically relive) these gruesome stories, especially since he was the cause of it all. Ho"ss acknowledges his part and simply states, "History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of all time." He never denies that he is, but simply attempts to report that, in spite of everything, "I still had a heart." There is no doubt that from the very beginning of his capture Ho"ss realized that he would be executed. He states this in his autobiography. Therefore, no serious argument can be made that Ho"ss concocted the gassing stories to help the Allies find the major Nazi war criminals guilty, as some claim." (Paskuly, 19-22) Work Cited Paskuly, Steven J., Ed. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, by Rudolph Ho"ss. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992
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