The Nuremberg Interviews (53 page)

“I was commandant at Auschwitz for four years, from May 1940 until the first of December, 1943.” I asked how many people were executed at Auschwitz during his time. “The exact number cannot be determined. I estimate about 2.5 million Jews.” Only Jews? “Yes.” Women and children as well? “Yes.”
²

What do you think of it? Hoess looked blank and apathetic. I repeated my question and asked him whether he approved of what went on at Auschwitz. “I had my personal orders from Himmler.” Did you ever protest? “I couldn’t do that. The reasons Himmler gave me I had to accept.” In other words, you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children? “Not justified — but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

How could the Jews exterminate the Germans? “I don’t know, that is what Himmler said. Himmler didn’t explain.” Don’t you have a mind or opinion of your own? “Yes, but when Himmler told us something, it was so correct and so natural we just blindly obeyed it.” Do you have any feelings of guilt for this? “Yes, now naturally it makes me think that it was not right.”

Health History:
Hoess stated that he was born at Baden-Baden on November 25, 1900. His birth was normal and he was a full-term baby. He knows nothing about his developmental history. His general health as a child was good and the only specific illness he recalls was measles at an early age.

Education:
He attended elementary school for three years and the gymnasium for five years. He is vague as to his accomplishments or achievements in school.

Career:
At the age of sixteen, in 1916, he volunteered as a soldier. He spent two years in Iraq and Palestine at the front, fighting against the English. In 1918, at the cessation of hostilities, he was a sergeant of infantry.

From 1918 until 1921 he was a member of a Freikorps, called the
Rossbach Freikorps, which was stationed in the Baltic states, the Ruhr, and in Upper Silesia. “Officially the Freikorps was not paid for by the government, but unofficially it was financed by the government and by industry. The Rossbach Freikorps consisted of three thousand men. There were innumerable Freikorps, from company to regimental strengths.”

After 1921 he became an apprentice agriculturalist on an estate in Silesia and Schleswig-Holstein. He worked there until 1923, when he was imprisoned, “because of the murder of a man who had given Leo Schlageter to the French; Schlageter was one of the leaders of the active resistance against the French in 1923.” You murdered the man who gave up Schlageter? “Yes, I was one of four men who clubbed him to death.” Why? “This man had been a member of the Rossbach Freikorps and then stole some money and made illegal dealings and took off. Then in May 1923 he reappeared in Mecklenburg in order to get some people in my school to work for the French. His name was Walter Kadow. He was an unemployed German teacher about twenty-five years old.”

How long were you in prison? “I was sentenced to ten years’ hard labor, but was released after five years.” How is it that you didn’t receive a longer sentence since it was murder? “It was not seen as murder by the court, at least not as a plain murder. It was considered death as a result of an argument. It happened in a restaurant where we met. The other three men received twelve-, ten-, and eight-year prison terms. I was in prison in Brandenburg on the Havel near Berlin. I was released from prison in 1928. There was a political amnesty when all people who were Communists or belonged to the rightist parties were released. It was the so-called Hindenburg amnesty. My crime was called a political murder.” What is the difference to you between a political murder and any other murder? “There is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder.” Do you mean that it is all right to kill your political opponents? “No, I only mean the emotions which lead to such things are different, that is, the causes vary.” But in both cases, it is murder? “Yes.”

From 1928 to 1934 he returned to work on various farms and estates in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, and so forth. He described his duties as being mainly “inspector of estates.”

Concerning his political activity, he said that he had been a National Socialist since 1922, but participated in no political activity between
1928 and 1934. He had attended party meetings but never held any office. In 1934 he joined the SS because the owner of the estate for which he worked wanted to establish an SS horse stable, and “I was an ex-cavalryman.” Once while on an inspection tour in Stettin, “Himmler met me and asked me if I wanted to take the position of supervisor of a concentration camp. I agreed.” How did you happen to be in Stettin? “There was a general inspection of the SS there and I was leading an SS cavalry group.”

Hoess said that while he was commandant of Auschwitz, soap was not manufactured from human fat. “We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, where it was woven into special fittings for gaskets.” Was this hair also from men and children? “No, in 1943 I received the first orders to do it. We cut the hair only from women and only after they were dead.” Did you supervise gas chamber murders? “Yes, I had the whole supervision of that business. I was often, but not always, present when the gas chambers were being used.” You must be a hard man. “You become hard when you carry out such orders.” It seems to me you must be hard to begin with. “Well, you certainly can’t have soft feelings, whether it is shooting of people or killing them in gas chambers.”

People were shot at Auschwitz also? “Not Jews, but Poles of the resistance movement were shot. This was done under orders of Rudolf Mildner.” Were you a friend of Mildner? “He often came to Auschwitz.” Did he have his court at Auschwitz? “After the Poles were sentenced, after the party district administrator signed the death sentences, then they came to Auschwitz to Mildner’s court and were told that they were sentenced to death. This amounted to about sixty or seventy men per month.” How many months was Mildner there? “Mildner came in 1941 and left in 1943. I would estimate about 1,500 men were sentenced to death by Mildner’s court.”

Hoess was sitting on his bed when I entered with Mr. Triest, the interpreter. He came to stiff attention and kept standing until I invited him to sit down. He said that his aching feet were somewhat relieved but that he still occasionally put them in a tub of cold water for temporary relief.

“I am going to court tomorrow or the next day, I was told this morning. I am going to be a witness for Kaltenbrunner.” He has a somber but
apprehensive and vacuous facial expression. He said: “Did I give you a report of the actual proceedings?” I told him to tell me whatever came to his mind. He said, “Auschwitz was originally thought of as a quarantine camp for Poles from the General Government. Poles were originally scheduled to come to a concentration camp in the Reich itself, and Auschwitz was originally meant to be only a transient quarantine station where prisoners would be held for a few weeks to determine whether they had illnesses which were contagious, such as typhus or fleck fever.

“The actual spot where the camp was is near a little city near Auschwitz. Originally it was the site of artillery barracks for the Polish army. I had the order to cultivate and work the surrounding farms with internees. This was a hard job because all of the surrounding territory was often flooded and quite run-down.

“Until 1918 Auschwitz was part of Austria and Silesia. Then it became Polish. It was on the Galician border. It is sixty kilometers from Krakow. But Auschwitz was not part of the General Government, it was considered part of the newly created province of Upper Silesia.

“I arrived at Auschwitz in May 1940 and I brought with me a cadre of thirty internees from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where I had been the first adjutant and then camp commandant. Auschwitz was just an empty couple of barracks when I arrived.

“Then Polish concentration camp inmates began arriving from the General Government and other Polish territory. Auschwitz at that time became a camp for people who had participated in the Polish resistance movement. Very few were executed during the first year — only those that were sentenced to death by the Gestapo and SS corps.” About how many would you say were executed? “I don’t know. A few hundred or maybe more.” How were they executed? “By shooting.

“The camp was run-down and I supervised the rebuilding of houses and barracks and prepared it for twenty thousand internees, but in the first few months we received only two thousand to three thousand men.

“In the spring of 1941, Himmler arrived on an inspection tour. He ordered me to enlarge the camp to the greatest possible extent, and party district administrator Fritz Bracht, who was present and who was responsible for the area, was ordered to put at my disposal the entire territory, which was about twenty thousand morgen, or five thousand hectares. In the camp itself I was ordered to erect several large workshops such as carpentry and machine shops.

“Then I was ordered to dry out the swamps and erect model farms and build up agriculture as much as possible. I was ordered to construct a prisoner-of-war camp to accommodate 100,000 in a neighborhood three kilometers from the original camp, called Birkenau. The population in that territory, consisting of about seven villages, was evacuated and sent to the town of Auschwitz. Those that could be employed in factories or the railroad stayed in Auschwitz, but the others, who were only farmers, went to work for the General Government elsewhere.

“The 100,000 prisoners of war for the camp at Birkenau, the POW camp, never arrived, and that project was later discarded.

“In the summer of 1941, I was called to Berlin to see Himmler.
³
I was given the order to erect extermination camps. I can almost give you Himmler’s actual words, which were to the effect: ‘The Führer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date.’

“That was Himmler’s explanation. Then he explained to me why he selected Auschwitz. There were extermination camps already in the East but they were incapable of carrying out a large-scale action of extermination. Himmler could not give me the exact number, but he said that at the proper time Eichmann would get in touch with me and tell me more about it. He would keep me informed about incoming transports and like matters.

“I was ordered by Himmler to submit precise plans as to my ideas on how the extermination program should be executed in Auschwitz. I was supposed to inspect a camp in the East, namely Treblinka, and to learn from the mistakes committed there.

“A few weeks later, Eichmann visited me in Auschwitz and told me that the first transports from the General Government and Slovakia were to be expected. He added that this action should not be delayed in any way so that no technical difficulties would arise and that the schedules of transports should be maintained at all costs.

“Meanwhile, I had inspected the extermination camp of Treblinka in the General Government, which was located on the Bug River. Treblinka was a few barracks and a railroad line side track, which had formerly been a sand quarry. I inspected the extermination chambers there. These chambers were built of wood and cement; each was about the size
of this cell [approximately eight feet by eleven feet], but the ceilings were lower than in this cell. Along the side of the extermination chambers, motors from old tanks or trucks were set up, and the gases of the motors, the exhaust, was directed into the cells, and this is how the people were exterminated.”

How many people at a time? “I couldn’t tell you exactly but I estimated that in each chamber, which was about the size of this cell, but not as high, about two hundred people were shoved in at one time — pressed into the cell very close together.”

Men, women and children? “Yes, but they were brought into the cells separately, that is, the men were exterminated in the same chambers but at different intervals.” You have this cell to yourself and it is not very large, therefore, two hundred people would have to be packed like sardines. “Yes, the door had to be jammed shut and the people pressed very close together, standing up.” How many chambers were there at Treblinka? “There were ten such chambers, each made of stone and cement. There were no peek holes, just big doors covered with metal sheeting. The authorities at Treblinka would leave the people to be exterminated in these chambers with the motors running for one hour after they had started the motors, and then they opened the doors again. By that time all were dead. I don’t know how long it really took for the gas to kill them.” How did they remove the bodies? “They were removed by other internees. At first they were placed in mass graves in the sand quarries, and later when I inspected they had just started burning the corpses in open sand quarries or ditches and had begun to excavate the mass graves and burn those that had been buried.” How long did you stay in Treblinka? “Only a few hours, then I went back to Auschwitz.

“Then the first transports arrived in Auschwitz.

“I had two old farmhouses somewhat removed from the camp which I had converted into gas chambers. I had the walls between the rooms removed and the outer walls cemented to make them leakproof. The first transport that arrived from the General Government was brought there. They were killed with Zyklon B gas.”

How many people at a time were exterminated in each farmhouse? Hoess stared at the floor and thought for several moments. He shifted his eyes from me to the floor to Mr. Triest, and finally after about thirty seconds of silence, said: “In each farmhouse eighteen hundred to two thousand persons could be gassed at one time. The two farmhouses were
separated by a distance of six hundred to eight hundred meters. They were completely closed off from the outside by woods and fences.”