Rudolf Höss

Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was an SS Obersturmbannführer and the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II. He tested and carried into effect various methods to accelerate Adolf Hitler's plan to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. Höss introduced pesticide Zyklon B containing hydrogen cyanide to the killing process, thereby allowing soldiers at Auschwitz to murder 2,000 people every hour. He created the largest installation for the continuous annihilation of human beings ever known.

Despite his youth, Höss served on the Ottoman Front in World War I, becoming a sergeant in the Imperial German Army by the age of 17. Following Germany's defeat, he fought with insurgents against the Weimar Republic. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 (serving 1923-8 in prison as accessory to a murder) and the SS in 1934. From 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945, he was in charge of Auschwitz where more than a million people were killed before the defeat of Germany. He was hanged in 1947 following a trial in Warsaw.

Rudolf Höss in Worldwar
Rudolf Höss was the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 until 1942, when the Race captured and the camp and liberated all its inmates.

In 1962 the Race's scientist Ttomalss interviewed with Höss in Nuremberg, the German Reich's capital city. When Ttomalss asked him how could he do what he did, Höss replied that he was simply obeying his superiors' orders.