Rudolf hess autobiography books

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Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Addeddate Identifier dli. Hoess is a definite liar with his thoughts and feelings but at least he was honest with fact. This book was the most difficult thing I've read in my entire life. The rating is not for the content of the book or the writing. The rating is for the necessity of reading this when studying Holocaust literature.

The rating applies to the eloquent introduction by Primo Levi. Anti-semitism is littered throughout and isn't an ideology he feels should be condemned even at the end of his life. Precisely because of these mass exterminations, Germany has drawn upon herself the hatred of the entire world. It in no way served the cause of anti-Semitism, but on the contrary brought the Jews far closer to their ultimate objective.

This is not a man who feels remorse for what he has done, nor does he understand why it was wrong. He is a victim in his own eyes and his own right, just a cog in the machine, he claims. Just following orders, he didn't have a choice! But there is no note of apology for the murdering of millions of innocent people just because of their faith. They could never understand that he, too, had a heart and that he was not evil.

This is just more Nazi propaganda trash, but it is so absolutely necessary in understanding what happened. The Holocaust is a cautionary tale of the dangers of nationalism, it is a testament to how truly inhumane humans can be to each other over stereotypes and -perceived- threats, it serves to remind us all that no matter how strongly we believe we are right, it doesn't mean that we are.

This man truly believed himself innocent. It is only in looking at it from all sides that one can truly grasp how such horrors could have occurred and how to prevent them from ever happening again. I think that is a pretty accurate depiction of what this book is. Hoss was forthright in conveying his own personal history, his role in the Nazi machine, and his position as Kommandant of Auschwitz.

His formative years during WWI, his 6 years in prison, and his early years in the SS all led up to the position he would be most notorious for. I learned a lot about SS hierarchy, especially in regards to concentration camp administration. The worst possible fate for a Jew at Auschwitz would be Sonderkommando, herding fellow Jews into gas chambers, removing the bodies, liberating them of their gold teeth and hair, and feeding the corpses into the furnaces.

And he stood by as millions were led into the gas chambers. His excuse follows the typical Nazi adage that they were just following orders. No doubt he was monstrous, but there is a sense of humanity beneath his Nazi uniform and ideology. In fact, he answered everything asked of him. Overall it was a chilling, if necessary glimpse at life inside the Nazi regime and concentration camps.

Steven Godin. An extraordinary and unique document? I don't think so. OK, so the chilling activity taking place within the gas chambers is told with clear cut precision, but it's nothing I haven't come across before. Even on the very first page he states - " I want to try and tell the story of my innermost being. Yes, it's not completely empty in regards looking at himself in the mirror, but I was expecting so much more.

I've read at lot of Holocaust lit already - both from the perspective of the Nazis rudolf hess autobiography books the Jews, and this, in terms of importance, was nothing special. Matthew Ted. This is one of the most brutal and difficult things I've read. A horrific, contradictory post-war statement by Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz.

Hoess, one minute, describes in clinical and unflinching detail, the process of leading people in the gas chambers, the process of their dying, and then the subsequent hair-cutting, teeth removals, and ovens, and the next minute, how he was 'forced' to witness these things and how he was shaken by them. How going home to his wife and children was difficult.

At the end of his statement he admits he is still a National Socialist but that the Final Solution was 'wrong'. There for the first time I saw the gassed bodies in mass. But I must admit openly that the gassings had a calming effect on me, since in the near future the mass annihilation of the Jews was to begin [ I had had enough of hostage executions, and the mass killings by firing squad ordered by Himmler and Heydrich.

Now I was at ease. We were all saved from these bloodbaths, and the victims would be spared until the last moment. Evil does and has existed. Niklas Pivic. Author 3 books 70 followers. This book is, as Primo Levi says in the introduction, filled with lies and shirks, but never the less, it is an extremely important document of The Final Solution, the extermination machine, Auschwitz, Birkenau, the bureaucracy, the corruption and the insanity that existed in the top ranks and among the SS in Auschwitz.

And he is considered by many to be the most cruel commandant of Auschwitz. Ellie Midwood. Author 45 books 1, followers. Now he knows how it felt for the millions of people whom he sent to the gas chambers or sentenced to death in other ways. Alan Mauldin. This alleged human is scary. In writing his memoirs he revealed a lack of awareness, emotion and responsibility that is breathtaking.

The SS guards he was assigned, the poor medical care, lack of supplies and indifferent higher officers all caused the brutal and deadly conditions at Auschwitz. He struggled mightily to rectify the situation, but could not manage due to everyone conspiring against him. There was nothing he could do to stop the sadistic guards from encouraging the mistreatment of prisoners or killing them.

But then he admits the Kommandant who followed him fixed the problem of prisoner beatings in no time. The worst is rudolf hess autobiography books reaction to his role in killing perhaps three million or more people.

Rudolf hess autobiography books

It was an order like any other. He was just rudolf hess autobiography books instrument fate put in place to carry it out. He is almost moved when a mother, one of the few he witnessed killed who knew her fate ahead of time, calmed her children and told them everything would be fine, but whispered in his ear as she passed: How can you kill all these beautiful children?

He never answers that question, as he rattles off his account of unimaginable horror in an almost trivial manner. He discusses how his lot was terrible, what with no one he can depend on to properly assist him, with directives to supply so many prisoners to work as slaves building weapons for the Nazi arms manufacturers and the never-ending supply of trains bringing Jews that he has to routinely gas to death and then burn.

That he doesn't seem to realize the enormity of what he's done -- and why it should be considered so horrible -- is the most frighting aspect of it all. This Italian edition for one in English see Death Dealer: The Memoirs Of The Ss Kommandant At Auschwitz comes with a lucid preface by Primo Levi himlsef an Auschwitz survivor - Hoss sees himself simply as somebody who wants to do his job properly, or at least this is the justification he is putting out to the world.

In his allucinated perspective, perfecting ways to "process" large numbers of inmates becomes almost an act of kindness to his prisoners: "Death would overcome [them] in the crowded cells just after the gas had been pumped int. A short cry, immediately muffled, and all was over" [my translation] - and Hoss is greatly conforted by the success of gasing Russian prisoners, as he had worried about not being able to carry out the orders of the mass extermination of the Jews in the near future.

He is simply a guy doing his job, and he cares about doing it properly. As compelling as it is horrifying. Todo por amor a su patria y lealtad a su partido. Todo esto no es nuevo, pese a lo chocante que pueda sonar. Esto porque los prisioneros tuvieron que hacer cosas terribles para garantizar su supervivencia en el estado primitivo y degradante en el que estaban.

Y esto lo confirma Hoss. Un libro recomendable si se quiere leer un testimonio del otro lado de las cosas, que sigue siendo un lado terrible y doloroso. Francesco Cicconetti. Author 2 books followers. In questo mese ho letto diversi libri sul periodo nazista e la maggior parte delle volte ho preferito non dare recensioni. I don't know why I continually feel compelled to read books about the Holocaust.

But I do. When we visited Auschwitz a few years ago, our guide practically spat out the name of Rudolf Hoss every time she had to say it. We saw the house he lived in. The place where he was executed. And somehow I felt the need to be a witness to his words. It is, of course, a chilling read. The 'banality of evil' is on full display. And most disturbing of all, to me, is the fact that even today, seventy five years later, one only has to turn on the nightly news to see all the 'little men and women with their little hatreds' still on full display, every single day, in every corner of the world.

And maybe that is reason enough to continue to read these books. They do not have to wade through the blood nor listen to the screams nor watch the victims in the dance of death. It is ordinary men and women who are ordered to carry out these horrors. These are the people who should have weighed these orders; it is here that the lesson of history lies.

Without the SS there could have been no concentration camps. Without the soldier there could have been no war. It is not only Germany that bears the heavy burden, but the rest of the world also. For it is well-documented that the Allies and the Christian churches, especially Rome, did not speak out strongly enough to stop the horrors, nor did the Allies take the proper action to halt the trains that led to Auschwitz.

By examining these little men and women and their little hatreds, we can learn from this history. Because of the highly organized mass media of today and the orchestrated propaganda spewing forth, be it from the West or the East, it will be the little men and women with their little hatreds who may once again be a tidal wave of destruction that will sweep humanity into another age of horror.

The words of George Santayana cannot be repeated often enough, for each new generation seems to find new ways to make the same mistakes. It is the hope of the present that they relearn and carry the burden of history: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Paskuly - Editor. This is a good read that has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

In my opinion, the book was left as a kind of explanation for his family. It is obvious that there is no remorse in Hoss' narrative. Please do not miss the appendices, they are dry but they will help the reader recognize inconsistencies within the rudolf hess autobiography books read. As such, I found it extremely difficult to review and yet, perhaps for that very reason, I felt compelled to put down my thoughts on this one.

Perhaps the very act of making them public will help me process what was a jarring experience: this autobiography left me in a state of painful dismay and anger; states that I hope to tame, so to speak, via cogent discourse. I had known of this account for quite a while but did not know it was an actual autobiography. This inability to fully shoulder person accountability is a constant and runs along several lines: his superiors, in particular Himmler, are repeatedly accused for the sorrowful state Auschwitz degenerated into.

Occasionally he will display glimpses of borderline concern for the prisoners but this was obviously not his main concern. He mentions, almost as aside, that this only applies in 'normal circumstances'. He began this cataloguing long before he even became involved in the Camps, having started in earnest as a young man in jail. The homosexuals, said to be a 'vice', and something of an epidemic are further subdivided into the 'real homosexuals', those who turn to homosexuality as a means of survival: labor can rescue the second group, while the first one is beyond redemption.

Specific tests are made to see if the 'cure' did succeed, including using females to approach the inmates and see if they acted 'like men' or not. The Roma prisoners are described in sickly endearing terms as "my best-loved prisoners- if I may put it that way". It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination program seemed to me right.

I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. It is true that I looked upon them as the enemies of our people. But just because of this I saw no difference between them and the other prisoners, and I treated them all the same way. I never drew and distinctions. In any event the emotion of hatred is foreign to my nature.

But I know what hate is, and what it looks like. I have seen it and I have suffered it myself. Jewish supremacy would thus be abolished. There was nothing new in anti-Semitism. It has always existed all over the world, but has only come into the limelight when the Jews have pushed themselves forward too much in their quest for power, and when their evil machinations have become too obvious for the general public to stomach.

He mentions a man who, upon wheeling a dead body to the ovens, stopped momentarily upon realizing it was his own wife but then went on with his job as if utterly nonplussed. Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Sign up for free Log in. It appears your browser does not have it turned on.

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