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Title details for Death Dealer by Rudolf Hoss - Available

Death Dealer

The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz

by Rudolf Hoss
Steven Paskuly
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By his own admission, SS Kommandant Rudolf Hess's was history's greatest mass murderer, having personally supervised the extermination of approximately two million people, mostly Jews, at the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Death Dealer is the first complete translation of Hess's memoirs into English.These bone-chilling memoirs were written between October 1946 and April 1947. At the suggestion of Professor Sanislaw Batawia, a psychologist, and Professor Jan Shen, the prosecuting attorney for the Polish War Crimes Commission in Warsaw, Hess wrote a lengthy and detailed description of how the camp developed, his impressions of the various personalities with whom he dealt, and even the extermination of millions in the gas chambers. This written testimony is perhaps the most important document attesting to the Holocaust, because it is the only candid, detailed, and (for the most part) honest description of the Final Solution from a high-ranking SS officer intimately involved in carrying out the plans of Hitler and Himmler.With the cold objectivity of a common hit-man, Höss chronicles the discovery of the most effective poison gas, and the technical obstacles that often thwarted his aim to kill as efficiently as possible. Staring at the horror without reacting, Hess allowed conditions at Auschwitz to reduce human beings to walking skeletons - then he labelled them as subhumans fit only to die. Readers will witness Hess's shallow rationalizations as he tries to balance his deeds with his increasingly disturbed, yet always ineffectual, conscience.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 26, 2019

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781616140083

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781616140083
      • File size: 18128 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1360
    • Text Difficulty: 11-12

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 1, 1992
      This first complete English translation of a senior Nazi officer's account of the Final Solution describes in cold, stomach-churning detail the program of genocide as an administrative procedure. Written during the six months before his 1947 execution in Warsaw for ``crimes committed against the Polish people,'' Hoss's memoirs are filled with specific recollections, from his fervently religious boyhood in Mannheim, through a prison term in Liepzig (for having killed a fellow soldier), to marriage and induction into the SS in 1934. Particulars of his roles in the concentration camp system include his ordering of ``the first execution of the war'' at Sachsenhausen in 1938 and his 1941 assignment to establish and manage Auschwitz as ``the largest human killing center in all of history.'' Personal squabbles with other SS leaders are interspersed with chilling descriptions of prison conditions and gassing procedures. This compelling historical document, from which Hoss emerges as a classic model of the bureaucratic middle manager, is expertly edited by Paskuly, a history teacher in New York; Pollinger's translation is seamless. Photos not seen by PW.

    • Library Journal

      June 15, 1992
      The man who presided over the expansion and lethal functioning of Auschwitz concentration camp, which surely earned him the distinction of being "the greatest destroyer of human beings in history," left behind this memoir before he was executed by the Poles at the end of World War II. A dedicated bureaucrat, Hoss smothered his feelings and devoted his talents to the killing of millions, even though he "personally never hated the Jews." The work was hard, and he "was no longer happy at Auschwitz once the mass annihilation began." An editorial glossary of terms and personalities enhances the usefulness of this valuable addition to Holocaust studies, a chilling self-portrait of an all-too-typical servant of totalitarianism.-- R.H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario

      Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1360
  • Text Difficulty:11-12

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