Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

by Thomas Harding

  Wrapping up his notes, Gilbert wrote, “In all of the discussions Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it would never occur to him if somebody hadn’t asked him. There is too much apathy to leave any suggestion of remorse and even the prospect of hanging does not unduly distress him. One gets the general impression of a man who is intellectually normal but with a schizoid apathy, insensitivity, and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic.”

  Two days later, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, Major Leon Goldensohn, came to visit Rudolf. Thirty-five years old, Goldensohn was, like Gilbert, a Jew who had been born and raised in New York. When he arrived in the cell, sucking at a pipe dangling from his mouth, Goldensohn found Rudolf sitting on the edge of his cot with his trousers rolled up, bathing his feet in a tub of warm water. Through an interpreter, Goldensohn asked what the problem was and Rudolf explained that he had had pains in his feet ever since they had become frostbitten in Camp Tomato.

  The psychiatrist asked him how he felt mentally. Rudolf replied: “I feel less nervous now than I did.” He was then asked if he felt upset over what he had done in Auschwitz. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” said Rudolf. “I was obeying orders, and now, of course, I see that it was unnecessary and wrong. But I don’t know what you mean by being upset about these things because I didn’t personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program at Auschwitz. It was Hitler who ordered it through Himmler and it was Eichmann who gave me the orders regarding transports.” When Goldensohn asked if he was haunted by nightmares—by images of the executions, gas chambers or burning corpses—Rudolf replied: “No, I have no such fantasies.”

  In a letter, written on May 20, 1946, Goldensohn gave his assessment: “His character is that of the amoral psychopath, which in itself, and correlated with his personal development history, indicates a dearth of parental love and unconscious hostility toward the father. Secondly, there is the influence of National Socialism, which enabled this sadistic psychopath to commit unprecedented inhumanities in a framework of apparent social and political respectability.” He concluded by saying, “In summary, this man has no moral or ethical standards, his reaction to the mass murders of which he is charged, is apathetic.”

  *

  On April 15, 1946, it was Rudolf’s turn to appear in court. Wearing a newly pressed black suit and a striped tie, with his hair recently cut and combed, Rudolf walked up to the wooden witness stand at the front of the room, placed a pair of black headphones around his head and, with his hand upon the Bible, swore to tell the truth. To either side of him stood burly white-helmeted American military police officers, hands behind their backs. Directly behind him hung a large map of Europe showing the major cities as well as the locations of the various concentration camps.

  The defense lawyer, Dr. Kurt Kauffmann, introduced Rudolf with the following summary: “Witness, your statements will have far-reaching significance. You are perhaps the only one who can throw some light upon certain hidden aspects, and who can tell which people gave the orders for the destruction of European Jewry, and can further state how this order was carried out and to what degree the execution was kept a secret.” He then asked him a series of questions, which were mostly intended to prove that Ernst Kaltenbrunner had never visited Auschwitz and which Rudolf quickly affirmed.

  The prosecution team was led by Colonel John Amen, a broad-shouldered man who, like all the soldiers present, wore full uniform, his chest patchworked with medals and his shoulders emblazoned with the eagle insignia of his rank. Amen sat at a small desk at the front of the courtroom, on which sat a microphone and two light bulbs, one red and one white. The lights were controlled by the court’s clerk, whose job it was to indicate when it was time to start speaking. When the white bulb lit up, he started reading from the affidavit that Rudolf had signed in front of Whitney Harris a few days earlier. This testimony is the only audio-visual record of Rudolf Höss. As he answered the questions put to him by the prosecutor, Rudolf spoke in a high-pitched, nasal voice.

  Colonel Amen: You signed that affidavit voluntarily, Witness?

  Rudolf: Jawohl.

  Colonel Amen: And the affidavit is true in all respects?

  Rudolf: Jawohl.

  The prosecutor then read a section that described Rudolf’s career in the SS, working as a camp guard in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and then Amtsgruppe D. He looked up from his papers, paused for effect, and then read out the most shocking part of Rudolf’s confession:

  “I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least two and a half million victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half-million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about three million.”

  There was total silence in the court, as Amen briskly read on. Sitting in two rows at the center of the courtroom, the twenty-three defendants looked gloomily on. The prosecutors knew they had finally found their trump card. The reporters crowded onto the visitors’ gallery took notes. The four judges placidly stared down from their elevated benches, grateful that the clarity of this testimony would help them deliver a definitive result at the end of the trial.

  Colonel Amen: “This figure represents about 70 or 80 percent of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries; included among the executed and burned were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of prisoner-of-war cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens, mostly Jewish, from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.” That is all true, Witness?

  Rudolf: Jawohl. It is.

  Colonel Amen: “I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until 1 December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, WVHA, that these mass executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took place under the direct order, supervision, and responsibility of RSHA. I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from RSHA.” Are those statements true and correct, Witness?

  Rudolf: Jawohl. They are.

  Once his cross-examination was concluded, Rudolf removed his heavy black headphones, set them on the edge of the witness stand, and stepped back to a row of chairs to the rear of the courtroom. A few minutes later the proceedings were adjourned and Rudolf was escorted back to his prison cell.

  Rudolf’s testimony was reported around the world. The New York Times described it as the “crushing climax to the case.” In Britain, the Times went further. It said of Höss’s signed testimony: “Its dreadful implications must surpass any document ever penned.”

  It was also clear to everyone in the courtroom that Rudolf’s testimony would have a profound impact on the proceedings, including the defendants themselves. At lunch in the prisoners’ canteen, Hans Frank, the former governor general of occupied Poland, told the psychologist Gustave Gilbert, “That was the low point of the entire trial—to hear a man say out of his own mouth that he exterminated two and a half million people in cold blood. That is something that people will talk about for a thousand years.” Hermann Göring also shared that he had been shocked by Rudolf’s confession but then attempted to distance himself, saying that it was only because Rudolf was from southern Germany that he had been able to commit such crimes—crimes of which a Prussian, such as himself, would never have been capable.

  The next day, Frank took the stand and for the first time confessed his role in the atrocities. To the direct question “Did you ever participate in the destruction of the Je
ws?,” he replied: “I say yes. And the reason I say yes is because I have been burdened by guilt for the five months of this trial, and particularly burdened by the statement made by Rudolf Höss.”

  Finally, the major war criminals had begun to admit their guilt.

  *

  While Rudolf had been appearing as a witness, the Polish government sent word that they were now prepared to try him themselves for the crimes he had committed in their country.

  So it was that on May 25, 1946, almost exactly a year since the end of the war and eleven weeks since his capture by Hanns, Rudolf was driven to the Nuremberg airport, where he was forced to pose for the Pathé news cameras, looking disheveled and unkempt in his rough woolen prison clothes. He was then flown in an American plane, along with two other German war criminals, to Warsaw, where he was handed over to the Polish authorities. At the city’s main prison, he was processed, checked once again for cyanide pills, and placed in his own cell.

  There is little record of his time in the Warsaw prison. The only source is Rudolf himself. He wrote that time passed slowly and that he endured beatings, including the vicious assaults of a twenty-year-old guard, but that he never complained, as the other guards treated him well.

  On July 30, 1946, two months after his return to Poland, he was transported by train, along with seven other former SS officers, from Warsaw to Krakow in southern Poland. When they arrived there were no cars waiting at the station to pick them up. Rudolf grew nervous, especially when an angry crowd began to gather around the group, having recognized the Kommandant. Just as they began to pose a real danger—some heckling, others threatening to throw stones—the cars arrived and whisked them away.

  It was then that he was taken to the old jail at 7 Montelupich Street, on the outskirts of Krakow, where, after being processed again, he was escorted to a tiny basement cell. Somehow Montelupich prison had avoided the worst of the aerial bombardments and, by the end of 1946, it housed many of Poland’s most notorious war criminals.

  Rudolf’s cell was six feet by ten, walled in gray concrete with a small grilled window set seven feet off the ground. He had a metal cot with a thin worn mattress, a bucket in the corner, a single light-bulb hanging from the ceiling, a small stove in one corner and, in the other, a metal jug from which to drink and wash. The prisoners were allowed to shower once every two weeks, although soap and towels were rarely available. They wore their own clothes and, by rule, underwear had to be changed every six weeks. Food was provided by the prison—coffee, potato soup, a small chunk of bread—and a lucky few received extra provisions from family members. The Poles had been kind enough to give Rudolf warm woolen socks.

  He had nothing to occupy him. The other prisoners either ignored him or treated him with hostility. He wrote letters to Hedwig, and to his family, but received nothing in reply. His sense of isolation and dejection increased with each passing day. He was becoming unhinged.

  In early November 1946, an investigative judge, fastidiously dressed in a tailored suit and smoking a cigarette in a jade holder, walked into his cell and introduced himself as Jan Sehn, Krakow’s lead investigator in the Polish war crimes trials. He had been tasked with collecting materials for Rudolf’s forthcoming hearing.

  Sehn explained that he wanted Rudolf to make a list of the documents that had been destroyed before the Red Army had liberated Auschwitz. He left him with a few pieces of thin paper and some sharpened pencils. At first Rudolf refused. He didn’t see why he should remember. But then he reconsidered. After all, he had nothing better to do and, on the whole, he had been favorably treated by the Polish. Soon he was enjoying the task, becoming “thankful . . . for the present assignment of writing . . . which brings me great satisfaction.”

  A few days later Sehn returned to the cell, collected Rudolf’s notes and, observing the prisoner’s helpful inclination, suggested that he next write some character sketches of the senior leaders of the SS: Himmler, Eichmann, Maurer, Pohl, Glücks. A week or so later, Sehn again visited the Kommandant. Having told Rudolf that his notes would be entered into the official record at his trial, Sehn asked him to write about the camp’s operations: the transports, the selections, the gas chambers. This took more time, with Rudolf recalling the inner workings of the camp in a tiny, marginless scrawl across the thin prison paper.

  *

  In between interviews, Rudolf kept up the one-sided correspondence with his family. On Christmas Eve, he wrote another letter to Hedwig, his words growing increasingly nostalgic and bitter:

  The eyes of expectant, glad, blissfully happy children, under the tree with its lights, used to be our reward for all the cares and troubles of the past year. For the sake of those happy children’s hearts, all troubles, grief and anxieties were forgotten at that comfortable, quiet hour. We saw our children growing up healthy and happy, and they showed us what it was we lived for . . . But the ill-starred war has destroyed our happiness too, just as it destroyed millions of families, tore them apart and spread unspeakable suffering throughout the world.

  But Hedwig again failed to reply. A few weeks later Rudolf sat down to write another letter:

  My dear good Mutz, my dear children

  Another month has passed, without any news of you. The last news I had was your dear letter of June 23, which I received on September 7. I draw all my hopes for you from that letter. But it is so long ago—I wonder how you are today, my dear ones, how may it be going with you now?

  How much more calmly I would face everything if I knew you were all in good health and provided with the necessities of life, if I knew whether you have good people helping you, whether you are allowed to live in peace? If I knew what your sad lives are like in general? Questions upon questions, and they give me no rest. I have to answer them for myself. But no amount of sad thoughts can do any good. All our lives are like this—it is Fate, and we can do nothing to alter it.

  I am always with you all in my thoughts, and I wait—I go on waiting uneasily for news of you, for some sign of life from you, confidently hoping and wishing that you are all in good health, that all is well with you, that your lives are bearable. I myself am still healthy.

  This is my third letter from here. I wrote the first on my birthday, the second at Christmas time. I hope that both those letters have reached you.

  Finally, I wish you all well, my dear ones, I sent you my heartfelt greetings, all my good children, my Mäusl, my Burling, my Püppi, my Kindi and my Klaus. And my fervent greetings to you, dear, good Mutz.

  For ever and always

  Your Vati

  Two months after Rudolf’s arrival in Krakow, Jan Sehn continued to encourage him to write; not just about the war years, but also about his family, his background, his own story. At first, Rudolf resisted—he did not want the world to know the details of his private life—but Sehn was persistent. It was a way to pass the time, and more, might even bring relief. But perhaps what finally persuaded Rudolf was a desire to set the record straight, to make meaningful all that he had done, and to challenge the lies and cowardice displayed by his former colleagues in Nuremberg: Göring the Luftwaffe commander, who had claimed that he was just a military man; Rudolf’s own boss, Oswald Pohl, who had argued that the extermination camps were the responsibility of his underlings, and particularly of Richard Glücks; Rudolf Hess, secretary to the Führer himself, who had pretended to be amnesic; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who claimed no knowledge of the Final Solution, despite supervising the construction of at least one concentration camp. None had told the truth, and all had cared only about saving their skins. Little good it did them. Rudolf’s confession was also a final act of distorted loyalty. Unlike those senior Nazi figures who had denied the past, he felt compelled to share his recollections. To do otherwise would have betrayed what they had all believed in.

  In the end, Rudolf picked up the pencil and wrote the title for the opening section about his formative years—“My psyche, growing up, life and experience.”

  In the f
ollowing pages I shall try to write about my innermost personal life, drawing on my memories in an attempt to give a faithful account of all the essential features, all the highs and lows, of my psychological life and experience. If that account is to be as full as possible, I must go back to incidents in my earliest childhood.

  Until my sixth year, we lived some way outside the town of Baden-Baden, where there were only a few farms in the neighborhood. I had no playmates at all at this time, since the neighbors’ children were all much older than me . . .

  As he wrote, he reviewed his life’s decisions:

  Today I deeply regret leaving the path I had so far trodden. My life, my family, everything would have been different, although still we would have no home and no farm. But we would have had years of satisfying work in the interim. However, who can foresee what will become of those whose lives are linked together? What is right, and what is wrong?

  On the last page of his memoirs, written in February 1947, Rudolf revealed why he had chosen to be so honest:

  I would never have brought myself to give such a frank account, revealing my most secret self, but for the humanity and understanding that I have encountered here [in prison]. It was something that I could never have expected, and it disarmed me entirely. It is because of this humane understanding that I have done everything in my power to contribute to casting light on circumstances that are as yet unexplained.

  Rudolf was aware that his prison memoirs might gain a wider audience beyond those gathered for his own trial. He asked that whoever was going to evaluate his notes did not publish those parts relating to his family, nor his “softer emotions,” nor his “secret doubts,” believing that the general reader would be incapable of looking beyond his murderous acts: