rudolph hearst is remembered in history
for his role as the commandant of
auschwitz in which he oversaw the mass
murder of over one million people
at the nuremberg trials he was brought
forward to testify as a defence witness
france calton broner and he made a
remarkable statement which encapsulated
the horrific mass murder machine of the
holocaust
he stated i commanded auschwitz until
the first of december 1943
and estimate that at least two and a
half million people were executed and
exterminated there by gassing and
burning and at least another half a
million succumbed to starvation and
disease making the total about three
million dead
when he said this he spoke coldly with
no emotion or remorse
hearse ultimately was sentenced to death
for his crimes and involvement in mass
murder and was executed on a specially
built gallows inside of the camp he once
oversaw
join us today as we look at the
despicable crimes of rudolph hearse the
commandant of auschwitz
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rudolph hurst was hanged on the 16th of
april 1947
but what were his crimes that he
committed
he joined the ss on the 1st of april
1934 responding to himmler's calls to
action and within a year he moved into
the notorious death heads unit
the ss totten cop for bandai as they
were known or the sstv were ultimately
the ones who were involved in running
the concentration and extermination
camps across germany and during the
second world war territory occupied by
the germans following invasion
herce's first role inside a
concentration camp was at dachau where
he worked as a block leader under
theodore icah who he viewed as a mentor
whilst here he was promoted a number of
times and was known to have been very
loyal to heinrich himmler and his
murderous intentions
hearst was then drafted to saxon house
and concentration camp where he worked
as an assistant and adjutant to hermann
baronovsky who was noted to himself have
been a sadistic killer at the camp
but whilst at saxonhausen hearst was
placed in charge of a firing squad and
on the 15th of september 1939 on the
orders of heinrich himmler he was in
charge of the soldiers who shot august
stickman the jehovah's witness who was
the first conscientious objector
executed during world war ii
hearst was the one who following the
shooting delivered a final shot from his
pistol into dickman's head
he then joined the voffin ss following
the invasion of poland
and gained more promotions and he
remained inside the ss
he was working as a head of the
protective custody camp at saxonhausen
and whilst here hers was incredibly
brutal
he ordered on a number of occasions
prisoners not assigned to work groups to
stand outside in temperatures around
minus 30 degrees celsius
many of the inmates had no coats and
some had frozen to death during one time
he did this 78 prisoners died and 67
prisoners died that following evening
he even denied prisoners a chance to go
to the infirmary and ordered that the
hospital door should be closed
it was this murderous intent and
personality that made him the perfect
candidate within the ss and the nazi
party to oversee a concentration camp
that would become the deadliest in the
whole of the holocaust
he was clearly well fought off by
himmler and was tasked with considering
how feasible it would be to make a
concentration camp in western poland
herz's report ultimately led to the
creation of auschwitz and the camp was
built around the site of an old
austro-hungarian and polish army
barracks
the camp began life initially as rather
modest in its size but then it became
colossal during the time in which hearse
acted as a camp's commandant
hearst was the one with all the power at
auschwitz and he was at the top and he
expanded the camp into a huge network of
subcamps
and it was he who was responsible for
the creation of the killing chambers and
the gas chambers
herself intended to do things
differently at auschwitz and he wished
to make the camp as efficient as it
possibly could and he became obsessed
with production quotas and ultimately he
would become obsessed with the
destructive figures that would show the
daily death and destruction there
whilst inside of auschwitz hurst lived
in relative luxury inside a huge villa
nearby with his wife and five children
while these were living extremely
comfortable within a short distance
people were being killed and burned
inside the crematorial
it's likely that the family would have
smelt the smoke from their villa
hurst would instill a reign of fear into
the camp which was perpetuated by gods
that he made sure would treat the
prisoners violently and with contempt
he set up block 11 the notorious torture
chamber at auschwitz where prisoners
would be forced into tiny cells and
between block 10 and block 11 was a
death wall where thousands of prisoners
were executed by firing squads there
hearst claimed that he would summon to
berlin in june 1941 to meet with
heinrich himmler in person to receive
important orders
it was said at this meeting that himmler
informed hearse that hitler had ordered
the final solution and himmler had
chosen auschwitz at a major site for the
extermination of europe's jews
this was done allegedly due to its links
and access by rail and also due to the
large site and the fact it was rather
isolated at the time
hearst was ordered not to speak about it
and he later would inform his wife of
auschwitz true purpose at the end of
1942 confirming after she'd already
found out what was happening there
it was said adolf eichmann would give
hers his orders but over time he began
to test and trial different methods of
mass murder in september 1941 he wished
for auschwitz his camp to become the
most efficient murder site used by the
nazis to carry out the final solution
and during these sick trials thousands
would be killed in different ways
hearst instigated the rules which today
are so familiar with the practices of
auschwitz
once prisoners disembarked off trains
they were sorted into those who would be
admitted into the camp and those who
would be selected
the prisoners were separated by men and
women and children and the elderly sick
children and those women who were deemed
not to be useful to work were usually
sent straight to the gas chambers to be
killed
gassing using zyklon b was a chosen
method at auschwitz as it was deemed to
have been the most efficient and at
first small gassing bunkers were set up
in the woods under the cover of the
trees but later hurst expanded the gas
chambers and over time four huge death
chambers were made along with crematoria
that made the killing process more
efficient
hurst later said technically it wasn't
so hard it would not have been hard to
exterminate even greater numbers
the killing itself took the least time
you could dispose of 2000 in half an
hour but it was a burning that took all
the time
the killing was easy you didn't even
need guards to drive them into the
chambers they just went in expecting to
take showers and instead of water we
turned on poison gas
the whole thing went very quickly
hurst had its deputies test different
methods and cyclone b was selected as a
pesticide to be used as it took between
3 and 15 minutes for someone to die
however hearse fell from grace rather
shockingly as he was sacked after having
an affair with a political prisoner at
the camp who was then imprisoned while
she was pregnant in a standing cell
she was forced to have a termination and
only just escaped being sent to the gas
chambers
he was replaced by arthur leiber
henschel on the 10th of november 1943
but then would return in the following
may to continue his barbaric crimes and
execution work
hurst was invited back to the camp to
oversee operation hearse a huge killing
mission that saw 430 000 hungarian jews
killed in 56 murderous days
the sheer amount of killing inside the
gas chambers was a problem for auschwitz
and there was simply not enough time and
space to dispose of the huge volume of
bodies
because of this hearse ordered that camp
staff should burn the thousands of
bodies in huge open pits
ten thousand people were being gassed
each day during operation hearse and
many were shot quickly by the ss before
being thrown into the fires and weren't
even gassed
he saw at the end of the war at
ravensbrook and he continued gassing
whilst at the all-female camp following
the completion of the gas chambers he
forced more than two thousand women and
girls into them having them killed
barbarically
rudolf hurst's long list of crimes would
eventually catch up with him
he was told by himmler to disguise
himself as a war turned against the
germans and he did escape for around a
year but was arrested in march 1946
he tried to take his own life biting
into a sinai capsule but this attempt
failed
he was beaten by the men who apprehended
him with axe handles but he was
surprisingly caught to testify at the
nuremberg trials
he was not a defendant but was seen as a
defence witness for aunt's
counten-broner
his testimony amazed as he would admit
the murderous actions of himself and his
crimes that were carried out at
auschwitz and he spoke of them with
almost a bursting pride and with no
sense of remorse
he did not care for the millions of
victims he had sent to their deaths and
he simply was proud of the efficiency
that he believed he had performed his
job with
he said of his 3 million death toll that
this figure represents about 70 or 80
percent of all persons sent to
auschwitz's prisoners the remainder
having been selected and used for slave
labor in the concentration camp
industries
included amongst the executed and burned
were approximately twenty thousand
russian prisoners of war who were
delivered at auschwitz in thermac
transports operated by regular vermont
officers and men
the remainder of the total number of
victims included about 100 000 german
jews and greater numbers of citizens
mostly jewish from the netherlands
france belgium poland hungary
czechoslovakia greece or other countries
we executed around 400 000 hungarian
jews alone at auschwitz in the summer of
1944
he was prompted and accused of murder of
three and a half million but then he
replied with only two and a half million
claiming that the rest were killed by
disease starvation and the conditions of
his camp
he later revised his death toll whilst
he was in polish custody but was
ultimately sentenced to death for his
horrific crimes
polish survivors of auschwitz lobbied
for hurt his execution to take place
within auschwitz on a specially
constructed gallows that stood at the
location of the camps gestapo quarters
shortly before his death
rudolf hearst acknowledged his crime
stating my conscience compels me to make
the following declaration
in the solitude of my prison cell i have
come to the bitter recognition that i
have sinned gravely against humanity
as commandant of auschwitz i was
responsible for carrying out part of the
cruel plans of the third reich for human
destruction
in so doing i've inflicted terrible
wounds on humanity
i caused unspeakable suffering for the
polish people in particular
i'm to pay for this with my life
may the lord god forgive me one day what
i've done
i asked the polish people for
forgiveness
in polish prisons i've experienced for
the first time what human kindness is
despite all that has happened i have
experienced humane treatment which i
could never have expected which has
deeply shamed me
may the facts which are now coming about
about the horrible crimes against
humanity made the repetition of such
cruel acts impossible for all time
the admission of guilt hurts made about
his time as a commandant of auschwitz
did nothing to appease or make up for
the horror that he was responsible of
whilst overseeing the death camp
hearst was a despicable man who was
motivated by causing as much death and
destruction as possible and his actions
were driven by the nazi race laws and
ideology that he subscribed to
he was someone who wished to please
hitler and more so himmler by
efficiently causing mass devastation and
death
he should also be held account for the
actions of those gods who served under
him who carried out horrific acts of
brutality and violence but also he
should be responsible for the starvation
disease and horrific conditions inside
the camp
the crimes of rudolph hearst are endless
and today many of them remain untold
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