One of the most awful and dispicable war criminals of the Second World War was Rudolf Hoss (Pronounced
Herse as in curse with a H on it.) He was a man who would admit to the mass killing
of millions at his concentration camp of Auschwitz. He later admitted at the Nuremberg Trials
that, ‘I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000
victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another
half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead. This
figure represents about 70% or 80% 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 burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of
war 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 from The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz
in the summer of 1944. ‘
He was a man who was proud of the fact he had created a concentration camp which was
brutal and completely barbaric in its killing. He wanted to create Auschwitz to be a site
which was efficient in the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. But despite
being in charge of Auschwitz as the Commandant, he was married to a woman who seemingly did
not know what her husband’s true life of work was. But what is the story of the oblivious
wife of the commandant of Auschwitz?
On the 17th August 1929, Rudolf Hoss married Hedwig Hensel a woman who was born in 1908.
The pair had been part of the Artaman League which was a group that promoted a back to
the land lifestyle and they wanted to back farming over growing urbanisation in Germany.
The pair were vocal in this group, and they met through their shared passion. But Hedwig
would marry a man who would in just over a decade become one of the most brutal and barbaric
war criminals of the Second World War. Together the couple had five children, two sons and
three daughters with their youngest daughter being born actually inside of Auschwitz. Rudolf
Hoss had a career inside of the SS and he was close with Heinrich Himmler and he was
seen as a loyal man, but he was then dispatched to Poland to try and research a site in Western
Poland to establish a huge concentration camp. The report that Hoss created led to the creation
of Auschwitz and he too became the commandant, and he commanded it for three and a half years,
and he expanded the site on a huge basis to create man different elements of Auschwitz.
He was responsible for the complex known as Auschwitz Birkenau which became the main killing
area of the site. But as prisoners moved inside of the camp and the barbed wire fences, the
Hoss family including Hedwig and the children moved into a villa nearby.
The commandants house or the villa was in the corner of the camp, and the trees and
large garden wall deliberately obscured the view of the chimney of the crematoria where
the bodies of men, women and children who had been killed in the gas chambers were being
burned. The house was considered luxurious, and the family never had to want for anything
as it was brought from the concentration camp nearby. The flower beds were tended to by
the family, and there was a well tended lawn along with a garden shed. There were also
fences made from the same concrete as the fences at Auschwitz. It was in a sense a normal
family home, with paintings on the walls and a carpeted floor, and views of the local area.
Further alterations to the home were made to add an earth mount in front of the concrete
wall to make sure that the camp crematoria could not be seen by Hedwig and the children.
There were prisoners that worked inside of the house, and it was said how even the eldest
child Klaus used to treat them poorly as he would carry a horsewhip and would beat them.
However despite this, what is rather strange is that allegedly Rudolf Hoss’ wife Hedwig
did not know anything about the murderous and brutal aspect of Auschwitz and the fact
her husband was running a camp where over 1 million people would be killed. Her husband
allegedly lived a double life where he was a murderer and brute at work, but at home
he was a doting father and wife, and he allegedly separated these well and disguised the real
intent of Auschwitz to his wife and children. However she was antisemitic, and one prisoner
who worked as the family’s gardener said, ‘Frau Hoess reminded me about an incident,
forcing me in doing whatever she asked to do. The couple hated everything that was polish.
Frau Hoess often used to say to me that all Jews had to disappear from the globe, and
there would even come a time for English Jews.’
Rudolf continued to lie to his wife on a daily basis as to what was happening at Auschwitz,
however she would find out what was actually going on at Auschwitz herself. She overheard
Fritz Bracht, the Gauleiter of Silesia explaining what happened at the site and explaining the
gas chambers and the crematoria, and she was disgusted that this mass killing was happening
at her Husband’s place of work, and also at the place he was running. Because of this
she argued with him and she refused then to share a bed with her husband who was a killer
of thousands. It was Hoss who himself settled on using the specific type of gas to kill
as many people as he could. But Hedwig struggled with her husband’s line of work, and as
the end of the war approached, she moved to Flensburg with her eldest son and it was here
where she was arrested by the allies. She was then sent to the British Army’s 92nd
Field Security Section and was interrogated for a matter of weeks, as the British wanted
to know where her husband was. She later gave over the information saying he had changed
his name to Franz Lang and was working as a gardener. She then gave over her husband’s
location.
It would be his wedding ring that played a large part in his arrest. Hoss was arrested
by Hanns Alexander who served with the British Army. He led 25 soldiers and found Rudolf
Hoss the commandant of Auschwitz hiding on a farm in Germany. Hoss asked him for his
name and he handed him false papers, but they knew he was the man they were looking for.
Alexander then demanded his wedding ring, and Hoss claimed that it was stuck on, and
Alexander then threatened to cut his finger off with a kitchen knife. But then he took
off the ring, and Alexander looked at the ring and saw that carved on the inner side
were the names of Rudolf and Hedwig, his wife.
Hedwig Hoss and her husband had very different last few years of their lives. Hedwig moved
to America and she died in her sleep in 1989. She had remarried but her husband was executed
inside of Auschwitz. He was sentenced to death for his crimes, and the former prisoners petitioned
to allow the commandant to be executed on a specially built gallows inside of the camp
he once oversaw and this was allowed. But what is strange is Hedwig Hoss’ lack of
knowledge of what happened inside of Auschwitz. She continued to maintain that she did not
know about the brutality of Auschwitz and the killing process that her husband had overseen
and crafted. She claimed he would not discuss work and his activities in the camp, but what
was shocking is that the crematorium was constantly burning, and she did not suspect anything.
We know that she was antisemitic and shared many of the same views as other ardent Nazis,
but today Hedwig Hoss is known for being the oblivious wife of the commandant of Auschwitz,
who was outraged when she found out the truth of Auschwitz.
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