Commandant of Auschwitz

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Rudolf Hoess’s autobiography was first published in a Polish translation in 1951 under the title Wspomnienia by Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warsaw. The German text was published in 1958 under the title Kommandant in Auschwitz by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. The English translation was made from this edition. All royalties from this translation go to the Comité International d’Auschwitz, a charitable organization set up to help the survivors of the Auschwitz camp; they are a pitifully small proportion of those who passed through its gates.

This autobiography was written in a Polish prison, and for the following facts concerning Hoess and the writing of it I am principally indebted to Dr. Martin Broszat, who wrote the introduction to the German edition.[1]

Hoess was arrested by the British Military Police near Flensburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, on March 11, 1946. He was interrogated by Field Security on March 13 and 14. Later that month he was handed over to the Americans and taken to Nuremberg, where he was again interrogated, in April, in connection with the trial of Kaltenbrunner, the so-called “Pohl Trial,” and the “IG Farben Trial.”[2]

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