11 November 2025

Remembering is not enough. There has to be some understanding too if history is not to repeat itself. After all, it was the interrogator at the Nuremburg War Trials who said that Rudolf Hoss was just like a grocery clerk. But this grocery clerk had been the commandant at Auschwitz since 1940 and had overseen the murder of one million people.

The trouble is that this observation was true. Hoss lived a pretty normal life. He was a husband and father. In fact, he and his family lived in the commandant’s house which was yards away from the crematorium in the main camp.

According to Laurence Rees, he was to all intents and purposes a solid middle-class citizen doing his work, purposely following his career path through the ranks of the SS until successfully reaching a final promotion as Commandant of Auschwitz.

Rees’  chilling analysis reveals two things. Firstly, there is no record of Hoss ever hitting, abusing or even killing anyone in the camp. He was cool, calm and collected. A perfect administrator, efficient, diligent, successful.

Secondly, far from submissively acting under orders, Hoss questioned his superiors not about the morality of this ethnic cleansing but about achieving greater efficiency in the way people were killed. For he actually believed that the anti-semitism of the Third Reich was right!

He wasn’t alone. ‘There is not one case in the records of an SS man being prosecuted for refusing to take part in the killings.’ writes Rees. ‘Whilst there is plenty of material showing that the real discipline problem in the camp … was theft.’

Strange as it may seem, the staff at Auschwitz agreed with the final solution but didn’t agree with the official policy that members of the SS should not benefit from the killings! What a peculiar state of affairs!