Rudolf Höss was born on 25 November 1901 in the town of Baden-Baden, then part of the German Empire. Höss was raised in a devout Catholic household. The Second World War began on 1 September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. By 1940, the Nazi leadership decided to repurpose a former Polish military barracks in the town of Oświęcim into the new concentration camp. Recognizing Höss’s reliability and organizational skills, the SS assigned him to oversee this emerging site. In May 1940, he arrived in southern Poland to assume command of what would become the most infamous concentration and extermination camp: Auschwitz. At first, Auschwitz I functioned much like other Nazi camps, holding political prisoners and forced laborers under harsh conditions. Yet the site’s location—easily reached by rail, and isolated enough to conceal large-scale atrocities—soon proved ideal for a more sinister purpose. In 1941, when the Nazi regime shifted from persecution to the systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews, Auschwitz became central to Hitler’s vision of genocide. Rudolf Höss later claimed he personally received orders from Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, to expand Auschwitz and implement gassing as the primary killing method. Though the details remain subject to debate, there is agreement that Höss oversaw the planning and construction of new facilities—such as Auschwitz II-Birkenau, with large gas chambers and crematoria—capable of murdering thousands of people each day. Zyklon B, initially used as a pesticide, was introduced as the primary agent of execution. Under Höss’s command, the SS developed a highly choreographed system: victims were told they were going to shower, then herded into large chambers, locked inside, and poisoned by gas. Their corpses were subsequently burned in nearby crematoria.
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