Hanns and Rudolf is a dual biography of Hanns Alexander and which Nazi German "SS"-"Obersturmbannführer" (lieutenant colonel) and the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in World War II?
b9271e93f333df1e92b73ad20a80575b
Hanns and Rudolf Hanns and Rudolf is a dual biography of Hanns Alexander and Rudolf Höss by the British-American journalist Thomas Harding.
fb40ce997d50feb55226f02875e835fe
Rudolf Höss Rudolf Höss (also Höß, Hoeß or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a Nazi German "SS"-"Obersturmbannführer" (lieutenant colonel) and the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in World War II. He tested and carried into effect various methods to accelerate Hitler's plan to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the "Final Solution". On the initiative of one of his subordinates, SS-"Hauptsturmführer" (captain) Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced pesticide Zyklon B containing hydrogen cyanide to the killing process, thereby allowing SS soldiers at Auschwitz to murder 2,000 people every hour. He created the largest installation for the continuous annihilation of human beings ever known.
905f6dc86245e36efd2e3b09212624f5
Sobibór extermination camp Sobibór (or Sobibor , or , ] ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built and operated by the SS near the railway station of Sobibór during World War II, within the semi-colonial territory of General Government of the occupied Second Polish Republic. The camp was part of the secretive Operation Reinhard, which marked the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland. The camp was situated near the rural county's major town of Włodawa (called "Wolzek" by the Germans), 85 km south of the provincial capital, Brest-on-the-Bug (Brześć nad Bugiem in Polish). Its official German name was "SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór". Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (including Jewish-Soviet POWs), were transported to Sobibór by rail. Most were suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of a large petrol engine. Up to 200,000 people were murdered at Sobibór and possibly more. At the postwar trial against the former "SS" personnel of Sobibór, held in Hagen two decades into the Cold War, Professor Wolfgang Scheffler estimated the number of murdered Jews totalled a minimum of 250,000. This would make it the fourth worst extermination camp, after Bełżec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz.
33a0b3991f59ea51b465cf3aab98c94d
Hans Koch (SS officer) Hans Koch (August 13, 1912 – July 14, 1955) was an SS-"Unterscharführer" and member of staff at Auschwitz concentration camp. He was prosecuted at the Auschwitz Trial.
e41092440767ef16568e5f3ef9406653
Herta Oberheuser Herta Oberheuser (15 May 1911 in Cologne, German Empire – 24 January 1978 in Linz am Rhein, West Germany) was a Nazi physician and a war criminal who worked at the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps from 1940 until 1943.
511722a8aa7d7393b21820bddc16b5b7
Rudolf Vrba Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenger in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He became known for having escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and for co-writing a detailed report about the mass murder that was taking place there. Distribution of the report is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving over 200,000 lives. After the war Vrba became a noted biochemist in England and Canada.
9c00f5f4f7d4ee05fe1cc5fc7068d1e9
August Miete August Wilhelm Miete (born 1 November 1908) was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany. He worked at the Grafeneck and Hadamar Euthanasia Centres, and then at Treblinka extermination camp. Miete was arrested in 1960 and tried in West Germany for participating in the mass murder of at least 300,000 people. In 1965, he was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty, life imprisonment.
ac6b5052085881a2f800c75f2fd3ac6b
Werner Best Karl Rudolf Werner Best (10 July 1903 – 23 June 1989) was a German Nazi, jurist, police chief, SS-"Obergruppenführer" and Nazi Party leader from Darmstadt, Hesse. He studied law and in 1927 obtained his doctorate degree at Heidelberg. Best served as civilian administrator of France and Denmark while Nazi Germany occupied those countries during World War II.
262cbefccbb58b6dea17c6ed3951a08b
Paul Heinrich Theodor Müller Paul Heinrich Theodor Müller (31 January 1896 in Kiel – after January 1945, declared dead by the District Court of Hohenlimburg in 1953) was a German SS-"Obersturmführer" and "Schutzhaftlagerführer" at Auschwitz concentration camp.
b2dc846b728544434b12c1d5008d12d2
Ludwig Plagge Ludwig Plagge (13 June 1910 – 22 January 1948) was an SS-"Oberscharführer" and member of staff at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. He was prosecuted at the Auschwitz Trial.
c1bbac92895fcb6fb64cc2d4b214509b
Heinz Thilo Heinz Thilo (8 October 1911 in Elberfeld 13 May 1945 in Hohenelbe) was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.
5db797a0f08ab8e2aa87a5e10e8ed8ab
Otto Förschner Otto Förschner (November 4, 1902 – May 28, 1946) was a German SS commander and a Nazi concentration camp official. He served as commandant of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and the Kaufering concentration camp in the Dachau camp system. He was indicted for his crimes, found guilty and hanged in May 1946.
995ddf94405b55e3024be252371c59d5
Günther Schwägermann Günther Schwägermann (born 24 July 1915) served in the Nazi government of German dictator Adolf Hitler. From approximately late 1941, Schwägermann served as the adjutant for Dr. Joseph Goebbels. He reached the rank of SS-"Hauptsturmführer" (captain). Schwägermann survived World War II and was held in American captivity from 25 June 1945 until 24 April 1947.
3555b1a5455bc5ea1071f7d67af5dd25
Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and chief of the "Abwehr", the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, by 1939 he had turned against the Nazis as he felt Germany would lose another major war. During the Second World War he was among the military officers involved in the clandestine opposition to the Nazi regime. He was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp for high treason as the Nazi regime was collapsing.
757161796eea217b552c23ad39bcd114
Günther Herrmann (SS commander) Günther Herrmann (1908−2004) was a functionary in the SS of Nazi Germany during World War II and a convicted criminal. He commanded the "Sonderkommando 4b" and the "Einsatzkommando 12" of the "Einsatzgruppe C" in the occupied Soviet Union and the "Einsatzgruppe E" in Croatia. In 1973, Herrmann was convicted for the murders committed in 1941–42 in the occupied Soviet Union and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
ccb8cc3511aa850a598ea608e14bbbf7
Erich Bauer Erich Bauer (March 26, 1900 – February 4, 1980), sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a low-level commander in the SS of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator. He participated in Action T4 program and later in Operation Reinhard, serving as a gas chamber operator at Sobibór extermination camp.
c2b2ae7d3c44e293b0a77dd8994f1548
Camp Ashcan Central Continental Prisoner of War Enclosure No. 32, code-named Ashcan, was an Allied prisoner-of-war camp in the "Palace Hotel" of Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg during World War II. Operating from May to August 1945, it served as a processing station and interrogation center for the 86 most prominent surviving Nazi leaders prior to their trial in Nuremberg, including Hermann Göring and Karl Dönitz.
52d4c8e60b49ce8c3ca20d33b78fdf7d
Hans Möser Hans Karl Möser, or Hans Moeser, (April 7, 1906 – November 26, 1948) was a German Nazi SS officer at the Neuengamme, Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps during World War II. Rising to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer, he was captured at the end of the war and tried by the United States Military Government Court for war crimes. The only one among 19 defendants at the Dora Trial sentenced to death, Möser was executed at Landsberg Prison in 1948 (death by hanging).
ee848c4620aa6304c10c35900707904e
Arnold Büscher Arnold Büscher (16 December 1899, Bad Oeynhausen – 2 August 1949) was a German SS officer. At the rank of SS-"Obersturmführer", he was the second and last commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, succeeding Amon Göth, from September 1944 until about January 1945.
95f6d86d2a4218588f3806d912571323
Johannes Hassebroek Johannes Hassebroek (11 July 1910 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt – 17 April 1977 in Westerstede) was a German SS officer of the Death's Head Units responsible for the Nazi concentration camps guardianship. He became a concentration camp commandant with the rank of Major ("Sturmbannführer").
7b2f264734bfd19b05412328f8d6b708
Rudolf Kerner Rudolf Kerner (21 February 1910 in Saarbrücken - ? 1998) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and crime commissioner. He was head of the German Security Police and Gestapo in Kristiansand, Norway from 1941. After the war he was sentenced to death but later pardoned.
bd1091c7b1b64008b0732d35f2becb13
Hans Lipschis Hans Lipschis (born November 7, 1919) is a former member of the Waffen-SS who worked at Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.