Head Prefect
RUDOLF Hoess was directly responsible for the murder of some two million people, almost all of whom were Jews. The orders were quite plain: Jews from all over Europe were to be fed into Auschwitz, where they were to be put to death with the minimum of fuss—save only for those who were still fit enough to work for a little, these being reprieved until, whether from disease or debility, their candidature for the gas chamber had fully matured. As for Hoess, the only aspect of the matter which seems to have troubled him even remotely was the question of ways and means, a nagging fear lest the inefficiency of his sub- ordinates or the limited materials at his disposal should lead to untidiness or delay. He found it an unpleasant task because bodies are messy and take up a lot of room.
This book is Hoess's own rather be- draggled account, written while he was awaiting his trial and then his execution, of how the circumstances of his life and career promoted him to, and ideally fitted him for, his unspeakable office. The child of strict Catholics, he was early instructed in the sanctity of obedience. A successful non- commissioned officer in World War 1, he saw that to obedience must be added the virtue of detachment. A prisoner in the Twenties as a result of his brutal political activities, he discovered that for him the only form of security lay in absolute mental adjustment to the existing frame- work of authority, however constricting or cruel. So that it is hardly suprising that when, in the late Thirties, he became a junior official in the SS he entirely approved the segregation of criminal, 'a-social' or homosexual elements, believing as he did that these, being both disobedient of their natures and without any stake in the furtherance of National Socialism, could only be a menace to the security of the State and so, ultimately, to the peace of mind of Rudolf Hoess. When the war came, and with it promotion for Hoess, such elements constituted an even greater threat. But, ran the argument, German Jews are automatically a-social because they are not, in a proper analysis, German, and other Jews, by extension, are even worse: they are, furthermore, conscious of themselves as a community: therefore the Jews are the greatest threat of all. Segregate them with the rest of them. But Himmler says destroy them? Well, concludes Hoess, perhaps that would be best if only it wasn't so difficult to find reliable executioners and an eco- nomic type of gas.
It was just as simple as that. This monster of wickedness turns out to be a mere Head Prefect—one with a particularly narrow up- bringing and in a more than ordinarily nasty school. 'The Housemaster says you are a bad influence and I have no alter- native but to put you in the gas chamber.' `The employment was mean,' wrote Gibbon (of St. George's appointment to be bacon contractor to the Imperial Armies); 'he rendered it infamous.' But for Hoess the adage must be reversed. His employment Was infamous: he rendered it merely mean.
SIMON RAVEN
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