AUSCHWITZ, POLAND – APRIL 16, 1947 Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss, was a Nazi SS officer and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He is best known as the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where he was involved in the systematic murder of millions of people, especially Jews.
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- Rudolf Höss 1
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- Rudolf Höss 2
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- Rudolf Höss 3
It was his idea to use the infamous Zyklon B gas for mass executions in the gas chambers. He also ordered the construction of crematoria. All this to streamline mass murder procedures. He was personally responsible for the deaths of approximately 2.5 million people.
When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, he tried to escape and lived under a false identity as a farmer in northern Germany. But in March 1946 he was tracked down and captured by the British army and handed over to the Polish authorities.
In 1947 he was sentenced to death by hanging in Krakow, Poland. Ironically, his execution took place not far from where he himself had millions of people murdered.
