Overview

An account by the first commandant at the Auschwitz concentration camp who was later executed for his wartime activities shares insights into his early childhood, his ascent through the ranks of the SS and his oversight of the camp's atrocities and mass killings. 15,000 first printing.

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9781590206775

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Amann, via his editorial craftsmanship, is able to capture an utterly soulless individual whose respect for life and capacity for authentic love were destroyed at a very early age . . . Jurg Amann has done a great service by making Hoess's memoir available to students of the Holocaust but, most importantly, to the young of the current and future generations. The Commandant is a must read for all social scientists and clinicians seeking a graphic and compelling self portrait of the evolution of ideological and bureaucratic sociopathy. ----Jewish Book World

Its brevity makes it no less stomach churning. The monolog describes Hoess''s rise in the SS directly under Heinrich Himmler''s tutelage and shows Himmler as the most brutally efficient of functionaries, so vile and so lacking human sensibilities as to be in danger of being rendered as a cartoon character. -- Library Journal

Its brevity makes it no less stomach churning. The monolog describes Hoess's rise in the SS directly under Heinrich Himmler's tutelage and shows Himmler as the most brutally efficient of functionaries, so vile and so lacking human sensibilities as to be in danger of being rendered as a cartoon character. Library Journal Amann, via his editorial craftsmanship, is able to capture an utterly soulless individual whose respect for life and capacity for authentic love were destroyed at a very early age . . . Jurg Amann has done a great service by making Hoess's memoir available to students of the Holocaust but, most importantly, to the young of the current and future generations. The Commandant is a must read for all social scientists and clinicians seeking a graphic and compelling self portrait of the evolution of ideological and bureaucratic sociopathy. Jewish Book World

Author Information

Rudolf Hoess (1900-1947) was the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. He was found guilty of murder and executed by hanging at Auschwitz on April 16, 1947. Jurg Amann was born in Switzerland in 1947, and his writings include plays, poetry, essays, and literary criticism. He has received the Ingeborg Bachman, the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and the Schiller Prize. Ian Buruma writes about a broad range of political and cultural subjects, most frequently for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He lives in New York. He is the recipient of the international Erasmus Prize and the Shorenstein Journalism Award, and he was twice voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Foreign Policy/Prospect.

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