Commandant or Follower?

History is filled with horrors. But when searching for documented evidence, it becomes clear that most such horrors are left to the imagination.

One cannot read a book with a microscope - the words cannot reveal more by magnifying them. The essential nature of the human predator remains largely buried within a pool of words. Words themselves do not "carry" emotions but rather affect individuals in different ways.

Lobaczewski remarks that the literature available to him at the time was missing this particular aspect: the actions may have been recorded but the inner state of mind that activated such actions was largely missing. However, he does cite a few examples, and the most famous must be Commandant of Auschwitz, the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Rudolf Hess!)

When Hoess writes about his childhood, we find a boy who is happy to be alone (also happy to play with friends), a devout Catholic, with intentions of becoming a priest; where the qualities of belief, respect and justice predominated over a lack of love and empathy. His crisis of faith was triggered by a priest who betrayed the secrecy of the confessional. Slowly, the child's ardour turns away from the priesthood and towards the military. He enlists, in secret, and thus joins the First World War.

It is easy to think of the psychopath as lacking all emotions, but here we see Hoess describe the feelings of fear, even terror, in relation to both the priesthood and war. His childhood was not particularly unusual - he didn't blow up frogs, he wasn't cruel to animals, indeed, he seems to have preferred the company of animals to humans.

What Hoess does possess is an abundance of faith. Even though such beliefs changed from church to military, he retains a conviction in the primacy of the cause. Indeed, his first real witness of depravity without any semblance of honour was with the hardened criminals he met in prison - him being a political prisoner. Those were truly heartless psychopaths, whose bragging aloud could be heard echoing across the prison walls. Hoess goes into some forensic details about the different types of prisoners.

But the real essence of life, that which makes living a true fulfillment, was still unknown to me at the time. I began to seek for it, absurd as this may sound, behind my prison walls, and found it, later!

I had been taught since childhood to be absolutely obedient and meticulously tidy and clean; so in these matters I did not find it difficult to conform to the strict discipline of prison.

[...]

Every prisoner who lives a sensitive inner life suffers far more from unjustified, malicious, and deliberate acts of spite, in a word, from acts of mental cruelty, than ever he does from the physical equivalent. Such acts produce a far more ignominious and oppressive effect than does corporal maltreatment.

I often tried to make myself indifferent to this, but I never succeeded.

Then comes the psychological break. "Prison psychosis. You'll get over it. It's not serious!" said the prison doctor.

I'm not sure if Hoess dwells long enough on this episode. He says that he saw his future then as a return to his rural past; to become a farmer, a husband and a father. He achieves all three once released from prison.

His eventual recruitment to the SS, and his rise to Commandant are very far into his unknown future.

I don't wish to go through the whole book, but I leave you with one paragraph, when Hoess was first made block leader in the protective custody camp. He describes the three types of guards, as he sees them.

Malicious, evil-minded, basically bad, brutal, inferior, common creatures regard the prisoner as an unresisting object on which they can exercise their unrestrained and often perverted desires and whims and so find relief for their inferiority complexes. They do not know the meaning of pity or of any kind of warm fellow feeling. They seize every opportunity to terrorize the prisoners entrusted to their care, especially those against whom they have a personal grudge. The odious machinations of these creatures range over the whole scale from the smallest trickery to the most brutal ill-treatment, according to the individual's temperament and talents. The spiritual anguish of their victims gives them particular satisfaction. No regulations, however strict, will restrain them in their evil ways. Only supervision can limit the torments they inflict. They spend their time thinking up new methods of physical and mental torture. Woe to the prisoners under their charge when these perverted creatures have as their superiors men who acquiesce in their evil propensities, or even share in their inclinations and encourage them!

He obviously does not place himself in this category.

It was Hoess who placed the banner, Arbeit Macht Frei, above the gate into Auschwitz. At the time, this was literally true - prisoners could be released for good behaviour. With what then happened over a few short years, that sign could be later translated as "Abandon all hope."

Apologia or confession? You decide.

---

_{image: wikimedia}