Hello,
If anyone is able to help me look at grammar, syntax, and paragraph structure, as well as any other problems I may have with my essay, it would be greatyly appreciated. This is only one half of my essay because I am still in the process of finishing it. The essay is supposed to support Primo Levi's arguments that Rudolf Hoess' book is important in the study of the Holocaust even though Hoess was the leader of the biggest and deadliest extermination camps under the Nazi regime. Some of the layout of the essay got messed up when I pasted it so just ignore that. Thank you for your help.
Jonathan N
Here is the essay:
To properly understand the motives and effects of the Holocaust, one has to mutually consider both sides: the horrors of a victimized Jew living in the Konzentrationslagers (concentration camps) or Vernichtungslagers (death camps), as well as the control of these camps by members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Primo Levi, an Italian-Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, understands that only considering one viewpoint of the massacres that occurred during the Holocaust would not allow one to truly grasp its meaning. Although Levi views Rudolf Hoess to be "a coarse, stupid, arrogant, long-winded scoundrel, who sometimes blatantly lies", it is the meaning of Hoess' autobiography portrayed in Commandant of Auschwitz that truly carries importance . Levi argues that Hoess' life leading up to his tenure as commandant of the deadliest death camp under the Nazi regime was exemplary in showing how an ordinary, disciplined, and obedient person would evolve into a ruthless and powerful war criminal . Levi wrote: "Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are...the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions" ; Hoess was one of the functionaries that were needed to carry out the orders of the Nazi high command. His beliefs were that orders had to come from a higher ranked officer and that they should be carried out swiftly and without question . Hoess' personality would make him a very fitting candidate for the position as commandant of Auschwitz. Levi knew that Hoess was not born an evil man, nor did he become evil during his occupation in Holocaust; Levi agrees that Hoess' orders of execution were not an enjoyable action for the commandant . This does not, however, mean Hoess was not responsible for the deaths of all the Jews and other peoples that passed through the gates of Auschwitz. The commandant was responsible for making Auschwitz "the largest extermination centre of all time", a mission that was "personally" handed down to him by Heinrich Himmler, the ReichsfĂźhrer of the Schutzstaffel, charged with the extermination of the Jews . Hoess was known for his efficiency and control of everything and everyone in his camp and he would perform this order without any questions . He is a self-described "expert" in ensuring the concentration camp will run smoothly or "reibungslos" (without friction), who had to attend to his "own concerns" and could not regularly count on help in administering the camp . It was Hoess' idea to use the vermin exterminator Cyclon B on the prisoners of Auschwitz, a decision that would improve the killing potential of the camp . Although Hoess is responsible for the millions of people that perished inside the fences of Auschwitz, he never acknowledges that his actions were a crime, nor does he apologize to any of the victims or their families . Rudolf Hoess' autobiography entitled Commandant of Auschwitz is important in the study of the Holocaust, according to Primo Levi, because it confirms the number of deaths that occurred under the Nazi regime and shows that the gas Cyclone B was used, contrary to many "revisionist's" beliefs, while also showing how the powerful Nazi ideology was blindly followed by devoted German citizens, transforming normal citizens into mass-murderers.
Rudolf Hoess' book, entitled Commandant of Auschwitz, helps historians begin to understand many of the actions and beliefs of the Nazi controlling party during the 1930's and -40's. Being an autobiography, Commandant of Auschwitz explains the life of Rudolf Hoess, an ethnic German from Baden-Baden, who details the events that led up to him becoming the commandant of the deadliest extermination camp under the Nazi regime. He explains the religious early-childhood he experienced under his Catholic parents on his family farm, as well as his experiences in the army that helped shape him into a ruthless and skilled soldier . Hoess' transformation into a killer would begin long before he was given the position as commandant. When Hoess was enlisted in the 21st regiment of Dragoons, the regiment of his father, he was quickly sent to fight in the Iraqi front . During an attack on his regiment by British-New Zealanders and Indians, his regiment began sustaining heavy casualties; one of his comrades was shot through the head right beside him, resulting in Hoess seizing with terror . He managed to control his fear and terror, eventually shooting an Indian who immediately plunged down to the ground . In his recount of the day Hoess remembers: "During the advance I glanced with some trepidation and nervousness at my dead man, and I did not feel very happy about it" . While still serving in the German army, Hoess was commanded by a captain that he admired deeply, considering him a "soldier-father" . This relationship was more profound to Hoess than he had had with his real father, resulting in Hoess' devastation when the captain suddenly died in the Battle of the Jordan in 1918 . Hoess, in Commandant of Auschwitz, writes "His death affected me very profoundly indeed" . Hoess would later detail similar feelings towards the people who had been killed in the stories of the prison inmates . When told of a robbery, assault, and triple-murder by a fellow Brandenburg prison inmate on a forester, his wife, and his servant, and the assault on his four small children made Hoess "long to fly at his throat" and prevented him from sleeping the whole night. This experience disturbed Rudolf Hoess more than anything he would encounter in his life after, including the torture and murder of the killing machine: Auschwitz . Death certainly was not taken lightly for Hoess, especially in his early years. Although he was a recluse, Hoess would be surrounded by large groups of people throughout his life. He would understand how it would affect family and friends of the deceased, yet his compassion would later seemingly disappear.
When the future commandant was released from prison after 6 years of containment, he would be pressured by his companions, especially old war comrades, to take a position in the National Socialist German Workers Party . Although Hoess had been a party member since 1922, he declares that he had no intentions on accepting a position in the party . He disagreed with many of the party's actions including, their use of mass propaganda to alter the opinions of German citizens, their "bargaining for the goodwill of the people", how they "appealed to the lowest instincts of the people", and their overall tone . Hoess believed he could help in the rebuilding of Germany by other means. In the first couple months after his amnesty, Hoess still held his intentions of settling on the land and raising a large family . Rudolf began this goal by joining the "Artamanen", a group of young people who were nationalist Germans and wanted to escape from the superficial life of large cities, establishing natural life on the land . In this large group of naturalists, Hoess met his wife who would be with him through his entire time as the commandant of Auschwitz . His life would not continue in this path for long. In June 1934, Heinrich Himmler, the ReichsfĂźhrer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), called German citizens to join his ranks . Hoess says "It was only after many doubts and hesitations that I finally decided to join the active SS". This decision would define the person he was to become and ultimately would decide the rest of his life. When asked to be a member of the unit guarding a concentration camp, "I gave no thought to the reference to concentration camps. It was quite beyond my powers of imagination...we had hardly heard of concentration camps" declared Hoess in his autobiography . Levi finds this assertion to be unbelievable in his introduction to Commandant of Auschwitz, declaring that a "concentration camp" was well-known ti the German public and especially among the members of the SS . The concept was not "unknown" as Hoess says, being already used in Nazi propaganda: "If you don't behave, you'll end up in a concentration camp", was a typical saying according to Levi . The SS had very secretive lives in the concentration camps and always had to lie, sometimes even to themselves. Once Hoess joined the SS it would not have been easy for him to get out . At the beginning of his career in Auschwitz, Hoess and his colleagues were taught about the "enemies of the state" and how dangerous they were ; they were trained to not view the prisoners as human . The Nazi ideology began by teaching the alienation of these people and then distancing them to remove any remorse or compassion when they were to begin the systematic extermination of the camp population. If any member of the SS showed any sympathy to the prisoners the "enemies of the state" would exploit it, according to the teachings of the SS commanders . Within months of being sent to Auschwitz, Hoess began to change. "I became distrustful and highly suspicious, and saw only the worst in everyone" says Hoess after feeling betrayed by everyone around him . He later goes on to say "All human emotions were forced into the background" . The Schutzstaffel's transformation of Hoess was complete. He would soon be responsible for the ordering of millions of murders.
In the summer of 1941, Hoess was told about the "Final Solution"; Himmler told him that "The Fuhrer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order" . Hoess, being an obedient and loyal servant to Hitler, Himmler, and the Nazi party, would attempt to complete this order with full force. His devotion was called upon by his superior and he was told that he would have to get past any difficulties that may arise. This order was also one that furthered his reclusion. He was unable to communicate this order with his superiors or the officers under him; he was tasked with the entire extermination of every Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz to save the German race. "Every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now during the war" or "the Jews will one day destroy the German people", Hoess was told . After receiving this order, Hoess returned immediately to Auschwitz to carry it out . Eichmann and Hoess soon decided that the only way to prevent the SS men from being effected by the shooting of large numbers of people was to gas them instead.
Yeah I have all of my citations in the file, they just didn't transfer to this thread. I fixed both of the sentences you suggested, thank you so much for your help. I am done the entire essay other than the conclusion. Here it is:
This decision would significantly increase the murderous potential of Auschwitz. This also was not just the commandant following orders as he had done previously; he was now taking an active role in destroying the Jewish race. Hoess, in his autobiography, declares "I for my part never sanctioned them (the horrors of the Holocaust) . By finding new faster ways to exterminate the Jews he was sanctioning the actions of Auschwitz with full knowledge and intent. Hoess hides behind the belief that he never personally maltreated or killed any prisoners of the camp, but his order of the murder of the millions of prisoners makes him responsible for their deaths. He acts as if he was not given the order he would have never acted against the Jews; this defense is taken by many Nazis that were being criminally tried after the Holocaust. This line of defense can be taken by anyone with a superior officer in the SS and usually is the main argument of their defense. Although the camp regulation declaring, "The camp commandant is fully responsible for everything that happens in his sphere", should not be taken literally, a great deal of responsibility was on Hoess . The biography of the life of Rudolf Hoess is not important for the atrocities he committed while being in charge of Auschwitz, it is important to show how German citizens transformed into puppets of the Nazi regime. Once fully submerged in Nazi ideology, Hoess, as well as other German Nazis, would have very little left of their old self. Hoess' power and responsibility was not used to save as many lives as he could, it was used to increase the killing output of Auschwitz with an attempt to make the entire Jewish race extinct.
Commandant of Auschwitz, the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, proves the methods in which the prisoners of the death camp were killed, as well as the number of deaths that occurred under Hoess` command. At the beginning of their discussions, before the completion of Auschwitz, Hoess and Himmler believed that 800 people could be gassed simultaneously in a 30 minute period in one of the building sectors . They decided to use a common vermin exterminator in the camp, Cyclon-B . The buildings they chose for this extermination would be the third sector in Birkenau, an area that was screened by woods, ensuring seclusion, while also not being overly distanced from the railway . According to Hoess, the gassing of Jews first occurred in this new area between the summer of 1941 and January of 1942 . The five rooms were filled with Jews, behind glass proof doors and walls. After half an hour the door was opened and all of the Jews had died from inhaling the poisonous gas Cyclon-B . This small-scale operation would soon become a lot deadlier. Hoess ordered the building of another gassing chamber that would increase the gassing twofold, while also creating new pits in the summer to burn the victims instead of putting them in mass graves; the fires in the pits would burn day and night . At the end of November, before the crematoriums were used, the mass graves held a total of 107,000 thousand bodies .
Many "revisionists" believe that "Hitler's gas chambers never existed", included in Austin J. Apps' "Eight Claims about the Holocaust" . Hoess' statements on the creation and use of several gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau clearly and directly disprove this assertion. Primo Levi believes Hoess would be "incapable" of creating "a colossal falsification of history"; he would never have been able to create a story that meshes with many other recollections by Nazi officers, Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners, and anyone else that would know about the implementation of the gas chambers and crematoria . Hoess alludes to gassing and gas chambers throughout the latter part of his autobiography as the gassing only began when Hoess and Himmler decided they needed a faster method of extermination that would not negatively affect the Nazi guards as much as personally shooting prisoners did. Hoess, in his autobiography Commandant of Auschwitz, clearly states "During Eichmann's next visit I told him about the use of Cyclon B and we decided to employ it for the mass extermination operation" . He later explains how it was used in the extermination process: "All the rooms...were filled at the same time, the gas-proof doors were then screwed up and the contents of the gas containers discharged into the rooms through special vents" . "I have never known or heard of a single person being found alive when the gas-chambers were opened half an hour after the gas had been inducted" explains Hoess . The use and destruction of Cyclon B cannot be logically denied in Auschwitz based on Hoess detailed explanations.
Austin J. Apps and fellow Holocaust revisionists also believe that the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust is not close to the commonly approximated six million . They believe that most of the people who died during the Holocaust were from natural causes and not from the extermination by Nazi officials. This assumption by revisionists is directly disproven in the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi ObersturmbannfĂźhrer during the Holocaust, reported a total of two and a half million Jews arriving in Auschwitz in a report to Himmler . Although Hoess believes this number may be too high, he still considers the number to be in the millions. This number also only includes Auschwitz-Birkenau, which does not take the other extermination camps into consideration. In the beginning, the sole goal for all Jews that were transported to Auschwitz was their immediate extermination; they were sent directly from the train cars into the gas chambers where they were "destroyed without exception" . In the large crematoria I and II, 2,000 Jews could be cremated in 24 hours, a process that went on throughout the night . The smaller crematoria III and IV could cremate 1,500 Jews in a 24 hour period . The gas-chambers could hold about 3,000 people per group, with the total number of gassings within a total of 24 hours being over 9,000 people, according to Hoess . The number of Jews that were killed in Auschwitz can be seen by the capacities of the crematoria and gas-chambers. If Auschwitz began gassing Jews at the latest possible day from Hoess` account and only gassed a third of the daily maximum per day during its three years in operation, a total of over three million Jews would have died within its fences. This number is grossly underestimated by individuals that entitle themselves "revisionists". By using the numbers and facts in Hoess autobiography as well as simple extrapolation and data analysis, one can see that the number of individuals that died in Auschwitz would drastically overcome the sub-one million estimates by revisionists.
Thanks again for your help.
Jonathan N
