Rudolf Höss

Rudolf Höss, in his memoir about his role in the Holocaust, writes that "I had received an order [for a mass anihilation of the Jews]; I had to carry it out." It is with this straightforward, unembellished, unemotional diction that Höss recounts his experiences as a commandant and overseer of concentration camps. Höss explains the hierarchy of the Nazi system and his capabilities and restrictions as an SS officer. Perhaps some sympathy should be given here to officers like Höss in the system; severe consequences would face them if they disobeyed or questioned their superiors, so how would they dodge the order for the Final Solution? Suicide would be one answer, alcohol another. The truth is that many involved in the order for the extermination of the Jews had little mobility to escape the role designed for them, regardless of their personal beliefs. I think many oversee the mental suffering such people had, in being forced to perform such inhumane acts on innocent human beings. But then again, Höss does not seem to extend much remorse towards what he did against the Jewish people; he writes that he "personally never hated the Jews" but "considered them to be the enemy" of the German nation, which therefore justified the order for him. The only guilt that seems to surface is when Höss describes his relief that the Jews would be put to death by gassing and not by firing squads that were much more painful to witness. But in Höss' accounts of Jews hopelessly awaiting their fate a clear sense of human suffering is understood and shared by Höss.  Human suffering reached over both sides of the Holocaust, and although things are often easier to digest in black and white, it is not fair to assume that all Germans were evil. Such an assumption has tainted the German people since World War II.