Höss began testing and perfecting mass murder techniques on 3 September 1941. His experiments made Auschwitz the camp that would kill the most prisoners during the Holocaust. Höss later said that, during a regular day at Auschwitz, two to three trains carrying 2,000 prisoners each would arrive every day for periods of four to six weeks. The prisoners were unloaded in the Birkenau death camp. Prisoners who were strong, healthy, and able to work were marched to barracks in either Birkenau or one of the other Auschwitz camps. Prisoners who were elderly, very young, sick, or unable to do forced labor were killed in gas chambers, which were disguised as showers. At first, small gassing bunkers were located deep in the woods, to keep them secret. Later, four large gas chambers and crematoria were built in Birkenau to make it easier for the Nazis to kill more people, more quickly.
Höss experimented with different poison gases. At first, he used cotton filters soaked in sulfuric acid. Höss later started using hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), made from the pesticide Zyklon B, after his deputy Karl Fritzsch tested it on a group of Russian prisoners in 1941. Höss said that when he used Zyklon B, it took 3–15 minutes for prisoners to die, and that "we knew when the people were dead because they stopped screaming."
On 10 November 1943, Arthur Liebehenschel became the Commandant at Auschwitz. Höss took over Liebehenschel's last job as the chairman of "Amt D I" in "Amtsgruppe D" of the "SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt" (WVHA), which ran the concentration camps. Höss also was made the deputy (assistant) of Richard Glücks, the inspector of all of the concentration camps.
On 8 May 1944, Höss returned to Auschwitz to supervise operation "Aktion Höss." In "Aktion Höss," 430,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz and killed in 56 days. Even the huge facility that Höss had built could not handle the huge number of victims' corpses. The camp's staff had to burn thousands of bodies in open fire pits.
In the last days of the war, Himmler told Höss to disguise himself among German Navy sailors. Höss avoided arrest for nearly a year. When he was captured by British soldiers on 11 March 1946 in Gottrupel, he was disguised as a gardener and called himself Franz Lang. His wife, who feared that her son, Klaus, would be shipped off to the Soviet Union to be imprisoned or tortured, had told the British where Höss was. The British soldiers that captured Höss were led by Hanns Alexander, a young Jewish man from Berlin who was forced to flee to England with his entire family during the rise of Nazi Germany. Höss initially denied who he was, until Alexander noticed his wedding ring and demanded to see it. Höss refused to remove it, saying it was stuck on his finger. But when Alexander threatened to cut his finger off, Höss removed the ring. It had the names "Rudolf" and "Hedwig" engraved inside. After being questioned and beaten with axe handles by the British soldiers, Höss admitted who he really was.
Höss appeared at the Nuremberg Trials on 15 April 1946, where he explained his crimes in detail. Affidavits (sworn statements to the court) that Rudolf Höss made while imprisoned in Nuremberg were also used at the Pohl and IG Farben trials.
In his affidavit made at Nuremberg on 5 April 1946, Höss stated:
On 25 May 1946, Höss was handed over to Polish authorities, and the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland tried him for murder. His trial lasted from 11 to 29 March 1947. During his trial, when accused of murdering three and a half million people, Höss replied, "No. Only two and one half million—the rest died from disease and starvation." Höss was sentenced to death by hanging on 2 April 1947. He was executed on 16 April next to the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp. He was hanged on a gallows built specifically for his execution, at the location of the camp's "Gestapo". Today, a board that marks the site reads:
Höss wrote his autobiography while awaiting execution. It was published in 1956 as "," and later as "Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz" (among other editions).
After discussions with Höss during the Nuremberg Trials where Höss testified, the American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert wrote:
Four days before he was executed, Höss apologized for his crimes in a message to the state prosecutor:
Shortly before his execution, Höss returned to the Catholic Church. On 10 April 1947, he received the sacrament of penance from Friar Władysław Lohn, S.J. On the next day, the same priest gave Höss Holy Communion as Viaticum (the Eucharist given to a person who is dying).
Höss's original confession, with his signature, is displayed in a glass case in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Behind the confession is a photo showing Hungarian Jewish women and children walking to one of the four gas chambers in the Birkenau death camp on 26 May 1944.
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Bibliography
Further reading
Bloons Tower Defense
Bloons Tower Defense (also Bloons TD or BTD) are a series of tower-defense games that were created by Ninja Kiwi. The focus of the games is to use towers to defeat an enemy called Bloons to progress through the game. As you play the game, the Bloons become more difficult to defeat. Players are able to upgrade their towers to help defeat stronger enemies. Bloons can come with power ups, such as camouflage and regeneration. Most of the Tower Defense games can be played on computers and mobile/tablets.
On mobile, all of the Bloons Tower Defense Games (except Bloons Monkey City and Bloons TD 3, which are free on the App Store) cost $2.99 to play and download. A free game is also on their website. Some of the Bloons games have lite versions, such as Bloons TD or Bloons TD 4, which are free to play, but have limitations.
The enemies of the series are "Bloons". (The trademarked word Bloons is a spinoff of the word ""balloons"".) Once the Bloons come, a monkey will have to be placed to pop them. These monkeys pop the bloons. Red Bloons release no "children". B.A.Ds also have no "parents". Children & parents are terms determining what Bloons release when pop (children) and what Bloon releases that Bloon (parents). For example, the child of a Blue Bloon is a Red Bloon, and the parent of a Blue Bloon is a Green Bloon. A Red Bloon Equivalent (RBE) value is the number of Red Bloons it is equivalent to.
In Bloons, there are a lot of towers. All towers can be upgraded four tiers. You can only upgrade one side of the tower to the fourth tier but upgrade the other side to the second tier. As of BTD6, here are the list of towers and camo status:
The Bloons Tower Defense series has been a top seller on the Apple app store. Bloons TD 4 reached No. 6 on Apple's list of top paid iPhone and iPad games in 2010. Bloons TD 5 was able to reach No. 8 on Apple's list of top paid iPhone app downloads in 2013.
Tower defense
Tower Defense is a type of game where players use strategy to build towers to help defeat an enemy. In many tower defence games the player's towers must stop an enemy from invading a base. If the towers cannot stop the enemy, the player loses the game.
The first game that was thought to be a tower defense game was "Rampart" . Other games started to be used for tower defense by using tools in the games to change them. Those games were ones like "Starcraft" , "Age of Empires II" , and "Warcraft III" .
Tower defense games were made by independent developers also. The first game made in Flash was "Flash Element Tower Defense" . The next game was made quickly after and was called "Desktop Tower Defense" . Desktop Tower Defense won an award from the Independent Games Festival.
Mel Tillis