Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz
This first complete English translation of a senior Nazi officer's account of the Final Solution describes in cold, stomach-churning detail the program of genocide as an administrative procedure. Written during the six months before his 1947 execution in Warsaw for "crimes committed against the Polish people," Hoss's memoirs are filled with specific recollections, from his fervently religious boyhood in Mannheim, through a prison term in Liepzig (for having killed a fellow soldier), to marriage and induction into the SS in 1934. Particulars of his roles in the concentration camp system include his ordering of "the first execution of the war" at Sachsenhausen in 1938 and his 1941 assignment to establish and manage Auschwitz as "the largest human killing center in all of history." Personal squabbles with other SS leaders are interspersed with chilling descriptions of prison conditions and gassing procedures. This compelling historical document, from which Hoss emerges as a classic model of the bureaucratic middle manager, is expertly edited by Paskuly, a history teacher in New York; Pollinger's translation is seamless. Photos not seen by PW.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.