I personally never hated the Jews. I considered them to be the enemy of our nation. However, that was precisely the reason to treat them the same way as other prisoners. I never made a distinction concerning this. Besides, the feeling of hatred is not in me, but I know what hate is, and how it manifests itself. I have seen it and I have felt it.
The original order of 1941 to annihilate all the Jews stated, “All Jews without exception are to be destroyed.” It was later changed by Himmler so that those able to work were to be used in the arms factories. This made Auschwitz the assembly point for the Jews to a degree never before known…
When he gave me the order personally in the summer of 1941 to prepare a place for mass killings and then carry it out, I could never have imagined the scale, or what the consequences would be. Of course this order was something extraordinary, something monstrous. However, the reasoning behind the order of this mass annihilation seemed correct to me. At the time I wasted no thoughts about it. I had received an order; I had to carry it out. I could not allow myself to form an opinion as to whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not. At the time it was beyond my frame of mind. Since the Führer himself had ordered “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” there was no second guessing for an old Nationalist Socialist, much less an SS officer. “Führer, you order. We obey” was not just a phrase or a slogan. It was meant to be taken seriously…
Before the mass destruction of the Jews began, all the Russian politruks and political commissars were killed in almost every camp during 1941 and 1942. According to the secret order given by Hitler, the Einsatzgruppe searched for and picked up the Russian politruks and commissars from all the Prisoners of War camps. They transferred all they found to the nearest concentration camp for liquidation… The first small transports were shot by firing squads of SS soldiers.
While I was on an official trip, my second in command, Camp Commander Fritzsch, experimented with gas for killings. He used a gas called Cyclon B, prussic acid, which was often used as an insecticide in the camp to exterminate lice and vermin. There was always a supply on hand. When I returned Fritzsch reported to me about how he had used the gas. We used it again to kill the next transport.
In the spring of 1942 the first transport of Jews arrived from Upper Silesia. All of them were to be exterminated. After arriving at the farmhouse they were told to undress. At first they went very quietly into the rooms where they were supposed to be disinfected. At that point some of them became suspicious and started talking about suffocation and extermination. Immediately a panic started. Those still standing outside were quickly driven into the chambers, and the doors were bolted shut. In the next transport those who were nervous or upset were identified and watched closely at all times. As soon as unrest was noticed these troublemakers were inconspicuously led behind the farmhouse and killed with a small-caliber pistol, which could not be heard by the others…
I also watched how some women who suspected or knew what was happening, even with the fear of death all over their faces, still managed enough strength to play with their children and to talk to them lovingly. Once a woman with four children, all holding each other by the hand to help the smallest ones over the rough ground, passed by me very slowly. She stepped very close to me and whispered, pointing to her four children, “How can you murder these beautiful, darling children? Don’t you have any heart?”
Another time an old man hissed while passing me, “Germany will pay a bitter penance for the mass murder of the Jews.” His eyes glowed with hatred as he spoke. In spite of this he went bravely into the gas chamber without worrying about the others…
Hour upon hour I had to witness all that happened. I had to watch day and night, whether it was the dragging and burning of the bodies, the teeth being ripped out, the cutting of the hair, I had to watch all this horror. For hours I had to stand in the horrible, haunting stench while the mass graves were dug open, and the bodies were dragged out and burned. I also had to watch the procession of death itself through the peephole of the gas chamber because the doctors called my attention to it. I had to do all of this because I was the one to whom everyone looked , and because I had to show everybody that I was not only the one who gave the orders and issued the directives, but that I was also willing to be present at whatever task I ordered my men to perform…
***
The above excerpts are taken from the memoirs of Rudolf Höss. Rudolf Höss was appointed commandant of Auschwitz, which began as a camp for Polish political prisoners but became a huge, sprawling complex where over a million Jews were gassed or shot and tens of thousands of prisoners served as slave labourers in nearby factories. After his capture in 1946, he was tried and convicted for crimes against humanity. He was hanged on April 16, 1947.
Reference books:
Kalampedia 
