The Holocaust: The Mass Extermination Of Jews At Auschwitz

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The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.
Signed April 5, 1946 by Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess and presented as evidence on April 15, 1946 before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg as Document 3868PS, vol. 33,27579, his affidavit is a primary source that begins by stating that he is 46 years old and since 1922 has been a member of the Nazi Party. In 1934, he became a member of the SS (Protection Squadron or later renamed Schutz-Staffel), the most powerful organization in the Third Reich. Under Heinrich Himmler's command, the SS was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II from 1939 through 1945.
Hoess attested to his continuous association with the administration of several concentrations camps since 1934, being appointed Commandant of Auschwitz on May 1, 1940 and remaining in that position until December 1, 1943. Hoess testifies that he was ordered to “establish extermination facilities at ...

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...gned the document and discrepancies in his testimony. Inconsistencies such as the number of victims, what is meant by the “final solution”, the claim of a third camp named Wolzek, and the year that Belzek and Treblinka were established exist.
Dr. Franciszek Piper, Polish historian and authority on Auschwitz, in 1980 completed the most comprehensive study of the number of people deported to Auschwitz entitled Estimating the Number of Deportees to and Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. His research revealed from 1940 to 1945 that of the 1.3 million deportees only 400,000 received registration numbers (Faurisson). Of those, 200,000 had been killed along with all those who had been unregistered (Faurisson). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. has accepted 1.1 million as the number killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

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