A first-person account by the SS captain who arranged the gassing of two million people at Auschwitz between 1941-1943.

Rudolf Hoess was the notorious Commandant of Auschwitz. Imprisoned and awaiting execution after the war, Hoess wrote a long memoir, a self- serving account of his life and approaches to management.

By his own admission, SS Kommandant Rudolf Höss was history's greatest mass murderer, having personally supervised the extermination of approximately two million people, mostly Jews, at the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Death Dealer is the first complete translation of Höss's memoirs into English. These bone-chilling memoirs were written between October 1946 and April 1947. At the suggestion of Professor Sanislaw Batawia, a psychologist, and Professor Jan Shen, the prosecuting attorney for the Polish War Crimes Commission in Warsaw, Höss wrote a lengthy and detailed description of how the camp developed, his impressions of the various personalities with whom he dealt, and even the extermination of millions in the gas chambers. This written testimony is perhaps the most important document attesting to the Holocaust, because it is the only candid, detailed, and (for the most part) honest description of the Final Solution from a high-ranking SS officer intimately involved in carrying out the plans of Hitler and Himmler. With the cold objectivity of a common hit-man, Höss chronicles the discovery of the most effective poison gas, and the technical obstacles that often thwarted his aim to kill as efficiently as possible. Staring at the horror without reacting, Höss allowed conditions at Auschwitz to reduce human beings to walking skeletons - then he labelled them as subhumans fit only to die. Readers will witness Höss's shallow rationalizations as he tries to balance his deeds with his increasingly disturbed, yet always ineffectual, conscience.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The “compelling,” untold story of the man who captured and brought to trial Rudolf Höss—one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious war criminals and subject of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest—“fascinates and shocks” (The Washington Post). May 1945. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. As Kommandant of Auschwitz, Höss not only oversaw the murder of more than one million men, women, and children; he was the man who perfected Hitler’s program of mass extermination. Höss is on the run across a continent in ruins, the one man whose testimony can ensure justice at Nuremberg. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss’s capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day. Moving from the Middle Eastern campaigns of World War I to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men—one Jewish, one Catholic—whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way. This is “one of those true stories that illuminates a small justice in the aftermath of the Holocaust, an event so huge and heinous that there can be no ultimate justice” (New York Daily News).

An extraordinary and unique document: Hoess was in charge of the huge extermination camp in Poland where the Nazis murdered some three million Jews, from the time of its creation (he was responsible for building it) in 1940 until late in 1943, by which time the mass exterminations were half completed. Before this he had worked in other concentration camps, and afterwards he was at the Inspectorate in Berlin. He thus knew more, both at first-hand and as an administrator, about Nazi Germany's greatest crime than did any save two or three other men. Taken prisoner by the British, he was handed over to the Poles, tried, sentenced to death, and taken back to Auschwitz and there hanged. During the period between his trial and his execution, he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it. Hoess repeatedly says he was glad to write the book. He enjoyed the work. And finally the most careful checking has shown that he took great pains to tell the truth. Here we have, painted by his own hand, a vivid and unforgettable self-portrait of one of the great monsters of all time. To this are added portraits of some of his more spectacular fellow-criminals. The royalties from this macabre but historically important book go to the fund set up to help the few survivors from the Auschwitz camps.

Rudolf Hoss has been called the greatest mass murderer in history. As the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz, he supervised the killing of more than 1.1 million people. Unlike many of his Nazi colleagues who denied either knowing about or participating in the Holocaust, Hoss remorselessly admitted, both at the Nuremberg war crimes trial and in his memoirs, that he sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers, frankly describing the killing process. His "innovations" included the use of hydrogen cyanide (derived from the pesticide Zyklon B) in the camp's gas chambers. Hoss lent his name to the 1944 operation that gassed 430,000 Hungarian Jews in 56 days, exceeding the capacity of the Auschwitz's crematoria. This biography follows Hoss throughout his life, from his childhood through his Nazi command and eventual reckoning at Nuremberg. Using historical records and Hoss' autobiography, it explores the life and mind of one of history's most notorious and sadistic individuals.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one the most virtuosic authors in the English language: a powerful novel, written with urgency and moral force, that explores life—and love—among the Nazi bureaucrats of Auschwitz. "A masterpiece.... Profound, powerful and morally urgent.... A benchmark for what serious literature can achieve." —San Francisco Chronicle Martin Amis first tackled the Holocaust in 1991 with his bestselling novel Time's Arrow. He returns again to the Shoah with this astonishing portrayal of life in "the zone of interest," or "kat zet"—the Nazis' euphemism for Auschwitz. The narrative rotates among three main characters: Paul Doll, the crass, drunken camp commandant; Thomsen, nephew of Hitler's private secretary, in love with Doll's wife; and Szmul, one of the Jewish prisoners charged with disposing of the bodies. Through these three narrative threads, Amis summons a searing, profound, darkly funny portrait of the most infamous place in history. An epilogue by the author elucidates Amis's reasons and method for undertaking this extraordinary project.

“Being kissed by Karl Jager was devastating. And beautiful. War makes you do dangerous things.” Hanna Mendel liked to know what was going to happen next. She was going to be a famous concert pianist. She was going to wear her yellow dress to the dance on Saturday night. But she didn’t plan on her street being turned into a ghetto. She didn’t plan on being rounded up and thrown in a cattle truck. She didn’t plan on spending her sixteenth birthday in Auschwitz, in a wooden barrack with 200 other prisoners. Most of all, Hanna didn’t plan on falling in love with the wrong boy. What happens when a Jewish girl falls in love with the German son of the camp commander? Award-winning Australian author Suzy Zail’s young adult fiction book, The Wrong Boy, paints a story of identity, romance, hate and loyalty alongside the historical backdrop of the Holocaust. This gripping novel about a teenage girl coming to terms with first love amid the confronting realities of a war-torn world will leave readers wanting more. Short-listed in the Older Reader’s category of the 2013 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards “A compelling picture of life in a prison camp from the point of view of a determined but naïve teenage girl. Recommended.” – Aussie Reviews “Four stars … From its opening page, the reader will feel empathy and heartache for those who suffered during this violent era.” – Read Plus “A roller-coaster ride … This is a must read for any teenager or adult interested in the past, the tragedy of war or what happens when humans believe they are superior.” – Kids Book Review “Compelling reading … Zail uses a deft hand.” – Buzz Words magazine “An addictive read, well-written and, in spite of the horrow, warm-hearted.” – ­Around the Bookshops

And she considers how the Holocaust has been portrayed in poetry, fiction, and film.

Barbara Cherish's upbringing in Nazi-occupied Poland was one of relative wealth and comfort. But her father's senior position in the Nazi Party meant that she and her brothers and sisters lived on a knife edge. In 1943 he became commandant of perhaps the most infamous of all the concentration camps: Auschwitz. The author tells her father's story with clarity and without judgement, detailing his relationship with his family and his unceasing love for his mistress, as well as the very separate life he led as a senior officer of the SS. Captured by the US Army at the end of the war, he was held at Dachau and Nuremberg before being extradited to Poland. He was tried in the 'Auschwitz Trial' at Krakow, found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and executed in January 1948. A unique insider's view of the dark heart of the Third Reich, it is also a heartbreaking tale of a family torn apart that will open the eyes of even the most well-read historian.