Hi. I'm a 76 years old Cockney from East London. I found this place by searching for somebody to tell me that I'm not dreaming! There's a book "The Autobiography of Rudolf Höss" readily available quoted variously as being published in dates like 1960 or 1961. However I clealrly remember reading "his" autobiography when I lived at a particular address which I left in 1949. It was called "Murder was my trade". Since "he" was captured and hanged and the book was a clear account of his own recollections it MUST have been the same as the current autobiography under a different name. I cannot find any link in the Web using this title. Just to show that my memory is functioning OK..... I also bought an A4 size red book published by the "Daily Mail" called "Lest we Forget". It was all pictures about the troops arriving at Belsen. It cost me 7/6pence. A fortune in those days. Sadly my life has been one of living out of a suitcase so I have nothing from the "old days" Anyone help? Bill.
Hi Bill, welcome. I'm not quite sure what you are looking for but the book you mentioned is available here. BookFinder.com: Search Results (Matching Books) Rudolf Walther Hess was born in Germany in 1900. He joined the German Army at the age of seventeen and in the First World War won the Iron Cross for bravery. After the war he joined the Rossbach Freikorps where he fought with Martin Bormann. In 1922 Hess joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) but two years later he Bormann were both jailed for murdering a man in the French-occupied Ruhr. Released in 1928, Hess joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1934. Hess worked in the concentration camp in Dachau before being appointed as adjutant to the commander of Sachsenhausen in 1938. Two years later, in May 1940, he became commander of Auschwitz in occupied Poland. In June, 1941, Heinrich Himmler ordered that Auschwitz be greatly increased in size and the following year it became an extermination camp. Bathhouses disguised as gas chambers were added. Hess introduced Zyklon-B gas, that enabled the Nazis to kill 2,000 people at a time. Hess was promoted to Deputy Inspector General and took charge of the Schutzstaffel (SS) department that administered German concentration camps. When Germany surrendered in April, 1945, Höss managed to avoid capture and worked on a farm. He was eventually captured and at his trial admitted that around 3,000,000 people were killed at Auschwitz. Rudolf Walther Hess was found guilty of war crimes and executed at Auschwitz on 15th April, 1947. His autobiography, Commandant of Auschwitz, was published in 1951.
Hi Bill, first the easy bit. Daily Mail's Lest We Forget was published in 1945. It is available to be read online: Lest We Forget - Other, Research, and History Now the tricky bit. The first edition of the Hoss/Hoess' autobiography came out in 1951 but was in Polish and was entitled Wspomnienia. It did not come out in English until 1959. And "Murder was my trade" is probably "Death Is My Trade" which was a fictionalised "autobigraphy" of Hoess by Robert Merle (but not publshed until 1952 in French). The only thing I can think of that was published in 1949 or before were some of the transcripts and reports of the Trial of the Major War Criminals, of which Hoess' testimony was crucial and widely reported and circulated
