Rudolf Hoss Quotes

• Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true, everything which is brought to your attention. Learn from life. The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. Walk through life with your eyes open. Don't become one-sided; examine the pros and cons in all matters.

  Rudolf Hoss

  Mistake, Eye, Thinking

  36 Copy quote

• Burning 2000 people took about 24 hours in the five stoves. Usually we could manage to cremate only about 1700 to 1800. We were thus always behind in our cremating because as you can see it was much easier to exterminate by gas than to cremate, which took so much more time and labor.

  Rudolf Hoss

  People, Burning, Hours

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

  33 Copy quote

• One woman approached me as she walked past and, pointing to her four children who were manfully helping the smallest ones over the rough ground, whispered: 'How can you bring yourself to kill such beautiful, darling children? Have you no heart at all?' One old man, as he passed me, hissed: 'Germany will pay a heavy penance for this mass murder of the Jews.' His eyes glowed with hatred as he said this. Nevertheless he walked calmly into the gas-chamber.

  Rudolf Hoss

  Beautiful, Children, Heart

  "Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess". Book by Rudolf Höss, p. 150, 2000.

  35 Copy quote

• There is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder.

  Rudolf Hoss

  Differences, Political, Murder

  "The Nuremberg Interviews: Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses". Book by Leon Goldensohn, p. 297, 2010.

  20 Copy quote

• We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, when it was woven into special fittings for gaskets.

  Rudolf Hoss

  Cutting, Hair, Special

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately, 2004.

  23 Copy quote

• Not justified - but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.

  Rudolf Hoss

  People, Would Be, Justified

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

  27 Copy quote

• This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed, were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.

  Rudolf Hoss

  Men, Prison Guards, Hands

  22 Copy quote

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