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Auschwitz: The men behind the mass murder.

[As you read the following article, keep in mind that the Nazis acquired power in a democratic nation with a population that was 94% Christian. Neither democracy nor Christianity is enough to prevent something like this from happening again.  Individuals must also have shared core values that place life as the highest value and top priority, along with a shared standard to judge human actions by – we recommend the TOV Standard.]

According to his interrogator at the Nuremberg war trials, the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, appeared “normal,” “like a grocery clerk.” Prisoners who came across him at Auschwitz confirmed this view, adding that Höss always appeared calm and collected. There is no record of him ever personally hitting – let alone killing – anyone at the camp. Höss lived with his wife and children in a house just yards from the crematorium in Auschwitz main camp, where some of the earliest killing experiments were conducted using the poisonous insecticide Zyklon B. During his working day Höss presided over the murder of more than a million people, but at home he lived the life of a solid middle-class German father and husband.

At Auschwitz there is not one case in the records of an SS man being prosecuted for refusing to take part in the killings. Crucial to understanding how it was possible for Höss to carry on, calmly and faithfully, organizing the killing, is the knowledge that he was never faced with one sudden command to commit mass murder. His long career in concentration camps as a guard prepared him step by step for the moment when the gassings began at Auschwitz. Indeed, he saw his subordinate’s innovation of the use of Zyklon B as a killing device as an “improvement” – a method of murder that carried with it less potential to cause psychological damage to his men than killing by firing squad. Höss was no mere robot, blindly following orders, but an innovator in the way he organized the killing. Read the complete article from BBC History at -- http://www.historyextra.com/feature/second-world-war/auschwitz-men-behind-mass-murder

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