HOESS, RUDOLF FRANZ (1900-1947)... In 1934 he was attached to the SS
at Dachau ... 1940 given rank of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer in command at
the Auschwitz camp. [He] was responsible for the execution of more
than 2.5 million inmates, not counting a half million who were allowed
to starve to death. He performed his job so well that he was commended
in a 1944 SS report that called him "a true pioneer in this area
because of his new ideas and educational methods." He was sentenced to
death at Warsaw and was executed several days later at Auschwitz. 

At the fulcrum of the extermination system in Poland were the camps at
Auschwitz, Maidanek, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, and Sobibor....
Auschwitz was the most notorious of the extermination centers. At the
height of its activity Auschwitz could house more the 100,000 men and
women and could provide for the gassing and incineration of 12,000
prisoners a day.... The .. gas chambers could accommodate 2,000
prisoners at one time. Rudolf Hoess testified at Nuremberg: "When I
set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Zyclon B which
was crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into the death-chamber
from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people
in the death-chamber, depending on climatic conditions. We knew when
the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually
waited for half-an-hour before we opened the doors and removed the
bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos
['Sonderkommandos' made up of prisoners who were partially trusted]
took off the rings and extracted the gold teeth of the corpses."

"We tried to fool the victims into believing that they were going
through a delousing process. Of course, at times they realized our
true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties.
Frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but we
found them and we sent the children to be exterminated. We were
required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but the foul
and nauseating stench from the continued burning of bodies permeated
the whole area and all the people living around Auschwitz knew what
was going on."

Taken from the ...----------------------------------------------------
Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, by Dr. Louis L. Snyder, Professor of
History, The City College and The City University of New York. Paragon
House, New York, 1989. ISBN 1-55778-144-3
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"The gassing was carried out in the detention cells of Block 11.
Proctected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded
cells, death came instantaneously the moment the Zyklon B was thrown
in. A short, almost smothered cry, and it was all over....  I must
even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass
extermination of the Jews was to start soon, and at that time neither
Eichmann nor I was certain as to how these mass killings were to be
carried out. In would be by gas, but we did not know which gas and how
it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a
procedure."  "KL Auschwitz seen by the SS Hoess, Broad, Kremer",
second edition, Museum w Oswiecimu, 1978, pp. 92-95.