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Rudolf Hess

Deputy Führer found strangled at Spandau Prison,
August 17, 1987

Odd winter whirlwinds occupy my brain
With telepathic messages I cherish.
Dynamic years! Mein Führer cannot perish
When august frenzy storms my mind’s terrain,

But fever may mean poisoned food. I sensed it.
These Allies once starved Germans into peace;
For me who tried to make peace—no release.
I’m guilty on two counts of crimes against it.

Alone for twenty years and more, unknown
By guards who may not speak or meet my eyes,
This healthy garden Lebensraum I own,

And here I see the Führer with my wraith.
Again in prison let us fraternize,
Young Juggernaut of my undying faith!

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Rudolf Höss

Commandant of Auschwitz, hanged there
on April 16, 1947

Lord, after heinous absences it’s time.
Let dismal shadows darken my life’s end
And rough winds blow about me as I climb
The gallows platform steps without a friend.

Still, brighten these few days with true contrition,
Since lacking it, I cannot stand upright
To offer my poor thanks and last petition
That I may honor you in what I write.

My turn from God was toweringly wrong;
My worship of an idol, gravely wrong;
My services to Death, abhorrent wrong,

But Father Lohn forgave me destitute,
And next comes Purgatory’s payback long,
For Mercy is God’s greatest attribute.

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Poet’s Note

Germany did not immediately accept Allied peace terms after World War I, but submitted following a blockade of supplies. During World War II, in May 1941, Rudolf Hess made a solo flight to Britain on what he considered a peace mission. Because he was taken captive by the British, and thus not present in Germany for much of the war, Hess was not convicted at Nuremberg of war crimes or crimes against humanity, but of crimes against peace. “Lebensraum” means “living space,” and the root meaning of “Juggernaut” is “leader of the world.”

Only days before the execution of Rudolf Höss, the condemned man asked for a priest, but Americans in charge could not find one. He then asked in particular for Władysław Lohn, a Polish Jesuit who had come to Auschwitz to speak on behalf of imprisoned brother priests. Höss had been impressed with Lohn, and allowed him to depart unharmed. Lohn was the only survivor of his community. The Americans located him at Krakow’s Shrine of Divine Mercy, and brought him to Auschwitz to hear Höss’s confession. Höss wrote of his changed outlook in a final letter to his wife.

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 

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34 Responses

  1. Mary Gardner

    Margaret, you skillfully present both men as multi-dimensional and therefore believable.
    The poet’s note was helpful.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Mary! This is a poem about relatively recent history where I rely on objective information. The two Rudolfs present an extreme but true contrast, and I’m very glad you could see them as multi-dimensional and believable.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Rohini. These first-person poems with evil men as speakers show them (insofar as I could) as they saw themselves shortly before death. We are accustomed to think of them as monsters of depravity rather than human beings, but a human being will excuse himself for the wrong he does. How he does so makes a considerable difference with these two, and I’m glad you could see their final thoughts as human self-presentations.

      Reply
  3. Michael Vanyukov

    Dear Margaret, that is an interesting, poignant, and finely worded take on both, differing only in that Hess was captured before he could commit war crimes. Which he would, no doubt, being Hitler’s deputy. I regret though that the poems – especially on the Auschwitz Rudolf, while mentioning “dismal shadows” and “services to Death,” leave out what those actually were, murdering 2,000 people a day while enjoying family life and wearing rings made of tooth fillings robbed from the corpses. Although many know that history, it’s never unworthy of being reminded of, as it stretches its tentacles into the present. Somehow I don’t believe his contrition, evil incarnate, hell’s spawn if there is hell. Nor, I think, does his grandson Rainer, who cut relations with his family he calls “terrible.” It is fitting that Hoess was captured by a Jew. And if hell does exist, there is no better candidate for permanent residency. His victims were not served coffee like he was before hanging.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Michael, thank you very much. I am replying first to you because you quite rightly mention how evil acts spread tentacles into the present day. This very day from Hollywood we hear the following news about last year’s film, “Zone of Interest,” concerning Rudolf Hoss and his family life at Auschwitz. The filmmaker earlier said he made the film to warn how persons can live an outwardly serene life while contributing to atrocities. This noble purpose applies to official employees today who victimize others. The filmmaker today made valuable donations of “Zone of Interest” paraphernalia to humanitarian aid for Gaza. This likens Israeli acts in Gaza to those of the Auschwitz commandant. One can only mourn to note it.

      With regard to my poems, I also understand your wish that the crimes of these two men should be explicitly described. I agree with you that Hess, once Hitler’s number two man, knew of and helped plan crimes that took place while he was out of action in Britain. I don’t describe them here, because these brief poems focus on the man’s state of mind at the time of death. Hess always maintained love and admiration for Hitler, as many studies of his psyche show. He made the flight to Britain in a foolish attempt to regain Hitler’s esteem. He never showed the slightest indication of repentance, and that is the state of mind I show in the first poem. It is a state revealing guilty madness as well as infatuated responsibility. The mind is as ugly as the crimes.

      With regard to Hoss, I have him as speaker outline his guilt as he did in his writing. The most serious wrong he committed was a turn away from God–and he says that happened the first time he heard Hitler speak. Another grave wrong was idol worship, the idol being Hitler. The wrong we are more likely to consider “abhorrent” was the “services to Death.” These depended on the first two wrongs of denying God and idolizing Hitler. Hoss is one of very few guilty of such things who took action to repent. He did not just feel sorry because he had been caught, tried, and condemned. I have him speak of Purgatory because the Catholic doctrine about it (which Hoss knew) says sinners must not only repent and be forgiven in the way God requires, but make up for their sins–if not here, then hereafter. God can be merciful, but He is also entirely just, and there is nothing He will let Hoss get away with.

      Reply
      • Michael Vanyukov

        Margaret, right you are, G-d is “entirely just.” Human as I am, I can’t know what His justice is. But Hoess, I believe, will not be allowed to get away with his enormity but merely “repenting” – especially while knowing the outcome. There is no conceivable way – in my human comprehension – for him to repent, let alone make up for what he did. There is a kabbalistic understanding of the outcome that comports well with how I see this: the evil created by a human will be his share in the World To Come.

  4. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I am surprised by your choice of such subjects and your creative treatment of them, but never surprised by your skillful classical poetry. These two Rudolphs with red noses are presented in their final day or days with humanizing internal thoughts of their reprehensible existence. Rudolf Höss for the first time in my life seems to be like the thief on the cross who asks the Lord for forgiveness and mercy. You often amaze!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Roy. You are right; this is a taboo topic. These men are, to our minds, much more reprehensible than the Good Thief–who has nothing good about him except a last-minute respect for the pure innocence of Jesus in contrast to himself. However, we don’t mind that Jesus promises him immediate entry to paradise. All he did was steal; he wasn’t a bigoted mass murderer. The question is not whether we can forgive a mass murderer, but whether God our Judge would have mercy on a mass murderer who did the minimum required for forgiveness. Or maybe, whether such a reprehensible person could be capable of repentance and reparation, even in the ways God has outlined?

      The subject was suggested by a friend, and I will admit I had trouble with the idea. But who are we, who all need mercy ourselves, to set our limits on God’s mercy? Hard to believe, but nothing is impossible with God.

      Reply
  5. Cynthia Erlandson

    These are both very moving, Margaret. What a stunning contrast between faith in the fuhrer / “Juggernaut”, and faith in God. In the second poem, rhyming “wrong” with itself seems especially appropriate and emphatic for a confession. And the final line is both simple and profound.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Cynthia, I thought I had placed my response to you here, but please see it below Warren Bonham’s comment.

      Reply
  6. Stephen Dickey

    Margaret, I will not comment on the formal qualities of the poems, which is your characteristic virtuosity. These are interesting and challenging poems to read with regard to their content/argument. One the one hand, I would say that this is “historical poetry” at its best, probing two very difficult, i.e., evil characters of the most blatantly evil regime in history. On the other, from my purely personal perspective, my approach would be simply to gun down both and let God sort them out—especially since my version of Christianity does not include the escape hatch of Purgatory.
    These remind me of a poem by Wilbur about a captured SS soldier, which I do not have at hand. But it would be interesting to look at.
    I have never read the details of the latter (Höss), but his epiphany just strikes me as a hair too little too late. The cynic in me wonders how sincere the Herr Obersturmbannführer was in his epiphany. As someone awaiting the gallows, maybe he simply had nothing better to do, or was simply a coward once he realized he had missed his chance for the Heldentod?
    I am reminded of Pound’s Pisan Cantos, which some have hailed as a great epiphany. When I read them, all I got was that some pro-axis asshole was butthurt about having to live in a cage after capture.
    Respectfully,
    Stephen

    Reply
    • Michael Vanyukov

      Stephen, I’d add that his sincerity, considering even the potentiality of the unpleasant outcome, is under suspicion as well. Not that it changes anything for me about him.

      Reply
      • Stephen Dickey

        The only comparison that occurs to me in the New Testament is Saul on the road to Damascus. But Saul, even with God’s fireworks, recanted while he was still the badass in control. If he had been hung by his scrotum and recanted only then, not such an epiphany.

  7. Margaret Coats

    Thank you, Stephen Dickey, for your response. Be assured that I respect your point of view, and I am grateful for your praise of my historical poetry based on historical evidence. It is also psychological poetry (again, dependent on evidence provided either by the thinker or by persons who knew him). I am aware that what I wrote is not the comfortable condemnation a reader might prefer about either of them. You and I do not differ at all in judging them evil characters of a blatantly evil regime. And you are quite correct to suppose that the motivation of Hoss in calling for a priest included fear and maybe boredom. As you don’t know the story, I’ll cite below the most accessible online account, by the British journalist K. V. Turley. Turley thinks Hoss was fearful, and influenced by his upbringing in a devout Catholic family, despite having abandoned the Faith years earlier, when he took up Nazism. It is also so unexpected as to be called a miracle.

    https://www.ncregister.com/blog/an-astonishing-miracle-of-divine-mercy-at-auschwitz

    Here’s the difficulty about authentic psychological poetry in these cases. We ourselves and all human beings very typically present ourselves in a good light even when we know we have done evil things. It would not be accurate to present the mind of these subjects judging themselves as we do. I see Hess believing himself a victim of circumstances, and thus continuing in his culpable adulation of Hitler. I see Hoss as doing what he knew, from Catholic upbringing, to be the right thing at the end of his life. Confession requires some effort, more than an interior prayer of hope and trust in God.

    Neither of my views has guns blaring, as you say yours would. But that would be the poet firing, not the subject. And you are right that God’s point of view is best left to Himself.

    I have to add one little thing about Purgatory–it’s not an escape hatch. It’s a painful purgation of every guilt still remaining in us that we haven’t made reparation for. No one defiled with sin enjoys the presence of God, as Paul says even when he claims nothing particular on his conscience. He was most fortunate that God knocked him off that horse and gave him work to do!

    Again, I very much appreciate your serious remarks, and those of Michael Vanyukov, to which I may return later.

    Reply
    • Stephen Dickey

      At risk of coming off as obsessive about this (if so it’s due maybe to more than two years of being paid to engage with such crimes in the late 1990s), I have thought a lot about this in the intervening time. I don’t want to take away from your poems, but after some reading I am convinced that he was unrepentant. On the one hand, he was able to talk about Jews and write the word “Juden” in the manuscript of his autobiography (written in shortly before his execution), saying such cynical things as that the extermination of the Jews was “thoroughly mistaken” because “it did not further the ends of Antisemitism, but rather the Jews were closer than ever to their final goal” [my translation]; lots of blame-shifting onto the Kapos and defaming of Jewish inmates, etc. there too. So I would respectfully take issue with the idea that he had turned honest.
      And something that troubled me already in the English-language Wikipedia was that, given his aforementioned record of slandering Jews at the end of his life, his confession concerned only crimes committed against “the Polish people”. He knew how to write the word “Juden” when he wanted to slander; but when it came time to confess, he could only mention Poles. I would point out here that this fact has bothered others, and one can read about it in a 2021 article by Alessandro Costazza available in Researchgate. FWIW.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Stephen, I’m happy to receive your further comment and new material regarding the most transgressive of these two poems. While you say that you don’t want to “take away from my poems,” an important issue, in my opinion, is that you (and perhaps others) believe I should not have written them and that Evan should not have published them. Kindly hear me out on this and I will address the serious things you have to say. I appreciate knowing that you have thought a great deal about this post, and particularly about Hoss.

      Scathing sex and savage satire are comfortably accepted here as “what we need.” Liberal viewpoints get an argument. But here I have written, without hate, of persons for whom hate is de rigueur and required. And I thank you for the vulgarities by which you demonstrated this.

      Please take my words to you as appreciative, not as scornful. With new material, you hope to show that my poem on Hoss is based on insufficient research, and presents a lie. You understand the importance of dating your material to the end of Hoss’s life. And it has to be the very last handful of days. The man necessarily changed in the two years after World War II ended. As Michael Vanyukov already pointed out, he assumed a false identity and hoped to escape from Germany if he could have done so. Therefore no one is surprised at his Nazi mindset remaining largely unchanged while he took the practical step of cooperating with the Allies after his capture, admitting wrongdoing, and describing it. He knew there was no way he could avoid condemnation and execution.

      It was 10 days before the execution that Hoss gave the first sign by asking for a priest. None could be located for several days. Hoss had been moved to Auschwitz for his death to happen where he had ordered so many others to their deaths. You say he slandered Jews at the end of his life, and you say his confession concerned only crimes against Poles. Do you speak of what he wrote after receiving the Last Sacraments? If you mean his sacramental confession to Wladyslaw Lohn, there is no record of it. Hoss did not write it down, and Lohn would break the sacred seal and incur the most severe canonical penalty for a priest had he done so. He did not.

      I do paraphrase in my poem things Hoss did write after his confession. He did identify his major sin as turning away from God. That’s right–First Commandment. He also said his whole view of the world had been wrong. You say he was dishonest. But there was one judge appointed by God in those last few days. You may think Hoss purposely deceived Father Lohn. Lohn had the grace-of-state equipping a priest to judge a sinner and free him from his sins or bind him in them. Lohn had lost his brother Jesuits at Auschwitz. He had presented himself before this very commandant expecting to die with them. He could have used the power to retain sins. Priests do this. I recently heard that my own pastor refused absolution because someone felt unable to forgive a person who had quarreled with him. Lohn probably asked questions to determine that Hoss’s contrition was true. It didn’t have to be perfect, motivated by love of God alone. Confession after an adult life denying God takes a while. But Hoss was absolved from sins and given Holy Communion the next day. That’s the Divine Mercy I give Hoss in my last line. It has to be divine, because many human beings can’t give it or believe it. We don’t know what happens between God and the soul, whatever our evidence.

      Reply
      • Stephen M. Dickey

        Margaret, I appreciate your response, not least because I thought you were PO’ed at my post. There are a couple of things I feel compelled to say.
        First, whatever disagreements there may be, I would not want to be telling you that you shouldn’t have published this or any other poem. I understood it in its intended spirit, I just happen to disagree about some of the background.
        In this regard, in my understanding, the poem has two aspects, that of Catholic belief about how God handles these things, and then the facts of the Höss case.
        When I posted on your poem I violated one of my private rules regarding the former, which is not to post on religious poems, because the aforementioned POing will happen.
        The reason I posted was that I couldn’t help myself based on the distraction of the Höss case and my experience in this respect. I worked as a translator for the ICTY and read and thought about those guys more than I can convey, and also at the time looked back into the Nazis since I know German and even had to translate some WWII stuff for the ICTY. If Höss actually repented, he would be the first I know of. That is, the story about him and the Polish priest would be the first evidence of such, at least that I can remember ever reading.
        Anyway, if you can believe it, I compartmentalize the fact of your writing the poems separately from the historical “facts.”
        All of that having been said, I still think the Höss facts are pretty damning.
        The timeline here is important:
        According to the English-language Wikipedia, “On 10 April 1947, he received the sacrament of penance from Fr. Władysław Lohn [pl], S.J., provincial of the Polish Province of the Society of Jesus.” (The German Wikipedia doesn’t discuss any of this.) I’m ignorant of Catholic practice, but I think that puts his confession on 10 April.
        Costazza gives the following information (my translation, in case of issue): “Neither in his last letter to his wife of 11 April 1947 nor in his last ‘Statement’ of a day later (and thus four days before his execution) was Höss able to ask the Jews for forgiveness: He repeatedly expresses regret for having inflicted ‘so much harm and anguish’ on ‘the Polish people’, and thus asked explicitly ‘for forgiveness’, but did not say one word about the Jews.”
        It’s helpful here to remember that among other things in seven weeks in 1944 Höss liquidated 430,000 Hungarian Jews, who had basically nothing to do with Poland.
        Thus, *after his confession* Höss made no mention of crimes committed against Jews, either in his “Statement” or in his letter to his wife, presumably someone he could be more or less honest to and who clearly knew who the target had been. If he had confessed to his crimes against the Jews and was in a new state of mind, I can’t believe his post-confession statement would not have room for that.
        Again, I think you’ve taken the bull by the horns poetically and I’m not trying to denigrate that.

  8. Paul A. Freeman

    You’ve done a fine job here, Margaret.

    To get inside the head of a person who’s done the unspeakable or who thinks the unspeakable is difficult and, as I’ve discovered from some of my writing, mentally very stressful.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Paul, I thank you. As you know, it would be far easier in these cases to present an external view, with judgment decided from exterior knowledge of the deeds. Having Hoss’s own written words, the difficulty is to condense them into a self-condemnation adequately summarizing his thought. Hess was more elusive because of the mystery he was to those he trusted, but a British guard and American psychiatrist gave sketches in English, from which I got the fear of poisoned food, and the overall obsession with the occult. Incoherence, as you say, is stressful to imagine and represent, even with some historical details as anchors.

      Reply
  9. Mia

    Dear Margaret,
    these are outstanding poems which is characteristic of you as a poet.
    Even though the subject is taboo, the treatment of it is so sensitive that these poems will contribute much to the idea that we must never forget.
    Your poems contribute to the understanding that , it is one thing to go to war for survival and quite another just from sheer hate and arrogance.
    “And here comes Purgatory’s payback long” is particularly memorable.
    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Mia, thank you so very much for reading so well as to identify important points about these poems. When we say that we must never forget, that does not mean just to remember the atrocities. We must remember the mindset that leads to them. That appears in the Hess poem idolizing Hitler in an insane manner, and selfishly concerned with personal and national grievances. This is where you see his sheer hate and arrogance, hidden under adulation for his leader. It also appears in the Hoss poem as Hoss says idol worship is gravely wrong, and stems from a person’s abandonment of God.

      When those in power serve idols and not God, it takes force to free their victims, as in World War II. But when you speak of “Purgatory’s payback,” that also considers restoring justice. This is rare but possible, with God’s grace. And it is the only way to overcome hate, because those who go to Hell continue in hate forever. Hoss looked forward to a long and intense “payback,” when we read the word to mean what he needed to pay back for the tremendous evil he had done. But “payback” has another meaning as well–it is the valuable return on an investment. And in this situation, the long, hard reparation is the immense reward Hoss gets for his return to God and faith. He goes to Purgatory, not to Hell. Hell was what he deserved, but because he finally comes back to God, God grants him the mercy of being allowed to make reparation in Purgatory. To satisfy God’s justice this way is a treasured gift. Thank you for noticing that line.

      Reply
  10. Warren Bonham

    I had never heard the story of Hoss before which is another example of how poor our education system is. It may be because we just celebrated Easter, but his story reminds me of the criminals who were crucified with Jesus. One of them is generally known as the “good thief” but I’m guessing that he did quite a lot more than commit just petty larceny. Despite the fact that he was a Christian for no more than a couple of hours and that he only converted because he was facing imminent death, Jesus told him that he would end up in Heaven. I still can’t wrap my head around how he (or the 11th hour workers) can receive the same reward. I know how I would have judged Hoss if I sat on the seat of judgment, but I know I don’t possess the qualities needed to be a just judge who is also filled with infinite love and mercy. Assuming I make it to Heaven, I’ll be very interested to see how things ended up for people like Hoss.

    Of course, it goes without saying that these poems were excellent.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Warren, you’ve mentioned the most notable example of last-minute repentance. If Christ died for all, that cannot leave out the worst sinners who continue longest in sin. He does require them to do what He asks to receive unearned salvation, but even those who respond earlier do not pay the price for themselves. You are right to see that we imperfect creatures cannot judge the way God in all his perfections judges. We usually judge others in relation to how we view ourselves. Thus we are kind to others who share our faults, and strict to those who don’t meet our standards. That works as it must for earthly judgment, according to our many systems of law. We can fine and imprison criminals, but we have no power to assign places in hell and heaven and purgatory in God’s realm after death. Thank you very much for your appreciation of poems in which I just touched on these ultimate issues.

      Reply
  11. Margaret Coats

    Cynthia, thank you for your perceptive comment. These two men were both enthralled by Hitler when young, as were many other Germans. I find them a contrast of extremes at the ends of their lives, with Hess continuing to worship Hitler long, long after others had lost any reverence for a dead, defeated leader of reprehensible ideas and crimes. Hoss had an early foreshadowing of conversion (or reversion to God) when he was the first Nazi official to admit to wrongdoing, rather than offer the excuse of “following orders.”

    That last line, “Mercy is God’s greatest attribute” belongs to Saint Faustina, the visionary who promoted the Divine Mercy devotions. The priest who heard Hoss’s confession was at her Divine Mercy shrine, having lost all his Jesuit brothers at Auschwitz. He may have instructed Hoss about mercy, which is why I felt justified putting the words in Hoss’s mouth. The Divine Mercy novena, ongoing now, runs from Good Friday to the Sunday after Easter, to pray for souls of every sort to experience divine mercy. I have had trouble with the idea that mercy is the greatest thing about God, because that makes His greatest attribute depend on a creature in need of mercy. But when we look at Rudolf Hoss, so “destitute” of any reason for God to have mercy on him, I’m willing to contrast that greatest “attribute” with the most miserable need for it.

    Reply
  12. Priscilla King

    In theory Christians believe that even murderers could sincerely repent and be forgiven; Christ’s sacrifice would cover their sins. In specific cases, yes, it’s hard to imagine how. Could the Nazis genuinely think they’d repented because they’d never realized how much evil they’d done, and what would God then do with them? I’m glad I’m not the judge.

    Reply
  13. Margaret Coats

    Thank you, Priscilla, for your perceptive comment on poems in which I consider two specific cases of response to evil in the world. These two individuals, as young men, adopted escapism and put their faith in the illusory Nazi worldview. Escapism is not honest about evil. You are right that it’s hard to imagine how a Nazi leader could fail to realize what evil he was doing. But that is apparently true of Hess. In his case, I believe, evil overcame his mind, and madness separated his consciousness from reality. My sonnet on him shows how, even near death, decades after World War II, he considered himself a victim and Hitler his savior. He did not repent.

    Hoss probably took an honest view of evil when he tried to escape. When captured and put on trial, he admitted wrongdoing, which was not the case for many others. He knew he would be condemned, and seems to have faced his deeds with a cynical or stoic despair. That’s honest–as I try to show in the first quatrain of the sonnet on him. For Christian repentance, though, one needs honesty without despair. Hoss seems to have come to that position in his final days, when he sought forgiveness from God in confessing to a priest. He was fearful, but I take his written rejection of the Nazi worldview, and his desire to confess even before a priest could be found, as honest. This doesn’t excuse evil, and in this case it was up to the priest, acting in the person of Christ, to decide whether to absolve Hoss. He did, and Hoss then expects a long and severe punishment in the afterlife. This differs from Christ simply covering sins and taking the penalty on Himself. I think it makes sense that Hoss would worry about having sufficient contrition. Again, an honest and fearful view of his evil deeds, supported by what he wrote. I grant it’s difficult to accept, but the man took on himself to do as he understood God required in his case. Thanks again for your consideration; God is the judge of Hoss’s despicable life.

    Reply
  14. R M Moore

    Dear Margaret,
    Very difficult for me to comment considering that all sides have some truth. So, I have to side with what the Church teaches about the repentant sinner. Let the poets learn more about their Savior, Who waits for them to seek Him and His wisdom through the Gifts of the Holy Ghost…and in their hardness of hearts and dullness of intellects they may ask, “Whatever or Whomever is that?”

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for your response, Mrs. Moore. Everyone who has commented has something important to say, as you note. If I were to re-think how this poem appeared, I would include more information about the crimes of these two men, as some have suggested. The fact that Hoss was hanged shows him to have been judged guilty of murders, but it should be stated that he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, which at Nuremberg meant the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews, carried out at Auschwitz among other places. The name of Auschwitz itself indicates crimes against the Jews, as the place is now exclusively a memorial to Jewish victims, with the memorial to others who died there being moved elsewhere in order to focus on the Jewish Holocaust. All who have commented here seem aware of the magnitude of these crimes.

      Your wish concerning knowledge of the Savior is the takeaway from the Hoss poem–which was not intended to cover his life. Both poems are about the manner of death. Hoss’s life left an almost unimaginable guilt in the huge number of victims (three million by his own estimate, but because there are questions on that subject, I will ask interested readers to look further). It is enough for some to doubt the willingness or even the ability of God to forgive. However, the Savior is not just a man willing to give His life for others, but our God incarnate. He is able to pay the price and set the terms. All I could do here was sketch around the end of Rudolf Hoss. It indicates the potential for salvation of any repentant sinner, no matter how great his guilt. Thank you again, Mrs. Moore, for proposing the teaching of the Church as the place to look.

      Reply
  15. Gary Krauss

    Margaret, a very insightful comparison of the two Rudolf’s. Thank you. In my opinion, it was no accident that the Lord made it possible for Fr. Lohn to visit Auschwitz and leave alive during the Holocaust there. As you explained in your note, in 1947, they located Fr. Lohn at the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Poland. The shrine was erected based on the a series of visions and interlocutions recorded in the diary of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun, between 1933 and 1935. It was from there that Fr. Lohn was summoned to hear Hoss’ confession. I am reminded that Saint Pope John Paul II considered it to be his calling to declare the Second Sunday after Easter to be “Divine Mercy Sunday”.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Gary, for noting the importance of the Divine Mercy revelations and ultimately the devotions based on them to this topic. You point out that these revelations were ongoing as Holocaust of the Jews and world war took place. The devotions require prayer for God’s mercy on everyone, while realistically recognizing the immensity of evil present in the world with a desperate need for Divine Mercy. Devotees are also urged to have mercy (of the human kind) on others, in every possible little way. This is the solid Christian teaching Father Lohn brought to Auschwitz when he was asked to hear the confession of one of human history’s most despicable evildoers. We have no idea what went on during the confession, but we know that Father Lohn, after all the questions and instructions needed for a confession covering decades of horrific sin, was able to grant Divine Mercy, as well as his own, to Rudolf Hoss. Hoss had performed a single act of mercy in his evil career, by sparing the life of Father Lohn, whom he could have killed along with the other priests of the Krakow community. As you say, this act must be attributed to God, for Hoss would not have considered it in the light of an act of mercy. The opportunity for it was a grace from God, to be accepted or not.

      Reply
  16. Michael K.

    Great job Margaret! It reminds me of the two ways and shows the mercy that God has for those who seek it. As you show, not everyone seeks His mercy.

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    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Michael, for seeing this pair as exemplary of the two ways, one seeking God and His mercy, the other having no thought of mercy needful to all, and no recognition or desire for God. Thanks as well for giving me an opportunity to say more about this aspect of the topic, which the discussion has hardly touched. I’m not able to do it now, but will try soon.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      These two poems are “death songs,” concerning the separate deaths of two individuals who died very differently. They had been much alike earlier–each a World War I soldier dismayed by Germany’s loss, and finding new hope for Germany and themselves in Hitler. The part Hitler plays in each song tells what he meant to each man about to die.

      The Hess sonnet begins by revealing that Hess felt unusual stirrings in his psyche. He tries to steady himself by calling up thoughts of Hitler, whom he always calls “Fuhrer.” Hess and Hitler had been in prison together during early years of the Nazi party. They were close, with Hess reading chapters of Hitler’s autobiography as it was being written. These days were cherished by Hess, who became less important as Hitler became national ruler and leader in war, with others trusted to perform practical tasks. It is thought that Hess made the foolish mission to Britain in hopes of regaining high status with his old friend. In 1987, with Hitler dead more that 40 years, Hess declares him still dynamic and imperishable, because that’s what his unreformed mind wants to remember.

      Middle parts of the sonnet give Hess’s personal feelings of being injured and maltreated. They do not suggest regret for anything he did even in his years of power as Hitler’s deputy; he sees himself in the positive light of an unsuccessful peacemaker with good intentions. He feels, moreover, that he is treated with inhuman disregard by guards at present.

      This is my imagination, of course. There is no record of what the man thought at this time. But there are earlier records attesting to his unswerving loyalty to the Fuhrer, to his self-absorbed suspicions about prison guards, and to the continuance of his long interest in the occult. Therefore, when I say Hess imagines seeing Hitler with his own wraith, this is a significant premonition of his death. A wraith is a spectral figure of a person supposed to be observed shortly before his death, though usually by others who later recall the foreboding apparition. To Hess with his trust in the occult, this is a welcome opportunity to feel friendly again with a long dead figure whom he admired in youth as the ruler of his world. He hasn’t changed and doesn’t want to change.

      It is uncertain how Hess died. The British who had charge of guarding him ruled it a suicide. He is supposed to have tried to hang himself with telephone cord in a small pavilion of the garden where he was allowed to walk alone. But when the body was delivered to Hess’s son for burial in a family plot, the younger Hess had an independent autopsy performed. It showed a heavy blow to the back of the neck that could not have been self-inflicted, and would not have resulted from a fall. Moreover, a medical attendant gave it as his opinion that the 93-year-old Hess did not have sufficient strength to hang or strangle himself. Where did he get the telephone cord, and how was he able to employ it in the garden pavilion, soon afterward demolished with all of Spandau Prison? If Hess had made suicide attempts earlier, why did not the guards, who had no other prisoner to watch, keep him under closer surveillance?

      All of the above shows why I do not give suicidal thoughts any place in the imagined death song. It seems probable that a guard or an employee of those in charge murdered Hess, but I leave room in the sonnet for the unknown killer to have been an evil spirit. You, Michael, said in response to such an idea, that the devil can always find a man to do his work. Whether it was Hess himself or another remains unknown–but what does seem to be known is that Hess was entirely unprepared for a good death. With more than 40 years of opportunity, he left no indication of repentance for evil deeds as a very high-ranking Nazi, and no indication of ceasing his adulation for Hitler.

      Rudolf Hoss, in the second sonnet, expresses repentance in the terms he used at the time. He wrote in his final letter that the first and most important wrong he had done was abandoning God. That is not enough for many who might like more explicit regret for his death camp work, and specifically for killing Jews to help carry out Hitler’s “final solution.” The only mention of Hitler is to call him the idol Hoss had worshiped. This is “gravely wrong,” which would indicate Hoss’s recognition of all service to Hitler as a false god was wrong, especially his “services to death, abhorrent wrong.”

      Why not say more on this topic? We do have a little more, but not from the repentant perspective. Hoss was one of the first Nazis to cooperate with Allies and estimate the number of deaths he personally had been involved in. He said it was 3 million, with 2 and a half million gassed and burned, another half million dead from starvation or disease. With the number of Jewish deaths at Auschwitz now said to be about one million, Hoss was probably counting all persons dying under his authority at all camps where he had worked. These admissions in the early stages of Nuremberg trials did not come with particular indications of personal repentance or regret.

      Repentance was expressed to God through His priest when Hoss made sacramental confession in the last week of his life. He waited more than a year between the “business” part of his admissions and whatever he said in confession. Until he asked for a priest at a rather late date, no one could have known he repented. And we do not know what he said to the priest or how he said it, but the priest, acting on the authority given by Christ to the Church, judged Hoss’s confession sufficient for absolution. He was forgiven in the way demanded by God in Christ, and on the following day was fully reconciled to his Lord and Redeemer in Holy Communion.

      I can say, from my own experience of General Confession (a confession in which the penitent confesses all the sins of his life), that Hoss’s confession probably took a full day. The priest, who is there as God’s ordained representative, acts as judge, and he takes time to listen carefully, ask questions to draw out the circumstances, makes sure the penitent does not omit anything, and makes doubly sure the penitent expresses contrition for every sin. To save time for the priest who was kind enough to hear my devotional Confession, I had written out all my sins on several sheets of a legal pad, and the priest had a copy. Reading it all might have taken five to ten minutes, but this General Confession lasted an hour. The priest-judge does his best to bring the penitent to the most desirable spiritual state. Wladyslaw Lohn would have done the same for Rudolf Hoss. It becomes a highly emotional exercise.

      And so, at the end of this sonnet, I have Hoss say he expects a very long sentence to Purgatory, and he expresses admiration for the great mercy God has shown him. Making reparation and being thankful conclude a good Confession. Most of what happened in Hoss’s Confession is unimaginable, and God’s mercy to him still more so. The sincere Christian has to believe Christ died for all, not just for decent people, and left strict guidelines for monsters among us to receive divine forgiveness–and afterward to make the required reparation.

      That’s the better way most sinners choose not even to look for, and few make it their own. I don’t even want to imagine the other road to eternal Hell that Rudolf Hess chose instead.

      Reply

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