The first time that Rudolf Höss (1901-1947) met Father Wladyslaw Lohn (1889-1961) was in 1940 after Lohn, having slipped into Auschwitz to locate several imprisoned Jesuits, was caught. He was brought before the Commandant. And Höss, rather inexplicably, permitted the priest to leave the concentration camp.

They met a second time in April 1947 after Höss had called for Father Lohn. No priest – and especially a Polish priest – would relish a reputation for accepting the confession of the longest-serving commander of Auschwitz. Yet that is what the Jesuit Father did, just before the penitent ascended the gallows. The place where the death sentence was carried out was located adjacent to the Auschwitz crematorium where so many had died horrible, far less merciful, deaths.

Höss had been raised in a strict Catholic family and had once seriously considered pursuing ordination. Instead, he became a Nazi. Upon Germany’s defeat in 1945, he disguised himself as a gardener and escaped capture for nearly a year. Once he was discovered, he faced trial before Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal. He famously testified that the death toll at the camp under his command was not 2.5 million but 1.5 million, the rest having died from starvation and disease rather than Zyklon B pellets.

Obersturmbannführer Höss himself, upon the “initiative” of a subordinate, had introduced Zyklon B as a more efficient means of mass murder in the camps.

Reimagining and critiquing the dialogue between Father Lohn (who spoke fluent German) and Höss occupies most of the fourteen essays in this slim volume.

Perhaps the most interesting and contested aspect of Höss’ reconciliation lies in his rather ambivalent if not downright disaffirmation of his sins. His memoirs, written while in prison, concede, “Yes, I said many a bad word in anger over the deplorable conditions, or the carelessness, and said many things which I never should have done” (4). Then in the very next sentence he asserts: “I was never cruel, nor did I let myself get carried away to the point of mistreating prisoners” (5).

These words are strongly suggestive of a lack of contrition, though no one but the priest, the confessor, and God know of the actual verbal exchange which took place within the sacrament itself.
The most fruitful of the fourteen essays is the one penned by Walter F. Modrys, SJ, who offers a contemporary Catholic view of Höss’ confession. Absolution, Modrys clarifies, is not forgiveness. Rather:

Absolution is the formal declaration of the church to stand with a fellow sinner, enclosing him or her within the community of the church whose mission is to serve as an instrument of divine reconciliation to the world. It is not an endorsement of the sinner’s reformed character or his rehabilitation or the recompense he has paid for his sins (93).

Moreover, any assertion that Höss went straight to heaven is both “rash and unfounded” (94). Genocide arguably exceeds any individual’s capacity for forgiveness. Occasionally, we tend to “glibly project onto God the same incapacity, based on our own notions of justice and accountability” (ibid.). But divine dispositions toward sinners – as demonstrated in scripture – are much more complex. Perhaps the true scope of divine mercy is simply unfathomable to us.

This collection of essays suffers only from the truncated word count of each contribution. Still, it would make a fruitful selection for either group discussions or individual study.