Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust.

Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945)

Höss wrote his autobiography while awaiting execution; it was published first in a Polish translation in 1951 and then in the original German in 1956, edited by Martin Broszat. It later appeared in various English editions and consists of two parts, one about his own life and the second about other SS men with whom Höss had become acquainted, mainly Heinrich Himmler and Theodor Eicke, among several others.