During most of the period from 1940 to 1945, the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps was SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Rudolf Franz Höss.
The events of the story unfold from three narrative standpoints – Angelus "Golo" Thomsen, the hero (his name cribbed from historian Golo Mann, Paul Dolll, the commandant of the camp, and Szmul, head of the Sonderkommando (prisoners who were charged with disposing of bodies, "the crows of the charnel house").
From 1823 to 1828, he was the commandant of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, which was followed by a posting from 1829 to 1835, as Superintendent of Fernando Po off the coast of Africa.
In all there are 116 pictures, beginning with a photo from June 21 , 1944 of Höcker and the commandant of the camp, Richard Baer, both in full SS regalia.
Successes included locating and bringing to trial Erich Rajakowitsch, responsible for the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, and Franz Murer, the commandant of the Vilna Ghetto.
Baer's first name was Richard; he was thirty-two in the photograph, and he was the commandant of Auschwitz from May , 1944 to January, 1945.
The rank of a commandant depends upon the size and importance of his command: in the British Army a colonel commandant is the senior officer of a regiment; in the French Army a commandant is the commanding officer of a battalion, a rank equivalent to major; and the commandant of the United States Marine Corps is a four-star general.
The above quotation is from the response to a recent Equal Opportunity investigation issued by Brigadier General Theodore Martin, the Commandant of Cadets.
Pate, the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
