10 Hoss, Commandant of Auschwitz. The French writer Robert Merle has used Rudolf Hoss's autobiographical report as subject for a fictitious portrayal of his life published under the title La Mort est mon metier. But the grotesque demonization of the father, deliberately contrived to make the flesh creep, quite apart from further embellishments which wear out in banality nearly every saleable cliche on 'the' German, banishes the book to the bog of sensational political tabloid literature.