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Inside the house of the head of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss' daughter speaks: He was a loving parent, we didn't know what he did

2025-01-28 12:48:08Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA MAGNUS LINKLATER
Inside the house of the head of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss' daughter speaks: He
Rudolf Hoss

Magnus Linklater - The Times

 Up in the attic, the children played, unaware of their father's role.

To them, he was a loving parent, who watched them swim in the small pool in the backyard, joined them for dinner, and kissed them goodnight.

However, his job was mass murder. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp and his name was Rudolf Höss.

Today (yesterday), dignitaries from around the world will gather at Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation by Russian troops on January 27, 1945. They will have the opportunity, for the first time, to look inside the commandant's house, climb the stairs to the attic, and then descend, if they dare, into the gloomy bunkers below it, which, in Höss's time, opened onto the complex where starving prisoners were held, the gas chambers where they died, and the incineration plant where their bodies disappeared.

On Sunday, coincidentally, I was among the first journalists allowed inside the house since it was taken over by the International Counter-Extremism Project, led by Mark Wallace, the former US ambassador to the United Nations.

Returning from Ukraine with my friend David Fox-Pitt, founder of the Scottish charity HopeFull, we decided to stop in the Polish city of Krakow and visit the camp, but discovered that the entire complex had been closed for security reasons on the eve of the anniversary.

As we walked around the perimeter fence, we passed by the commandant's house — No. 88, Legionow Street — and found ourselves invited inside to meet the ambassador himself.

"Believe it or not, you're the first person I've ever spoken to who came in here simply because it was open," Wallace said.

“And this, as a starting point, is extremely important. This house has been closed for 80 years to humanity. Remember the poor souls who marched to Gas Chamber No. 1 and Crematorium No. 1, just a football field away. They always saw this ordinary house, a paradise for its inhabitants, but always beyond their means. It has never been opened since, including the last 80 years,” he said.

During that time, the house was occupied by private owners, who lived there, apparently unfazed by its sordid connections or by the fact that Höss himself was brought back to be executed right across from No. 88 in April 1947. Now, Wallace wants to transform it into a center where racial extremism can be combated. In partnership with UNESCO, the Auschwitz museum, and the Polish government, he has founded the Auschwitz Research Center on Hatred, Extremism, and Radicalization (ARCHER), where racism can be challenged within a country that once practiced genocide.

“It's important to honor the victims, the survivors and their families, and to say to them, 'This house has been closed for 80 years, but now it's open to everyone,' and that's the starting point,” he told us.

There’s no denying that House No. 88 is a place that inspires fear. Even though it’s been stripped down to its very walls, it still carries the scars of its horrific past. Despite being privately owned for so long, researchers have found several artifacts dating back to Höss’s time — several bottles, cups, and plates, and, hidden in a hole in the roof, a pair of trousers that once belonged to a Jewish prisoner. There are plans to conduct DNA testing to uncover the identity of their owner.

In the basement there is a sink, where the family's clothes may have been washed, and from the first floor, on a calm and beautiful day, we could see the buildings where Jewish prisoners were held in brutal conditions, before being stripped, shaved and led to the slopes where they would face death, while the Zyklon B gas tablets were activated.

The attic where the children slept is now empty, but from its windows they would have seen the crematorium chimney, which occasionally belched black smoke. Did they ever wonder what had to be burned so often?

Among yesterday's visitors was Thomas Harding, whose great-uncle, Hanns Alexander, a captain in the British Army, tracked down Höss after he had escaped. Höss was tried and executed in Poland in 1947.

After years of researching Höss's story, Harding finally convinced his daughter, Brigitte, then 88, to talk to him. She remembered her father fondly.

"He was a wonderful father," she told Harding.

"On Sundays he would smoke a cigar all over the house. We would have breakfast, lunch or dinner, like a nice family... we didn't even know what his job really was," she recounted.

She found it almost impossible to face the reality of her father's role.

"There was someone above him, forcing him to do this," was the most he could say.

Architect Daniel Libeskind has been tasked with adapting the house as a place where the public will be welcomed, and a piano has been brought inside.

We listened in fascination as the Italian pianist, Francesco Lotoro, who has traced much of the music performed by death camp prisoners, played a lullaby composed by Adam Kopycinski, conductor of the Auschwitz orchestra.

Kopycinski and the musicians were all prisoners. Only a few of them managed to get out of the camp alive. But the music survives.


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