Germany

US foundation buys former villa of Auschwitz commandant Höss

Rudolf Höss, commandant of the German extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, lived in this villa during the Second World War. The house is located outside the memorial and was previously privately owned. An American foundation has bought the house. Photo: Czarek Sokolowski/AP/dpa

Keystone

An American foundation against extremism has bought the former villa of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. The house right next to the former German concentration and extermination camp is to be developed into a research and education center in the fight against anti-Semitism and extremism, according to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP). The foundation is supported by Unesco, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Keystone-SDA

27.01.2025, 08:51

Seemingly idyllic family life

The seemingly idyllic private and family life of war criminal Höss was recently the subject of the Oscar-nominated Holocaust drama "The Zone of Interest" by Jonathan Glazer, which is based on fiction. Höss moved into the official villa in 1940; his wife Hedwig described the house as a "paradise". The extermination camp began directly behind the garden wall, the barracks of which are also visible from the rooms.

The villa is not located on the grounds of today's memorial and was previously privately owned by the Poles. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is now being made accessible to the public for the first time.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp is a symbol of the Holocaust and the horrors of National Socialism. Around 1.1 million people died here between 1940 and 1945, most of them Jews. They were shot, murdered in gas chambers or died of hunger and disease.

Rudolf Höss was in charge of the camp from 1940 to 1944. After the end of the war, he went into hiding but was tracked down by British investigators near Flensburg. Höss was extradited to Poland, sentenced to death and hanged from a gallows on the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in 1947.