Family house next to Auschwitz opens its doors to visitors

Family house next to Auschwitz opens its doors to visitors

oświęcim, Poland - with its well -kept garden and the spacious interior, the three -story villa was once described as "paradise" by a mother who raised her five children. In order to keep the calm of the household, the largest and most notorious Nazi concentration camp was in the immediate vicinity, Auschwitz .

The Höss family and their hidden life

Inside the family house, Rudolf Höss-the longest-serving SS commander of Auschwitz-dreamed of the most efficient opportunities to do millions of Jews, Roma, homosexual and political prison href = "https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/europe/skeletons-goring-wolfs-lair-intl-scli-scn/index.html"> eliminated the Third Reich . High trees and a high concrete wall covered the view of the screams of the warehouse, so that Rudolf Höss' Ms. Hedwig and her five children-Klaus, Heidetraud, Brigitte, Hans-Jürgen and Annegret-lived from the atrocities that took only a few steps from their door.

The former family House and its new provision

Your life was shaped by joy. The children played with turtles, cats, rode on horses and swam in the nearby river, while the fireplace of the concentration camp sparked smoke and other families were pushed into the gas chambers.

Since the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, the house on 88 Legionow Straße has been in private hands with a Polish family. But last year it was acquired by Counter Extremism Project, an NGO resident in New York, which has been fighting against extremism since 2014.

a new approach to extremism

In the coming days, this building, a powerful symbol of how the Holocaust was staged and a main character in the Oscar-winning film " The zone of interest ", open its door for visitors in a new form.

"The idea behind the project is to create something that does not exist: a global center to combat extremism in the house of one of the historically worst extremists and anti -Semites who have ever existed," explained Hans Jakob Schindler, the leading director of the Counter Extremism Project, to CNN.

a monument to memory and education

The NGO's plans for the house are twice: on the one hand there should be a new center for your organization, and on the other hand, this long -closed house will be made accessible to the public on time for the 80th anniversary of the camp on January 27th.

"If you look at this property with the gardens and fountains and look at normal, ordinary life, we have learned since the time of the Holocaust," said Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project. "Eighty years later it is clear that" not forgetting "is essential, but not sufficient to prevent hatred and anti -Semitism that currently penetrate our society."

insights into the life of the Höss family

In the villa, not only pictures of the happy life of the Höss family remained, but also diaries-one of the domestic workers and another of Rudolf Höss himself. This did not happen out of freely: After his arrest and before his execution, he was ordered to write his memoirs, which gives an insight into the spirit of a man who was both common and frightening.

In his diary, Höss described himself as a disciplined person who was committed to the sense of order. He wrote that he used cyclone B, an insecticide, to efficiently murder as possible as possible, to protect the mental health of his guards.

The terrible truth behind the walls

In the three and a half years under Höss, four additional gas chambers were built, which were intended for industrialized extermination. More than 1.1 million people were murdered there, which made Auschwitz-Birkenau the most fatal of all Nazi camps.

The diary also provided a lot of material for the film "The Zone of Interest", which plays almost entirely in the house and its immediate surroundings. The film illuminates the "banality of evil", a concept of Hannah Arendt, and illustrates the idea that the commander was only a person and not a monster.

memories and the inability to insight

"People have done this to other people, and it is very comfortable for us to distance ourselves from them because we think we could never behave, but I think we should be less sure in this regard," said the director Jonathan Glazer.

Höss ’diary also helps to understand more about family life in 88 Legionow Straße and what measures they took to protect their children. The frosted windows, the high walls and a crouching motorcycle in front of gas chamber number 1 to drown out the screams of the people in it.

The deepest tragedy

In his memoirs, Höss also describes how he saw women and children who were led into the gas chambers. "A woman approached me and pointed to her four children, who helped the little one over the uneven terrain, and whispered: 'How can you look like it to kill children so beautiful dear children?" "

After the witness of these scenes, Höss often rode his horse to clarify his mind. But at no time he seemed to understand the terrority of his deeds. He described the annihilation of the Jews as "mistakes" and not as a crime and as a consequence of the blind fellow commands, which in his opinion were based on an incorrect ideology.

the case of Rudolf Höss

"Let the general public continue to be a bloodthirsty beast, as a cruel sadist, the mass murderer of millions of people: Because the masses can never imagine the commanders of Auschwitz in a different light," wrote Höss. "You will never understand that I also had a heart."

Höss was on the run after the liberation of Auschwitz, but was caught and was the first person at such a high level to confess to the extent of the slaughter in the warehouse. He was asked to testify at the International Military Court in Nuremberg and later sentenced to death by a Polish court.

1947 Höss was executed between the warehouse and his house.

The legacy of the Höss family

The surviving members of the Höss family continued to try to be isolating from what Rudolf Höss had done. His wife Hedwig and daughter Brigitte moved to the United States after his execution. In an interview in 2013 with Washington Post, Brigitte said: "It was a long time ago. I didn't do what was done. I never talk about it - it is something that remains in me. It remains with me."

"There must have been two sides on him. The one I knew and then another."

The future of the house

The goal is to open the house on time for the 80th anniversary of the liberation for the public. The conversion of part of the property into a museum and the rest to a work area will take many months, according to the Counter Extremism Project.

"Everyone has or can identify with the 'house next door'. But today hatred often lurks in houses that are as close as the neighboring house. House 88 will devote itself to the fight against destructive hatred, extremism and anti -Semitism," said Wallace.

The first thing the members of the Counter Extremism project did was to add a mezah to the front door to reclaim the house and to open it to everyone.

reports of CNN, Camille Knight and Serene Nourrisson.