Family house next to Auschwitz opens its doors to visitors

Family house next to Auschwitz opens its doors to visitors

Oświęcim, Poland – With its manicured gardens and spacious interior, the three-story villa was once described as a “paradise” by a mother who raised her five children here. In order to preserve the peace of the household, the largest and most notorious Nazi concentration camp was located in the immediate vicinity, Auschwitz.

The Höss family and their hidden life

Inside the family home, Rudolf Höss – Auschwitz's longest-serving SS commander – dreamed of the most efficient ways to kill millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and political prisoners the Third Reich had eliminated, to kill. Tall trees and a high concrete wall obscured the camp's screams from view, so Rudolf Höss' wife Hedwig and their five children - Klaus, Heidetraud, Brigitte, Hans-Jürgen and Annegret - lived insulated from the atrocities that took place just steps from their door.

The former family home and its new purpose

Her life was filled with joy. The children played with turtles, cats, rode horses and swam in the nearby river as the concentration camp's chimneys belched out smoke and other families were forced into the gas chambers.

Since the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, the house at 88 Legionow Street was in the private hands of a Polish family. But last year it was acquired by the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based NGO that has been fighting 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 major character in the Oscar-winning film " The Zone of Interest “, opening its door to visitors in a new way.

"The idea behind the project is to create something that doesn't exist: a global counter-extremism center in the home of one of the historically worst extremists and anti-Semites to ever exist," Hans Jakob Schindler, executive director of the Counter Extremism Project, told CNN.

A monument for remembrance and enlightenment

The NGO's plans for the house are twofold: firstly, there will be a new center for their organization, and secondly, this long-closed house will be opened to the public in time for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp on January 27th.

“When 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 to never forget,” 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 the hatred and anti-Semitism that currently permeates our society.”

Insights into the life of the Höss family

In the villa remained not only pictures of the Höss family's happy life, but also diaries - one from the maid and another from Rudolf Höss himself. This was not of his own free will: after his arrest and before his execution, Höss was ordered to write his memoirs, which gives a glimpse into the mind of a man who was both ordinary and frighteningly evil.

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

The terrible truth behind the walls

During the three and a half years under Höss, four additional gas chambers were built that were intended for industrialized extermination. More than 1.1 million people were murdered there, making Auschwitz-Birkenau the deadliest of all Nazi camps.

The diary also provided a lot of material for the film “The Zone of Interest,” which takes place almost entirely in the house and its immediate surroundings. The film highlights the “banality of evil,” a term coined by Hannah Arendt, and illustrates the idea that the commander was only human and not a monster.

Memories and the inability to understand

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

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

Probably the deepest tragedy

In his memoirs, Höss also describes how he saw women and children being led into the gas chambers. "A woman came up to me and pointed to her four children, who were helping the youngest ones across the uneven terrain, and whispered, 'How can you dare to kill such beautiful, dear children? Don't you have a heart?'"

After witnessing these scenes, Höss often rode his horse to clear his mind. But at no moment did he seem to understand the terribleness of his actions. He called the extermination of the Jews a “mistake” rather than a crime and a consequence of blindly following orders that he said were based on a flawed ideology.

The case of Rudolf Höss

“Let the general public continue to see me as a bloodthirsty beast, a cruel sadist, the mass murderer of millions of people: because the masses can never imagine the commander of Auschwitz in any other light,” Höss wrote. “You will never understand that I too had a heart.”

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

In 1947, Höss was executed between the camp and his house.

The legacy of the Höss family

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

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

The future of the house

The goal is to open the house to the public in time for the 80th anniversary of the liberation. Converting part of the property into a museum and the rest into a workspace 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 homes as close as the house next door. House 88 will be dedicated to the fight against destructive hatred, extremism and anti-Semitism," Wallace said.

The first thing the members of the Counter Extremism Project did was place a mezuzah on the front door to both reclaim the house and open it to all.

Reported by CNN, Camille Knight and Serene Nourrisson.