Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

by Thomas Harding

  It was from his father that Rudolf learned about the traditions and principles of the Catholic Church. Franz Xaver took his son on pilgrimages to holy sites in Switzerland and to Lourdes in France. Rudolf became a fervent believer; he later recalled that he “prayed with a child’s earnest gravity, and was ready and willing to act as an altar boy,” and he took his “religious duties very seriously.”

  From the earliest age, Rudolf was given numerous tasks to perform as a member of the household, which he was expected to complete without complaint. For every misdemeanor Rudolf was severely punished. Even a small unkindness to one of his sisters—a harsh word or teasing remark—resulted in kneeling for long periods of time on the cold hard floor, seeking God’s forgiveness.

  Upon the birth of his first daughter, Franz Xaver swore an oath that his three-year-old son would become a priest: he would go to a seminary, he would be celibate, and he would pledge himself to prayer, learning and community. Rudolf’s education was planned with the sole purpose of preparing him for a religious life. He later remembered:

  Great emphasis was always laid on my duty to obey and immediately comply with all the wishes and orders of my parents, my teachers, priests, indeed all adults, even including the servants, and to let nothing divert me from that duty. What adults said was always right. Those educational principles became second nature to me.

  Living in the suburbs meant Rudolf was surrounded by children of his age, and he enjoyed roughhousing with the other boys. His consideration of future missionary work in no way blunted his enthusiasm for these contests, and he proved no less ruthless when it came to exacting revenge. If another boy hurt him in any way he was relentless until he had paid him back. Thus Rudolf was feared by his playmates.

  However, when Rudolf was eleven years old, one fight went too far. He and his friends had been involved in a lighthearted skirmish, during which one of the boys had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his ankle. Horrified, Rudolf went straight to church and confessed to the priest, who was also a friend of the family. The priest promptly told Franz Xaver, who in turn punished Rudolf. This betrayal of the confessional code deeply upset Rudolf, destroying his belief in the trustworthiness of the profession.

  For a long, long time I went over all the details of what had happened again and again, because such a thing seemed to me so monstrous. At the time—and even today—I was and still am firmly convinced that my father confessor had broken the seal of the confessional. My faith in the sanctity of the priesthood was gone, and I began to have religious doubts. After what had happened I could no longer think the priest trustworthy.

  Rudolf painted a dismal picture of his childhood: a father who was a fanatic and a bigot, and whom he therefore feared and despised, and a distant mother, who was either taking care of his two small sisters or in bed recuperating from some sickness. Indeed, Rudolf recalled not being close to anyone in his family. He might shake somebody’s hand or say a few words of thanks, but he was not a child who enjoyed physical touch. As a result, Rudolf did not share his problems with those around him: “I dealt with all these difficulties by myself.”

  On May 3, 1914, a year after the incident with the priest, Rudolf’s forty-year-old father died at home. The cause of death was not recorded.

  I do not remember whether I was particularly affected by that loss. But I was still too young to see all its far-reaching consequences. And yet my father’s death was to set my life on a course very different from the one he had wanted it to follow.

  However, Franz Xaver’s death did have an impact on the rest of the family. Rudolf’s father had been the sole income earner and, with three children to feed, it was difficult for Rudolf’s mother to make ends meet. But the death freed the son from his father’s shadow; the young Rudolf would forge his own path sooner than he might otherwise have been allowed.

  *

  On July 28, 1914, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire reacted by invading Serbia. This aggression triggered retaliation by the other European powers—Russia, Britain, Germany, France and the Ottoman Empire—and within weeks they were embroiled in the First World War. The hostilities were initially focused in the western European countries of Germany, France and Belgium, but the conflict soon spread east and south, through Europe and then to the colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The fighting was particularly fierce in the Middle East, which became a strategic battleground, partly because of its supply of oil, and partly for the symbolic value of its holy sites.

  When war broke out Rudolf was twelve years old and the Höss family was still living on the outskirts of Mannheim. The city was only a two-hour train ride away from eastern France, and Rudolf was thrilled to be living so close to the conflict. He stood on the local train platform to witness the first groups of boys being sent off to the front line, excited about the war, but also desperate to be among them.

  A year later, and after much pleading with his mother, Rudolf joined the Red Cross as an auxiliary. After school he spent as much time as he could working in the Red Cross hospital, distributing tobacco, food and drink to the injured. Horrified by the terrible traumas of modern warfare, Rudolf was nonetheless impressed by the wounded soldiers’ bravery and resolute in his wish to fight for his country.

  So it was that, in the summer of 1916, Rudolf left home, telling his mother that he intended to visit his grandparents. As soon as he was outside the town limits, he contacted a local captain, an old friend of his father’s, and, lying about his age, enlisted. He was just fourteen years old.

  It was not that rare for such a young person to join the army. Officially, the minimum age of enlistment in Germany during the First World War was seventeen. This limit had been in place since the creation of the German Constitution of April 16, 1871, which stated that every male was liable for military service, from his seventeenth until his forty-fifth birthday. Yet, since the declaration of war in 1914, boy soldiers had flooded the German Army. While the number of adult recruits dropped considerably in 1915 and 1916, as the vast majority of eligible men had by this time enlisted, most young lads—if healthy enough to pass a medical exam and willing enough to carry a rifle—were eagerly accepted, even if looks betrayed their age. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of boy soldiers fought for the Germans during the Great War.

  On August 1, 1916, with the help of his father’s friend, Rudolf joined the 21st Baden Regiment of Dragoons, the same cavalry regiment in which both his father and his grandfather had once served. He underwent a cursory medical inspection, and was given the standard uniform for a private in the German cavalry: knee-length black leather boots; gray woolen trousers; a wide black belt with an eagle-embossed buckle, the symbol of his home state; a pocketless gray jacket with brass buttons; and a Feldmütze, a gray flat woolen hat that sloped to one side and had a small silver rosette sewn onto the front. Best of all, he was now the proud owner of a brass-handled cavalry sword and a black scabbard, which, when resting on the ground, reached as high as his hip. With only two weeks of training, Rudolf and his regiment set off on their long trek towards the Middle East. Their mission was to provide reinforcements to the Turkish troops who were battling the British for control of the southeastern part of the Ottoman Empire.

  On his way south, Rudolf sent his mother a letter telling her that he had gone to war. She had earlier “with endless, truly touching patience and kindness, tried to make me change my mind,” recalled Rudolf, wanting him to finish school and then to join the priesthood. But now that his “father’s strong, guiding hand” was missing, Rudolf felt able to defy her orders.

  The Dragoons traveled by train from Mannheim through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and on to Turkey. After a short rest period in Istanbul, the regiment rode south on horseback for over fifteen hundred miles, towards the Mesopotamian front line, to what is today known as Iraq. Rudolf, who had never before been outside Germany, spent the next month camping rough and surviving on meage
r military rations. “The secret training, together with my constant fear of being found out and taken home, as well as the long journey through many countries to Turkey, all left a great impression;” the exotic landscape and peoples were both new and profoundly shocking.

  When Rudolf and his comrades finally arrived at the front line they found themselves in the middle of a year-long struggle for control of the oil fields between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. At the center of this impasse was Al-Kut, a dusty town situated a hundred miles southeast of Baghdad, where for months the Turks had been laying siege to British forces. The Allies had attempted to break out of Al-Kut but were repeatedly repelled; each side had suffered high numbers of casualties. In April 1916, the Allies surrendered control of the town and more than 13,000 Allied troops were taken prisoner and pressed into hard labor. The British high command viewed the incident as a humiliating defeat and, concluding that the Mesopotamian Campaign should be a higher priority within their overall global war strategy, replaced the Indian regional commander with an Englishman, reinforced the railroad lines and sent in an additional 150,000 troops. The Central Powers responded to the Allies’ changes by replacing the Turkish officer in command with a German general and bringing in fresh troops from Germany, including Rudolf’s Dragoons from Baden-Baden.

  At the end of 1916 Rudolf’s unit joined the Turkish 6th Army on the outskirts of Al-Kut. Just as his cavalry unit was receiving its initial orders, a brigade of Indian soldiers attacked. Rudolf jumped off his horse and dived onto the rocky ground among some ancient ruins, his carefully starched cavalry uniform immediately caked in fine yellow desert dust. There was no battle plan and no complete orders had been given.

  As the intensity of the shooting increased, the Turkish soldiers ran away, leaving the Germans to fend for themselves. Rudolf began to panic. The explosions from the enemy’s grenades grew louder; all around him German soldiers were being hit. To his left, a man fell wounded, and the soldier on his right didn’t respond when Rudolf called his name.

  When I turned to look at him, I saw that he was bleeding from a large head wound and was already dead. I was overcome by horror worse than I ever knew in my life, and by a dreadful fear of suffering the same fate. If I had been alone I would certainly have run away like the Turks.

  As Rudolf debated joining the Turkish retreat he saw his captain crouching behind a large boulder, firing steadily at the Indians in a disciplined and orderly fashion. A change came over him. Now calm and focused, he saw a tall Indian man with a black beard come racing forward, his British Lee-Enfield .303 rifle pointed straight ahead. Taking a deep breath, Rudolf raised his gun, set his sights and fired. It was his first kill.

  After a few moments, he raised his gun again and started shooting, rapidly, round after round, “as if the spell was broken.” Rudolf had discovered within himself a new skill: he could kill, efficiently and quickly, in the heat of battle.

  Rudolf’s captain had been watching, and now called out his name with encouragement. After a short time the Indian soldiers realized they were faced with stiff resistance, halted the attack and were driven back across the desert. By the end of that day, the German unit was in control of the ancient ruins. Rudolf and his comrades dug in to prepare for what was to become the daily task of defending this small piece of territory.

  Rudolf recalled feeling mixed emotions during his first battle. He had found it “exciting,” but when he later walked across the field he had “hesitantly and timidly” looked at the Indian soldier that he had killed and felt “a little queasy.” When he told his captain that he had been scared, the man simply laughed and said that he should not worry. Over the coming months, Rudolf grew to love and trust this man, who came to be “like a father” to Rudolf, and an authority figure he revered. Rudolf felt that the captain treated him as if he were a son, showing pride when Rudolf was promoted and ensuring that he wasn’t assigned the most dangerous missions. For the first time in his life, he realized that somebody was looking out for him. As he confessed: “It was a far closer relationship than I had had with my real father.”

  *

  In early 1917, Rudolf and his regiment were deployed to Palestine. Their first task was to defend the critical Hejaz railroad line, which ran between Damascus, in Syria, and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. Later that year, the Dragoons found themselves at the front lines of Jerusalem. While the Mesopotamian Campaign had focused on the strategic supply of oil, the battles around Palestine were partly about destabilizing British control of the Suez Canal and partly about capturing the venerated biblical cities.

  It was during this battle for Jerusalem that Rudolf received a painful shot to the knee, and was taken to a German field hospital near Jaffa. There he became delirious with malaria, a relapse from an infection caught earlier in the campaign, and experienced bouts of fever so violent that he had to be watched closely by the medical staff.

  While convalescing in the hospital, Rudolf was cared for by a young German nurse. She was gentle with him, propping him up carefully in bed and ensuring that he didn’t hurt himself during one of his malarial episodes. At first he found her caresses confusing, but soon, “spellbound by the magic of love, I saw her with new eyes.” In later weeks, once Rudolf could walk again, they found a quiet spot, away from the busy wards. “She initiated me into every stage of lovemaking, leading to full sexual intercourse,” he remembered. “I would never have summoned up the courage of my own accord. This first experience of love, with all its sweet affection, became a guideline for me all my life.” This was not only the fifteen-year-old boy’s first sexual encounter, but the first time that he had experienced any type of physical intimacy: “This tenderness was a wonderful experience such as I had never known before.” Rudolf swore to himself, somewhat naively, that he would have sex only if it involved true warmth and he would never, as his fellow soldiers did, visit prostitutes or conduct affairs with other men’s girlfriends or wives.

  Once he had recovered from his injuries, Rudolf was told to return to his unit. It must have been hard to say goodbye, but he had received his orders. He would never see the nurse again.

  *

  Over the course of the next few months Rudolf was wounded twice more: on November 17, 1917, a few days before his sixteenth birthday, with a bullet embedded in his thigh; and on February 28, 1918, with wounds to his hands and knees. None of these injuries prevented his participation in continued action.

  For his wartime service Rudolf was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class by the German government, the Iron Half Moon First Class by the Ottoman Empire for his efforts in Iraq and Palestine, as well as the Baden Service Medal by the city of Baden-Baden. The war had transformed him from a frightened and innocent young schoolboy into a toughened soldier. In Rudolf’s eyes, the war “had matured me, both outwardly and inwardly, far beyond my years.”

  He was by now fully grown. At five feet seven inches he was not tall, nor was he bulky like some of the other men in his unit. Instead he was thin, battle-hardened, with piercing brown eyes and a head of short-cropped fair hair. His was a soldier’s body. For Rudolf had become accustomed to the pain and hardships of war, possessing the emotional wherewithal—a numbness, perhaps—to withstand injuries, and then to return to the fight. Even more, he had learned what he saw as leadership skills: displaying knowledge rather than rank, showing “icy, imperturbable calm” in the face of adversity, and endeavoring to “set an example all the time and never lose face, whatever one’s real feelings.”

  However, the spring of 1918 brought him sorrow that even he found difficult to hide. The captain that he had so looked up to over the previous year was killed during the Battle of Jordan. His death proved a heavy blow: “I felt it painfully, and grieved for him.”

  Once more Rudolf was alone.

  2

  HANNS

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  1917

  * * *

  Hanns Hermann Alexander was born on May 6, 1917, fifteen minutes before hi
s twin brother, Paul, at his parents’ expansive apartment on the Kaiserallee, in west Berlin. The two boys were wartime babies, conceived when their father, Dr. Alfred Alexander, was on leave from the military hospital he ran in the town of Zabern in German Alsace.

  Shortly after their birth, Alfred sent for his family—his wife, Henny, his two young daughters, Bella and Elsie, and his new twin sons—to join him at the front. It was a dangerous decision, with the hospital so close to the battlefield, but Alfred insisted. The family was reunited for eighteen months, enough time for both girls to attend a local school. At the end of October 1918, with the war’s end fast approaching, Alsace partisans threatened to storm the hospital. The doctor had only a few hours to transport all of his patients and his family to the railroad station. It was exhausting work, but Alfred and his hospital staff proved up to the task, and not a single patient was left behind. They were aboard the last train heading back to Berlin.

  The family only made it as far as Ulm, sixty miles east of Stuttgart. Inspired by the revolution that had swept Russia the year before, workers’ committees had taken over the Ulm railroad lines and were calling not only for the end of the war but for Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication. Similar violent protests had erupted around the country: sailors mutinied in the northern port of Kiel, refusing to set sail for battle; a left-wing council had forced the King of Bavaria to step down and a people’s republic had been declared; and thousands of workers were staging violent protests across Berlin. The train was backed out of the station and shunted towards Frankfurt, where the family took refuge with Henny’s parents until the way was clear.