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

by Thomas Harding

  The primary obstacle facing Rudolf was that no building materials had been supplied. The prisoners were marched out to the countryside to dismantle local buildings for their wood, bricks and stone. They stole barbed wire from engineering depots and stripped armor plate from old bunkers. With few vehicles or tools available, the prisoners then had to carry everything back to the camp.

  Rudolf was not only dismayed by the camp’s condition and the lack of support from Berlin but, with the exception of a few good men such as Josef Kramer, disappointed by the quantity and quality of his staff. He viewed them as stubborn, malicious and lazy. Despite repeated requests to Richard Glücks for additional men, he was ignored. After a while, Rudolf resolved that he would do everything by himself. So while he could have been meeting policymakers or planning the camp’s development, he was actually driving hundreds of miles to the Polish border to purchase kettles for the kitchens, or traveling to western Czechoslovakia to buy bed frames and straw sacks. Determined, as he had never been before, Rudolf recognized that he had become a different person.

  Until then I had seen only the good side of my fellow men, particularly my comrades, until I was convinced of the opposite. My innocent trust has often served me badly. But in Auschwitz, where I found that my supposed fellow workers were always deceiving me, I suffered new disappointments every day, and I changed. I turned suspicious, I saw nothing but deception everywhere, and thought the worst of others. I instantly looked for what was bad in every newcomer to the camp. As a result I injured the feelings of many good, decent men, and rejected their friendship. I could no longer trust or feel confidence in anyone.

  By the autumn of 1940 the construction of the camp was complete. There were now twenty-two brick blocks standing in neat rows, intersected by a cross of cobbled lanes. The majority served as barracks for the thousands of prisoners who had arrived over the summer; the rest were given specific uses: Block 9 was assigned as the infirmary, Block 11 was for detention and punishment, Block 20 was set aside to quarantine prisoners with contagious infections. Rudolf had commandeered a large stone-faced building next to Block 4, in which he had established his offices. The camp was encircled by two layers of twenty-foot-high fencing, topped with razor wire. Guard posts were positioned every few hundred feet. There was only one entrance to the camp, protected by two large iron gates, a barricade and a guardhouse. On Eicke’s orders, Rudolf had hung a wrought-iron sign above the gates: “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“work sets you free”).

  Soon after, Hedwig and the children joined Rudolf. The family moved into a modest gray stucco two-story box-shaped house, just on the edge of the camp, a hundred feet from the Sola River and across a dusty path from the Kommandant’s newly built offices.

  In November 1940, Rudolf traveled to Berlin to provide Himmler with an update on the camp’s progress. Using maps and diagrams, he presented a summary of the camp’s failings, “and plainly described the serious shortcomings in the camp at the time.” Himmler remarked that it was up to Rudolf, as Kommandant, to fix things, “and how I did it was my business.” When Rudolf raised the problem of epidemics due to the lack of hygiene facilities, Himmler cut him off and said, “You are too pessimistic!” and reminded Rudolf that they were at war, telling him to “improvise.” Only when Rudolf started describing the wider terrain beyond the original camp did Himmler begin to “show a lively interest, he began making plans, issuing order after order.” Himmler said it was time to expand the facility and transform it into an experimental station to research agricultural techniques and processes: they should drain the marshes, construct a dam, build plant laboratories and breed new types of cattle. Rudolf found Himmler’s excitement contagious. The conversation that had begun with a list of grievances concluded with Rudolf committing to a massive and unrealistic expansion of the camp. Such was his receptiveness to Himmler’s persuasive powers.

  Before leaving, Himmler asked about Rudolf’s family. The inquiry moved Rudolf, who felt that he was almost being treated as a favorite child. He thought it unlikely that Himmler asked many people such intimate questions.

  A few days later, Rudolf sent word to the residents who lived in the rural areas near the Auschwitz camp that he was taking control of their property. This land grab would amount to an area three miles long and four miles wide.

  The next few months were frenetic, with Rudolf working long hours to fulfill the orders from Berlin, in particular from Himmler, whom, above all others, he didn’t want to disappoint.

  From the first I was utterly absorbed in my work, indeed obsessed by it. All new difficulties only spurred me on to greater efforts. I did not want to let the problems get me down; my ambition would not allow it. I concentrated entirely on my work.

  As Rudolf threw himself into the new scheme, he began to spend less and less time with Hedwig and the children. By this time Klaus was ten years old, tall for his age, and had the jutting jaw of his father; the two girls—Heideraud, who was eight, and Brigitte, who was seven (Rudolf affectionately called them “Kindi” and “Puppi”)—were both already beauties, with long blonde hair, big smiles and slender figures; and Hans-Jürgen, the youngest, known as “Burling,” at three, was a pudgy little boy with a penchant for sweets.

  The Höss “villa,” as it was now known, had a large garden with flower beds, vegetable patches, a greenhouse and a shed full of pots and tools, which the children raced around on their bicycles. This garden was itself surrounded by a high concrete wall, capped with red tiles, which gave the family privacy and protection. From Rudolf and Hedwig’s bedroom window on the second floor it was possible to see far into the camp: to the barracks where the prisoners were housed; to the covered guard posts that had been built on wooden platforms at intervals around the camp’s perimeter; and on to the courtyard in which stood the old crematorium, built in the days when the site had been occupied by a Polish garrison.

  The family liked to take photographs during their time at the villa. One picture shows Hans-Jürgen, smiling widely as he sits inside a giant toy plane that had been made by the prisoners. Another shows the girls flirting with two handsome young soldiers, on duty next to their garden’s gate. There is a photograph of the family at a picnic table in the garden, appearing cheerful and relaxed as they eat their lunch. In another the children sit on a slide at the edge of a small pool, looking happily at the camera. Another shows them playing in a sand pit, while two men walk behind, dressed in their black-and-white-striped prison uniforms.

  The children transformed the villa into a small animal sanctuary: Klaus played with and groomed the family’s two Dalmatians and hunting dog; Heideraud liked to watch her two tortoises, “Jumbo” and “Dilla,” crawl around the garden patio; while Brigitte carried her white mice to the Sola River behind the house, allowing them to explore the high grass alongside the riverbanks until her mother called her home. There was also a beehive towards the back of the garden, where Rudolf would show the children how to extract the honeycomb without upsetting the swarm. Brigitte also liked to pick the raspberries that ripened on trellised vines. She would sneak into the garden to steal some of the fruit, hoping that her mother would not catch her from the upstairs window.

  At first, Hedwig employed two political prisoners to help around the house, but she decided that they did not work hard enough, and replaced them with two elderly Jehovah’s Witnesses. Hedwig was delighted with these two female prisoners, telling Rudolf that they took care of the house better than she ever could. They also looked after the children, taking them for walks, feeding and playing with them in the garden, as well as out along the banks of the Sola River. Hedwig also employed a gardener, a cook, a governess, a tailor, a painter, a seamstress, a barber and a chauffeur, who was available for errands, picking up goods from town or taking her shopping. Hedwig’s servants called her the “Angel of Auschwitz.”

  One day, the children approached the family’s seamstress, Janina Szczurek, and asked her to make them armbands with badges like the prisoners o
n the other side of the garden wall. Klaus, the eldest, put on the badge of a Kapo, while the rest attached shapes of different colors—yellow stars, green triangles, pink triangles—worn by the other prisoners. The children created a game where they pretended to be inmates, with Klaus ordering them about. Their play was brought to a sudden end when their father arrived. He told them he did not approve of the game, tore off their badges and took them inside. The seamstress was not punished, but Rudolf gave her a severe warning.

  Hedwig expected her staff to “organize” the food that she wanted for the house, relying particularly on Stanisław Dubiel, a Polish political prisoner who worked as their gardener. When Hedwig would quietly mention that they were short of a few things, Dubiel would pick up the signal and locate the required items somewhere in the camp. Her wish list ranged from the mundane—sugar, cream, bread, flour and leather—which Dubiel picked up from the camp kitchens and tannery, to the more exotic—women’s underwear, artwork, furniture—which he filched from the possessions that had been plundered from the arriving inmates. The gardener was also asked to track down exotic seeds, for Hedwig’s greenhouses. Stanisław Dubiel was blunt about the family’s wealth: “They lacked for nothing in their household and nothing could be lacking, considering the immense quantities of all kinds of possessions accumulated in the camp.”

  Hedwig needed her staff, for Rudolf had told her that she must be ready to entertain the important guests who would arrive, often unannounced, from Berlin, Munich and Warsaw. She could expect, he said, their guest book to fill with the names of visitors such as Richard Glücks, the head of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate; Hans Frank, governor of the General Government of Poland; Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of transporting the Jews to the camps; and, the most honored guest of all, for whom Hedwig would have to work the hardest and create his favorite dishes—he had recurrent stomachaches and was very particular about what he ate—Heinrich Himmler, or “Uncle Heiner,” as the children called him. On a more frequent basis, they could expect to host the senior officers from the camp, including Josef Mengele, the camp doctor, and Josef Kramer, Rudolf’s adjutant. If she was to entertain such luminaries, Hedwig said, the house would need improvements. Rudolf promised to do his best.

  Their most frequent guest was Hedwig’s brother, Fritz Hensel, who would sometimes stay for weeks at a time. Rudolf walked him around the camp, showing off all that had been achieved. Fritz was also allowed to wander around by himself, to stop and paint pictures, of the buildings, of the inmates. During one of these visits Fritz was sitting with Rudolf in the villa drinking wine, and he asked why Rudolf used the term Untermensch, or subhuman, to describe the prisoners. Rudolf replied: “Look, you can see for yourself. They are not like you and me. They are different. They look different. They do not behave like human beings. They have numbers on their arms. They are here in order to die.”

  *

  The work was unrelenting. Rudolf’s days were filled with meeting his senior officers, inspecting progress on the camp, hosting visits from party dignitaries, fielding telephone inquiries from Berlin—often late into the night—and drawing up plans for further expansion. He found that it was more efficient to do the work himself, rather than delegate to his staff, something for which Glücks often criticized him. To impress his subordinates he woke up before them and went to bed after them. In the little free time he had, Rudolf would walk over to the stables next to the family’s house, tack up his favorite horse and ride away from the camp into the flat countryside that surrounded Auschwitz.

  As the pressure from Berlin mounted, Rudolf began to change.

  I withdrew more and more into myself. I became unapproachable and visibly harder. My family suffered, particularly my wife, for I was often unbearable company.

  A few times, he and Hedwig managed to drive into town to see a film or play. Such entertainments were rare, however, and Rudolf often wondered what life would have been like if he had remained on the farm in Pomerania. He now found that he didn’t like company and he had become increasingly taciturn. Aware of this new tendency, Rudolf began deliberately to drink more—never by himself, nor enough to become drunk—which he hoped would help make him more talkative, more outgoing, and perhaps even funny. Deep down, Rudolf felt increasingly alone.

  My wife was always trying to extract me from the cocoon into which I had retreated. She invited friends from outside to come and see us, hoping that in the company of comrades I would open up to them again, and she organized social occasions outside the camp with the same end in view, although she liked that kind of social life as little as I did. Sometimes I was induced, for a time, to force myself out of my deliberate introversion, but new disappointments always made me retreat quickly behind a wall of glass.

  Each week Rudolf had his hair cut by Jozef Paczynski, a diminutive twenty-year-old Polish political prisoner, branded on his forearm with one of the first tattoos: number 121. At the appointed time, an SS officer escorted Jozef from his redbrick prison block to the villa, where he was greeted by Hedwig. She then walked him through the well-furnished living room, up the narrow stairs and into a small bathroom on the first floor. Soon the Kommandant would arrive, sit down, light a cigar and start reading his paper. He would never say a word to the barber.

  Another prisoner, Lee Abraham Biderman, who worked in the villa polishing furniture, making beds and cleaning floors, said that the Kommandant was “very soft-spoken,” and that unlike the guards he “did not bark,” nor did he “use vulgarities.” He also observed that whenever the Kommandant passed by, other officers would click their heels and salute him. Felix Samelson, who worked as a tailor in the SS barracks, received a permit to visit the SS kitchen in return for his labor. There he could pick up milk and rice, both of which were unavailable to the other prisoners. One day, a Kapo caught him just as he was sharing the illicit supplies with his sister. The Kapo began beating him so viciously that Samelson feared for his life. Just then Rudolf walked over and the Kapo halted his attack. Rudolf asked the prisoner, “What did you do?” When Samelson explained that he was giving food away that he had earned as a tailor, Rudolf said, “Ach, verschwinde!,” or “get lost.” And so his life was saved.

  Yet other prisoners had less favorable memories of Rudolf. Sara Juskowitz viewed the Kommandant as “ruthless,” and during roll call “always screaming that ‘work makes life sweet.’ ” Sidney Bloom was also present during these roll calls, in which Rudolf would give such lengthy sermons that he became known as the “Preacher.” One time, Bloom recalled, they were forced to stand outside in the courtyard in the freezing cold for three hours, while fifteen Polish and Russian prisoners were marched out and hanged for possessing a radio. Another prisoner, Michael Vogel, was present for many of the hangings that took place in the camp, describing the Kommandant as the “most cold-blooded animal we ever met” and saying “killing meant nothing to him.” George Klein, also an inmate, remembered a day in 1941 when he saw Rudolf sitting on his horse in a field. Beside him was a machine gun mounted on a horse-drawn cart. Moments later, a man climbed into the cart and began firing at a crowd of over five hundred female prisoners standing in the field with blankets over their heads. Klein does not provide an explanation for why they were there. A few minutes later they were all dead. And then Rudolf rode away without a word, the task apparently completed to his satisfaction.

  Rudolf Höss (second right) and Heinrich Himmler (second left) in Auschwitz

  It was a warm spring day when, on March 1, 1941, a convoy of open-topped blue Mercedes pulled up outside the Kommandant’s offices in Auschwitz. From the lead vehicle stepped the imposing figure of Heinrich Himmler. He wore gray woolen trousers that hung wide at the thigh and which were tucked neatly into knee-high black leather boots, and a wide black belt tightly cinching his jacket, and his collar was emblazoned with three silver oak leaves, marking his unique rank of Reichsführer. As always, he wore a peaked hat under which glittered his signature wire-rimmed glasses.<
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  Himmler had arrived for a formal inspection, accompanied by a mob of cronies—governors and high-ranking SS officials from Berlin, political leaders from Silesia, and corporate officers from the IG Farben company. Also in the party was Richard Glücks, Rudolf’s direct boss, who had been trying to remove Rudolf from his post ever since he had been appointed as Auschwitz Kommandant. Glücks had arrived earlier that morning, warning Rudolf not to say anything negative about the camp.

  After serving refreshments in his offices, Rudolf gave an overview of the improvements that had been made to the camp since his previous meeting with Himmler. Using maps and diagrams, he pointed out which buildings had been repaired, which had yet to be constructed, and the planned expansion. Having dealt easily with the group’s questions, Rudolf then invited them to join him for a tour of the camp.

  The Kommandant climbed into the backseat of the car with Himmler and Ernst Schmauser, the head of a local district, whom Rudolf could trust to be discreet. In the privacy of the car, Rudolf launched into a long list of grievances: the lack of resources, the immensity of the task, the threat of disease due to lack of sanitation, the overcrowding, the lack of water and, worse still, the lack of support from Richard Glücks. Himmler had no patience for Rudolf’s complaints.

  “Gentlemen,” Himmler said, smiling, “this [extension of Auschwitz] will be built. My reasons are more important than your arguments against it.”