The Villa of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, known from the film ‘The Zone of Interest’, becomes ‘experience space’

From the top floor of the detached villa, the gas chamber of concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz can be seen. It is the floor where the five children lived from camp commander Rudolf Höss, who led Auschwitz during the Second World War. Only the children did not see what happened behind the wall around their house. The windows on the top floor were made of milk glass.

Every day Höss ran from his villa to Auschwitz – about fifty passes. At the command of Heinrich Himmler, he founded the camp in 1940 and turned it into the industrial murder factory that led to the death of an estimated 1.1 million people. In 1947, Höss was sentenced to death and hung in Auschwitz, next to gas chamber I – the place that is visible from the top floor of his villa.

His wife Hedwig called the villa “a paradise.” She led a normal family life with her children. There was a large vegetable garden, a swimming pool and the children played with their turtles of Jumbo and Dilla. During the weekend the whole family went swimming in the nearby River Sola.

Average family life

That story, from the family life of the camp commander of Auschwitz, was filmed in 2023. The Oscarwinning The zone of interestbased on the new novel from 2014 by Martin Amis, shows the daily life of the Höss family that takes place within the walls around the house. That average family life is occasionally interrupted by screaming, thumping ovens and clouds full of black axle.

This year’s house of the camp commander opened for the first time to the public – once during the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, 80 years ago by the Red Army. The villa, built in 1937 for a Polish army officer, came into the hands of a Polish family after the Second World War who lived there for generations. Last year the family decided to sell the house. Only a 62-year-old widow still lived in the family house. She was the tourists in her garden after the appearance of The zone of interest.

The villa was purchased by the American NGO Counter Extremism Project (CEP), which is committed to all forms of extremism, hatred and racism worldwide. “We are not going to make it a museum,” says CEP director Hans-Jakob Schindler. The organization has targeted the building to house 88, which should serve as an ‘experience space’. The house number 88 of Höss’ home refers to the eighth letter in the alphabet and is a code for Heil Hitler. The world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind, son of Holocaust survivors and architect of the Holocaust Namur monument in Amsterdam, will completely renovate the villa. The CEP also bought the adjacent building, where a think tank will sit.

Striped pants

House 88 is completely stripped and brought back as much as possible to the state it had when the Höss family lived there. But before the doors open to the general public – expected in a year and a half – it must be completely renovated. The roof leaks, the ceiling in the basement drops.

During the renovation, the organization found German newspapers from the after-time, a mug with the SS sign on it, a stamp with the image of Adolf Hitler and a striped pants from a Jewish Auschwitz prison. “Those pants were used to close a leaking hole in the roof,” says Jacek Purski, director of the house, during a tour for NRC. “There is a red cross on it – the sign of Jewish prisoners – and an unreadable prisoner number,” says Purski. “We are trying to find out who those pants were.”

Jacek Purskidirector of House 88.

This will not be mausoleum for Rudolf Höss

Since the announcement of the purchase of the house, Purski has received a lot of criticism. Critical voices fear that the house will be a place of pilgrimage for neo -Nazis. But, Purski emphasizes, “this will not be mausoleum for Rudolf Höss.” Yet they leave certain elements that refer to his life intact, Purski says, opening the bathroom door with a lock with the German words on it ‘Frei/Besetzt’.

Purski first placed a mezuzaa text case with Bible verses that is placed on doorposts according to Jewish use. “Not from religious considerations,” says Purski. “But because of the symbolism: this house that was closed for years is now open to everyone. We use the Mezuza as a symbol of humanity, which hangs next to the house number 88.”

Surprised houses

Purski’s message is that extremism starts in ordinary houses like this. “Each of us can have neighbors with extremist ideas,” says Purski as he walks over the creaking wooden stairs to the second floor, which Höss has added for his children. “We want to give visitors to this house the feeling that they are responsible for taking action against extremism. That is not necessary, that is already possible in daily life.”

Purski, who teaches Auschwitz guides how to act against extremism, had been living with the idea of ​​opening a place that occurs against extremism in the present and the future for twenty years. “There are currently new Hössen in the world – they are often active on the internet and some of them decide to board a car to commit an attack,” Purski said to recent attacks in Germany. He wants to say that extremism can start in any ‘house next’. “That is why we do not want to commemorate history in this house, but with the gravity that the story of this house brings, fight extremism in the present.”

“On the other side is Auschwitz,” Purski points out the window. “That is the best museum to commemorate the Holocaust. This place, this house, is a tribute to the survivors of Auschwitz – who will no longer be among us in a few years – to show that we are working on a better future.”

A window with a view of concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz from House 88the villa where camp commander Rudolf Höss and his family lived during the Second World War.

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