I’ve been reading more here about the recent trip to Auschwitz made by British students on a Holocaust Education Trust tour. I was intrigued by the following information in the article written by Mike Pyle, a reporter who accompanied the students on the trip:
We stood outside the house of Rudolf Hoss, (sic) effectively the manager of the camp, where he lived with his family just a few hundred yards from Block 11.
Outside it stands the gallows he was hanged from in 1947. Our HET educator for the day, Nicole Sarsby, challenged us to think of how this man was able to bring up his family in such circumstances.
The name of the first Commandant of Auschwitz was Rudolf Hoess. (In German the name is spelled Höß or Höss.) Hoess was an officer in the SS; he had received his training at Dachau and had then been assigned to the Sachsenhausen camp before becoming the Commandant of Auschwitz in May 1940. You can read here about the numerous statements made by Rudolf Hoess in which he confessed that millions of Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.
The house where Rudolf Hoess lived is shown in the two photos below.
The rear of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived with his family at Auschwitz
The front of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived at Auschwitz
The house where Rudolf Hoess formerly lived with his wife and children is now occupied by new residents. I took the photo above in October 2005. I wonder what the current residents think about the hundreds of British students parading past their home, gawking at the reconstruction of the gallows where Rudolf Hoess was hanged. Note that I took the photo from across the street, so as not to invade the privacy of the current occupants. (more…)
