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Descendants of Auschwitz death camp's survivors - and its commandant - describe trauma they endure. 'Mother would say 'You're not going to the gas chambers, what's your problem?''
Descendants of the man who presided over the most notorious Nazi death camp meet with a survivor and her daughter to discuss their trauma in a shocking new documentary on the family of Auschwitz's mastermind.
Hans Jürgen Höss, 87, delivers perhaps one of the most bewildering lines ever captured on film in the upcoming documentary 'The Commandant's Shadow' when he says without a hint of irony: 'I had a really lovely and idyllic childhood in Auschwitz.'
He is the son of Rudolf Höss, the infamous Auschwitz commandant responsible for the murder of some 1.1 million innocent victims amid the Nazi Holocaust.
The documentary reveals how he spent his summers as a child playing in the grounds of the family villa - from which the chimneys of the death camp's crematorium are visible - completely oblivious to the crimes against humanity his father was orchestrating mere yards away.
It also sees him and his son Kai Höss, who only learned the identity of his grandfather in a school classroom, touring Auschwitz before meeting Anita Lasker-Wallfisch - a woman who survived the camp by playing the cello for guards - and her daughter Maya.
62-year-old Kai Höss (pictured centre) and his father Hans Jürgen Höss, 87, visit the Auschwitz death camp. Hans Jürgen grew up mere yards away as the son of camp commandant Rudolf Höss
Descendants of Rudolf Höss (right) meet an Auschwitz survivor and her daughter (left)
Hans Jürgen is seen in the new documentary film 'The Commandant's Shadow'
Rudolf Höss was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II
Rudolf Höss lived in a villa at the camp. In this photograph, his wife and four of their five children are seen playing in a paddling pool. Their idyllic family life is depicted in Martin Amis's novel 'The Zone of Interest' which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film by the same name
The Höss family garden backing onto the death camp is depicted in 'The Zone of Interest'
Director of 'The Commandant's Shadow', Daniela Volker, said that when she first met Hans Jürgen, the elderly man was still living in denial.
He had spent a lifetime trying to repress the reality of what had transpired on his father's orders just a stone's throw away from where he played in the garden as a kid.
But after being pushed to read the first few pages of his father's autobiography, 'a lifetime of denial came crashing down', she said.
Over the course of the film, the audience follows Hans Jürgen's journey of acceptance as he walks the grounds of Auschwitz and stands inside the death camp's crematorium alongside son Kai.
The pair are then introduced to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch - a woman who survived the camp by playing the cello for guards - and her daughter Maya, in a truly surreal meeting.
Anita aims a few digs at Hans Jürgen, but the group generally treat one another with respect and kindness as they discuss the threat of history repeating itself.
'It could happen again,' Anita tells them, 'because we humans behave atrociously badly.'
Maya recalls how her mother, who witnessed firsthand the darkest side of humanity in the camp, was so hardened by her experiences that she became a brutally cold and emotionally distant parent.
'I was brought up with messages like, ''You're not going to the gas chamber, you're not starving. You've had a piece of bread. What's your problem?'',' Maya said.
A stoic Anita, meanwhile, acknowledges: 'I am the wrong mother for my daughter... Traumatised? Forget it. Get on with life.'
Kai, a pastor from Renningen, Germany, grew up in Ludwigsburg not knowing of the murderous sins of his grandfather until one fateful day in school.
Today, he says he has been left with inherited guilt over his grandfather's evil actions, and is cursed by his family's attempt to avoid the subject for years - something he tried to rectify by agreeing to participate in the documentary with his father, after the pair had not spoken for three decades.
The Höss family pose for a photo. Pictured anti-clockwise from left: Inge-Brigit, Hedwig and Annagret, Hans Jürgen, Heidetraud, Rudolf and Klaus
A handout photo made available by the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum shows the unloading ramp and the main gate called the 'Gate of Death' at the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Brzezinka, Poland
Kai Höss (left) is seen with his father Hans-Jürgen in the new documentary as they go on a journey to reconcile with their dark family history
The Höss villa at Auschwitz. It still stands today
The entrance to the Höss family home in Auschwitz
'It was in sixth or seventh grade' when he learned the truth about his family, Kai recalled. 'The Holocaust was a topic in class, and the name Höss came up. I went home and asked, "Mum, is that us?"
'She said, ''Yes, that's us. Rudolf Höss is your grandfather'',' he told Germany's FOCUS magazine.
Höss was the commandant of the Auschwitz death camp from May 4, 1940 to November 1943, and again from May 8, 1944 to January 18, 1945.
He lived in a house on the grounds of the camp with his wife and family, and their life is depicted in Martin Amis's novel 'The Zone of Interest' which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film by the same name in 2023.
During that time, Höss tested and perfected methods to accelerate Adolf Hitler's 'final solution' - the dictator's plan to exterminate Nazi-occupied Europe's Jewish population - including introducing the use of Zyklon B into gas chambers.
As a result, more than a million people were killed at the camp as part of what later became known as the Nazi Holocaust. In total, Nazi Germany killed an estimated 17 million people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation, including six million Jews.
'My dad and I never talked about it at home,' Kai says in the film.
'It was never denied, but we just kept it quiet. But still it has very negative effects.
'And that's what happens when terrible things are not talked about and you don't work through these things, and you just somehow try to pretend it didn't happen.'
Kai's father, Hans-Jürgen Höss, is seen depicted as a young child in 'The Zone of Interest' (left). The film stars German actor Christian Friedel (right) as Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, was hanged next to the Auschwitz crematorium in 1947 after being captured by Nazi hunters and tried for the part he played in the killing of more than one million people at the death camp. He is seen in this historic photograph moments before he was put to death
A photo shows the family's villa with the Nazi death camp in the background
The documentary reveals how Hans Jürgen spent his summers as a child playing in the grounds of the family villa - from which the chimneys of the death camp's crematorium are visible
After the war, in 1947, Rudolf Höss was tracked down and captured by Nazi hunter Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who had fled to England in 1936.
Höss was ultimately sentenced to death in Poland, and was hanged that same year at Auschwitz - 15 years before Kai was born.
'I was born in 1962, so when I was young, Höss was no longer a big topic in public,' Kai told Germany's FOCUS magazine.
'But when I was 16, I read my grandfather's biographical notes, which he had written in prison. The book was on my parents' bookshelf. I was shocked. My grandfather was the greatest mass murderer of all time.'
After this discovery, he said, 'I just wanted to get away'.
The Zone of Interest, an adaptation of the novel by the late Martin Amis, tells the story of how the commandant of Auschwitz lived just outside the death camp. Above: Rudolf Höss - depicted by Christian Friedel - is seen watching his children as they play in a paddling pool
Four of Rudolf Höss's children, including Hans Jürgen, who is pictured bottom left
Kai and Hans Jürgen inspect a photo showing Rudolf Höss with his wife and children
After leaving school, he trained to be a chef in Stuttgart before going on to join the German army. He was stationed in England for a time.
But his desire to escape his family history led him to Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Bali, China, Egypt and Dubai as part of a career in the luxury hotel industry.
Although he lived a life of booze, women and high-end clubs, inside he was completely broken.
'I was an arrogant, self-absorbed 28-year-old with a Rolex on my arm. Upscale nightclubs, double gin and tonics, parties, girls, bodybuilding, six-packs - that was my thing. But inside, I was broken,' he told the magazine.
Kai's turning point came after a near-death experience following tonsil surgery in Singapore. He lost so much blood, he almost died.
In hospital, he stumbled upon a Gideon Bible: 'Faith saved me,' he said, adding that he recognised himself in the story of King David.
'I was an unscrupulous manager. Everything revolved around performance, success and profit. The end justified the means,' he said.
But after meeting a Christian community in Singapore, he found solace and purpose and by Easter 1989, he had decided to follow Jesus, leaving behind his wild life of extravagance and eventually returning to Germany with his wife and daughters.
Daughters Brigitte and Heidetraud Höss are seen with soldiers in Auschwitz
The Höss family life is seen depicted in the film 'The Zone of Interest'
Kai Höss returned to his homeland in 2000, where he now serves as a pastor.
But the family of Hans Jürgen Höss had kept the truth hidden for years.
Hans Jürgen was the fourth of five children shared by Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, whom he married on August 17, 1929.
Rudolf Höss and Hedwig famously lived in a villa on the grounds of Auschwitz as he oversaw the camp and fine-tuned the horrific methods used by the Nazis to kill more than a million people at the camp during the Second World War.
Although Hans Jürgen grew up in the villa, with the camp's crematorium visible from their garden, he grew up ashamed of his father's actions.
He hid the identity of his father from his wife (Kai's mother) when they first met.
Hans Jürgen's wife eventually found out the truth from an aunt who had seen a newspaper report about Rudolf Höss's execution in 1947.
As a result, Kai Höss's childhood was marked by silence and repression, and this avoidance put enormous strain on his parents' marriage, he said.
Today Höss still has his own vivid memories of his grandmother, Hedwig. She was a stern, disciplined woman who maintained strict order, he told FOCUS.
'She was tough but also loving with her children,' said Höss.
Hedwig, deeply embedded in Nazi ideology, showed no remorse for her husband's actions, believing that they 'rose with the National Socialists and fell with them'.
Following his parents' eventual divorce in the 1990s, Kai said he had no contact with his father for 30 years. That period of no contact ended around six years ago, he said, when his father called him.
Höss was appointed commandant of Auschwitz, in the west of Nazi-occupied Poland, in May 1940, when it housed political prisoners. He is pictured on trial in Poland in 1947
A view from the villa at Auschwitz shows how the camp was visible from the windows
One of the rooms inside the villa is seen in this photograph
The new documentary provided an opportunity for Kai and his father to address their family's dark history, he told the German publication, as it allowed them to properly delve deeply into their past, and explore the effect it has had on them as men.
A powerful moment in the documentary sees Kai and Hans Jürgen's meeting with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a 98-year-old Auschwitz survivor.
It also sees them visiting the Auschwitz memorial, which was also an extremely emotional experience for Kai and his father, he said.
This was particularly the case when the father and son stood in front of the gallows where Rudolf Höss was hanged. There, Hans Jürgen acknowledged his father's crimes: 'He deserved it, he paid. What he did was wrong.'
'I hate what he did, and to a certain extent I hate him. His heartlessness, the meticulous, clinical way in which he fulfilled his task.'
But he said it is important to learn the lesson from this in terms of how evil can take hold of people's hearts.
'The film is a reminder of where populism can lead. Hitler didn't start out by saying "I'm going to murder six million people and overrun the world with war".
'[Hitler] said "I will make you great again, I will give you back your pride".'
Today Kai also frequently wrestles with the question of whether his grandfather has been forgiven by God.
'If he really repented, God forgave him. Then we'll see each other in eternity. But I don't know what really happened in his heart at the end.'
The Höss family villa still stands on the Auschwitz grounds today.
Rudolf Höss (centre) - along with his wife and five children - lived just outside the walls of the concentration camp where more than one million people were murdered in the Holocaust
After Nazi Germany's defeat in the Second World War in 1945, Höss evaded capture before being arrested after being tracked down by a Nazi hunter
Rudolf Höss is seen at his trial in Poland which resulted in him being sentenced to death
Kai Höss and his father Hans Jürgen are seen in the film during a visit to Auschwitz
Kai said he is 'not looking for absolution' for his grandfather's crimes, but said he believes his family is cursed as a result of Rudolf Höss's actions, but also because of his family going on to avoid the topic of their dark history.
'I am not a perpetrator. But I believe in inherited guilt,' he said. 'There is a curse on families when something bad has happened and it is not spoken about honestly. Then the hearts are damaged, it changes the soul.
'Then the children and grandchildren may become Nazis again because they say "What Grandpa did wasn't so bad after all".
'That is also what the documentary 'The Commandant's Shadow' is about. It is about the trauma in the families of the perpetrators and the victims.'
The Commandant's Shadow will be released in selected UK cinemas from 12 July.
The Nazis' concentration and extermination camps: The factories of death used to slaughter millions
Auschwitz-Birkenau, near the town of Oswiecim, in what was then occupied Poland
Auschwitz-Birkenau was a concentration and extermination camp used by the Nazis during World War Two.
The camp, which was located in Nazi-occupied Poland, was made up of three main sites.
Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a combined concentration and extermination camp and Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labour camp, with a further 45 satellite sites.
Auschwitz was an extermination camp used by the Nazis in Poland to murder more than 1.1 million Jews
Birkenau became a major part of the Nazis' 'Final Solution', where they sought to rid Europe of Jews.
An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom at least 1.1 million died – around 90 percent of which were Jews.
Since 1947, it has operated as Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which in 1979 was named a World Heritage Site by Unesco.
Treblinka, near a village of the same name, outside Warsaw in Nazi-occupied Poland
Unlike at other camps, where some Jews were assigned to forced labour before being killed, nearly all Jews brought to Treblinka were immediately gassed to death.
Only a select few - mostly young, strong men, were spared from immediate death and assigned to maintenance work instead.
Unlike at other camps, where some Jews were assigned to forced labor before being killed, nearly all Jews brought to Treblinka were immediately gassed to death
The death toll at Treblinka was second only to Auschwitz. In just 15 months of operation - between July 1942 and October 1943 - between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers.
Exterminations stopped at the camp after an uprising which saw around 200 prisoners escape. Around half of them were killed shortly afterwards, but 70 are known to have survived until the end of the war
Belzec, near the station of the same name in Nazi-occupied Poland
Belzec operated from March 1942 until the end of June 1943. It was built specifically as an extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard.
Polish, German, Ukrainian and Austrian Jews were all killed there. In total, around 600,000 people were murdered.
The camp was dismantled in 1943 and the site was disguised as a fake farm.
Belzec operated from March 1942 until the end of June 1943. It was built specifically as an extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard
Sobibor, near the village of the same name in Nazi-occupied Poland
Sobibor was named after its closest train station, at which Jews disembarked from extremely crowded carriages, unsure of their fate.
Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union were killed in three gas chambers fed by the deadly fumes of a large petrol engine taken from a tank.
An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the camp. Some estimations put the figure at 250,000.
This would place Sobibor as the fourth worst extermination camp - in terms of number of deaths - after Belzec, Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Sobibor was named after its closest train station, at which Jews disembarked from extremely crowded carriages, unsure of their fate
The camp was located about 50 miles from the provincial Polish capital of Brest-on-the-Bug. Its official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor.
Prisoners launched a heroic escape on October 14 1943 in which 600 men, women and children succeeded in crossing the camp's perimeter fence.
Of those, only 50 managed to evade capture. It is unclear how many crossed into allied territory.
Chelmno (also known as Kulmhof), in Nazi-occupied Poland
Chelmno was the first of Nazi Germany's camps built specifically for extermination.
It operated from December 1941 until April 1943 and then again from June 1944 until January 1945.
Between 152,000 and 200,000 people, nearly all of whom were Jews, were killed there.
Chelmno was the first of Nazi Germany's camps built specifically for extermination. It operated from December 1941 until April 1943 and then again from June 1944 until January 1945
Majdanek (also known simply as Lublin), built on outskirts of city of Lublin in Nazi-occupied Poland
Majdanek was initially intended for forced labour but was converted into an extermination camp in 1942.
It had seven gas chambers as well as wooden gallows where some victims were hanged.
In total, it is believed that as many as 130,000 people were killed there.