Auschwitz Commandant: Rudolf Höss

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Every day Rudolf Höss oversaw the killing of thousands of people at the death camp and then went home and acted like a doting father to his family. Höss was brought in by top Nazis to pioneer the industrialisation of the mass murder of Europe's Jews and others. He lived in a house that shared a wall with Auschwitz, metres from the crematorium, where he and his family enjoyed a happy domestic life - his wife once described their life at the house as 'paradise'.

The house was home to a Polish family until last year when it was taken over by the Counter Extremism Project who invited History Hit to explore the house, which is largely as it was when the Hoss family lived there. Dan travels to Poland with historian and best-selling author Thomas Harding to discover more about Höss' role in the Holocaust and what the house teaches us about 'the banality of evil'. They learn about what went on there, what Holocaust artefacts were recently found in the attic and the future of the house as a centre to combat hate.

Warning: this episode contains descriptions of human suffering and genocide which some listeners may find upsetting.

With special thanks to the Counter Extremism Project, Dr Hans-Jakob Schindler, Keith Burnet and Thomas Harding.

You can find out more in Thomas' book Rudolf and Hans: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Commandant of Auschwitz. He also has a new book out for children. It's called 'The Story of the House that Hid Anne Frank.'

Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Max Carrey and Dougal Patmore

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dan Snow, and if you would like Dan Snow's History Hit ad-free,
0:04.6	get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:09.7	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries
0:14.7	with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
0:19.4	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe.
0:26.1	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the snow is white
0:32.3	on the ground. But all that is at odds with what I'm looking out over now.
0:38.3	The beauty of the day is in sharp contrast to the buildings that lie in front of me.
0:42.3	I'm looking out over a series of red brick barracks.
0:46.3	Three stories high, neatly laid out behind double barbed wire fences.
0:51.3	I'm in southern Poland, just outside Krakar, and this is Auschwitz, the Nazi
0:57.1	extermination camp, the place where millions of people were murdered during the Second World War.
1:05.2	I'm here on Holocaust Memorial Day, the 27th of January, and that is the day on which Auschwitz this camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
1:15.3	That happened 80 years ago to the day.
1:19.2	What they found as they came into this camp was what seemed like an advanced industrial complex.
1:24.2	There were a series of partially demolished crematoria, and next to them, these chambers,
1:28.8	they looked like enormous shower rooms. It quickly became clear their true purpose. They were
1:35.2	the gas chambers. The Soviets learned this and other facts from the few shattered, starving
1:42.2	survivors that shuffled around the ruins of this camp. The vast majority
1:47.0	of inhabitants here, the guards and the inmates had been forced to march west into the
1:52.6	heart of the ever shrinking Third Reich as the Soviets approached. But a few people hid
1:58.2	out here and were able to tell the Soviets what had occurred.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -57 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.