In theaters on November 6, “The Commander’s Shadow” tells the story of the return to Auschwitz of Hans-Jürgen Höss, the son of the Nazi officer in charge of the death camp.
At its head, Rüdolf Höss oversaw the deaths of more than 1.1 million prisoners during the Second World War.
A troubled character, volunteered in the German army before joining the deadliest regime of the 20th century.
Under his direct responsibility, more than 1.1 million prisoners died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, most of them Jewish. Central character of The Area of Interestthe chilling masterpiece by Jonathan Glazer released in 2021, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss is the tutelary figure of The Commander’s Shadowthe exciting documentary by Daniela Völker, in cinemas from Wednesday.
Born in Baden-Baden at the turn of the 20th century, this son of a soldier was 39 years old when he moved with his wife Hedwig and their young children to a large property adjacent to the Auschwitz camp. Until January 1945, he perfected the death machine down to the smallest cogs in order to cause the maximum number of victims, returning home for dinner in the evening as if nothing had happened. Dizzy.
A CV contested by historians
Zealous civil servant or psychotic executioner? Both at the same time? The personality of Rudolf Höss fascinates as much as it questions. In his memoirs, The commander of Auschwitz speakswritten in prison after his arrest in 1946, he presents himself as a war hero, volunteering on the Eastern Front in his youth. A version undermined by historians who see him as a mythomaniac, eager to embellish his CV.
Involved in the death of a left-wing activist which earned him a ten-year prison sentence in 1924, Rudolf Höss was released four years later due to his exemplary behavior. The following year, he met his wife Hedwig within the Artamans, a far-right youth movement. They had five children, boys Klaus and Hans-Jürgen, and three girls, Heidetraut, Inge-Brigitt and Annegret.
In 1933, Rudolf Höss joined the Schutzstaffel, Adolf Hitler’s close protection service which would gradually occupy a central place within the Nazi administration, before being tasked with organizing the extermination of Europe’s Jews. The following year, Heinrich Himmler assigned him to the Dachau camp where he met Theodor Eicke, considered one of the architects of the Final Solution.
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Rudolf Höss was tasked with studying the feasibility of a prison camp that would become Auschwitz. First of all Poles and Russians. Then Jews deported from all over Europe, most of whom will die in the gas chambers. In The Commander’s ShadowHans-Jurgen Höss, now 87 years old, claims that his father always hid the true nature of the concentration camp from his brothers and sisters.
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In his memoirs, which serve as a common thread for the documentary, the executioner of Auschwitz reduces his role to that of a simple executioner, obeying the orders of a hierarchy “demanding”. For historians, he would thus have tried to dilute his responsibility in the worst tragedy of the 20th century. In vain. Arrested in 1946 on the instructions of his wife, on a German farm where he had taken refuge, he was hanged on April 16, 1947 on the site of his misdeeds, his former property on the horizon.
