Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

by Thomas Harding

  I stood in the front rank, so that I was forced to watch the whole procedure at close quarters. I say forced because if I had been standing further back I would have looked away. I felt hot and cold by turn when the screams began. The whole process, indeed, from the moment when the very first blows fell, made me shudder. I was not so agitated later, witnessing the first execution at the beginning of the war, as I was watching this corporal punishment, although I can find no explanation for this.

  In his mind, Rudolf distanced himself from the other officers who were eager to watch the prisoner beaten. He thought such men to be “of a malicious, malignant, thoroughly unpleasant, brutal, base, and vile nature,” who “see the prisoner only as an object on which to vent their often perverse urges.” He resolved that next time he would find a way to stand in the back row so that he could avoid having to view the punishment.

  As company commander, however, Rudolf increasingly found himself caught up with the camp’s brutality. He was forced to witness the harsh punishment of prisoners, and saw inmates commit suicide by running into the camp’s electrified fences, or being shot while trying to escape.

  Despite his unease, Rudolf refused to abandon his post.

  I could not summon up the courage to do that because I did not want to expose myself and admit to being soft-hearted. I was too stubborn to confess that I had made the wrong choice in giving up my plans to be a farmer.

  In mid-June 1936, Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann—his old colleague in the Freikorps—as well as Reichsminister Rudolf Hess and other dignitaries, paid a visit to Dachau. With the Kommandant absent, Rudolf was asked to show the visitors around. He was only too pleased and warmly greeted his old acquaintances. Himmler was in high spirits, Rudolf felt, and the inspection went without any problems. The prisoners were in good health; they were well fed and lived in reasonable housing. As they toured the camp, Himmler asked the inmates about their backgrounds. When two Communists told him that they had been incarcerated because of their political views, which they asserted they still maintained, Himmler simply listened and then moved on. A little later, he was introduced to two political prisoners who minimized their crimes. When Rudolf reminded them of why they were in prison, Himmler ordered that they be punished for several Sundays.

  Shortly after the visit, Rudolf was promoted to second lieutenant, and given charge of the camp’s stores and the prisoners’ property. For the first time, he would participate in the camp administration. This promotion was recorded in a memo dated June 24, 1936:

  To:

  The Inspector of Concentration Camps

  Subject:

  Recommendation to promote SS-Master Sergeant Höss, SS No 193616, to the rank of SS-Lieutenant.

  Following the inspection of the concentration camp Dachau by Reichsminister HESS, and after discussion with Reichsleiter BORMANN, Reichsführer (HIMMLER) called me and told me that SS-Master Sergeant HOSS should, because of his former merits, be recommended at the earliest opportunity to the rank of SS-Lieutenant.

  I beg to submit this report to the inspector of concentration camps together with my recommendation.

  Shortly after the tour of Dachau, Himmler ordered that the old buildings be torn down and replaced by rows of new barracks. He wanted Dachau to become a model camp, a template for the new facilities that were to be built at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. It would also, he said, act as a training center for guards going on to work in other camps.

  The new camp was designed in a rectangular shape, approximately seven hundred yards long and four hundred yards wide, surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers. The facilities included an administrative office and kitchens, as well as thirty-four barracks. At the end of each building, following Himmler’s instructions, a flower bed was dug and new roads were laid, with the gravel regularly raked by the prisoners. Roll call took place each evening in a courtyard between the prison and the central kitchen. The space was also the site of executions. All the work was done by the inmates, with few tools and little respite given for weather, hunger or thirst.

  Although it was no longer the romantic idyll that they had enjoyed in Pomerania, Rudolf and Hedwig continued to build their family in Dachau. On May 1, 1937, a second boy was born, named Hans-Jürgen. While the newborn was looked after at home by a nanny, the three older siblings attended school in town along with the other officers’ children. When Rudolf returned home each night, he played music for the children on his gramophone and recited German folk stories when they were tucked up in bed. At weekends the family took trips into Dachau to shop, or gathered with one or more of the other officer families for lunch, games and group songs.

  In this way, Rudolf developed two existences. First, there was ordinary family life: his time with his four children, evenings out with his wife, socializing after work. Then there was the world of the camp guard: a cruel and hard existence during which he became increasingly inured to the pain of those he governed. Somehow, Rudolf was able to reconcile these two apparently opposing aspects of his life. He had mastered a new skill: he could exercise profound cruelty, and then come home to kids and dinner, as if nothing significant or disturbing had happened. The brutality that his loyalty demanded was by now second nature, if not yet fully expressed.

  *

  By 1938, the reconstruction of the concentration camp at Dachau was complete, and it was now able to take on almost 20,000 prisoners. Rudolf had proved to be an efficient and hard worker, an officer who was able strategically and mechanically to implement the vision of his superiors. He was ready for his next promotion.

  So it was that on August 1, 1938, four years after his arrival at Dachau, Rudolf was told that he was being transferred to the Sachsenhausen camp, some twenty miles north of Berlin, where he would become adjutant to the camp’s Kommandant, Hermann Baranowski.

  A mercurial man and a bully, Baranowski was capable of both kindness and ruthlessness. Yet what appealed to Rudolf was that Baranowski’s harshness derived not from some irrational, sadistic or psychopathic tendency—traits which Rudolf had found so ‘vile’ in other guards—but from a seemingly rational framework. What made Baranowski special was that he could transcend the natural empathy that he felt towards others in order to implement a command, thereby furthering the National Socialist doctrine. This was a duality to which Rudolf aspired, and one which echoed the divisions of his own life.

  Sachsenhausen was also the headquarters of the administration offices that coordinated Germany’s burgeoning internment facilities. The Inspectorate for Concentration Camps was housed in a T-shaped building just outside the camp’s walls. The inspectorate was managed by Theodor Eicke, who had by now left Dachau to become supervisor for all the new camps. While Rudolf did not work in the inspectorate directly, as adjutant he had frequent contact with the staff who, among other things, oversaw the supplies to the network of camps.

  For Rudolf, Sachsenhausen was an improvement on Dachau. It was a good place to be noticed by his superiors and to scale the political ladder. Working in Sachsenhausen enabled him to travel frequently to Berlin, where he could meet up with old Freikorps comrades, catch up on the latest news and learn more about the inner workings of the Nazi Party. Additionally, as the camp’s new adjutant, he came into contact with the Gestapo and the SS administration in charge of the concentration camps.

  Another great advantage was that Rudolf’s relationship with the prisoners was now changed.

  My personal difficulty in staying in the concentration camp service, despite my unsuitability for it, retreated into the background because I was no longer so close to the prisoners as at Dachau.

  Though Rudolf no longer had day-to-day contact with the prisoners, he was now responsible for camp discipline and executions. And despite any misgivings, he was determined to carry out his duties. One man who would test Rudolf’s newfound resolve was an SS officer who had arrested a Communist organizer and then made the grave mistake of allowi
ng the prisoner a few moments to say goodbye to his family. As the SS officer was talking to the prisoner’s wife, the prisoner had escaped through an open window. This lapse in protocol was punishable by death under SS rules. Rudolf knew the officer well, as he had frequently brought prisoners to Sachsenhausen, and just the week before, the two of them had sat down together in the mess hall talking about the increasing number of executions taking place in the camp. Rudolf considered him a friend. Now this same officer, still dressed in his gray SS uniform, was pulled out of a car, handcuffed and blindfolded, and handed over to Rudolf, who led him to the pole in the middle of the main courtyard, tied his arms, stepped back and gave the order to fire.

  When his friend collapsed on the ground, Rudolf walked up and shot him in the head. Rudolf was so upset that he “could barely hold the pistol steady when I had to give the coup de grâce.”

  I did adjust to all those aspects of concentration camp life that could not be changed, but my feelings were never dulled to human wretchedness. I always saw and felt it. However, I had to get over that if I was not to appear soft. I wanted to be thought a hard man in order to avoid being considered weak.

  Rudolf had demonstrated to his superiors that he was capable of implementing their harshest orders. He was a most trustworthy officer of the SS. He had become a hardened instrument of blind loyalty. His next move would be career-defining.

  6

  HANNS

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  1933

  * * *

  On April 1, 1933, storm troopers from the National Socialist Party’s SA marched from the Zoo train station in Berlin, across the Kurfürstendamm, and down the Kaiserallee. The anxious Alexander family gathered together. The boycott of Jewish businesses had been announced on the radio and in the newspapers, and they were terrified the apartment would now be targeted. Looking out of the window, Hanns could see a group of brown-shirted thugs gathering in front of their building.

  These events had come as a surprise to the highly assimilated and party-loving family. Like so many of their friends, the Alexanders had been optimistic about their future in Germany. And while they were concerned about the rise of the National Socialists, they had not been overwrought by the stories they had read in the newspapers: Hitler being appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933; the fire in the Reichstag; the suspension of the basic legal right of habeas corpus—now anybody could be arrested without the opportunity of challenging their imprisonment in court; the so-called Enabling Act of 1933, which granted Hitler the power to pass legislation without parliamentary approval.

  It was easy enough for the mob to find the Alexander home. Dr. Alexander was the current president of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians, and his name and address were listed in the readily available blue-bound 1931–1932 Jewish Directory.

  A volatile crowd now stood in front of the Alexander building, shouting the slogans of the day: “Don’t buy from Jews,” “Boycott the Jews” and “The Jews are our misfortune.” Increasing numbers of local residents and passersby joined them, eager to see what was going on, and perhaps thrilled to watch people finally challenge those who, many believed, were to blame for Germany’s economic misfortunes.

  The storm troopers appeared willing to spend the entire day blockading the Alexanders’ door. Then a tall man dressed in the First World War uniform of a colonel strode up and addressed the crowd. He told them that his name was Colonel Otto Meyer, and that the occupant of the apartment was his good friend Dr. Alfred Alexander, who had served under him during the war. He said that this man was a war hero who had received the Iron Cross First Class, and ordered the crowd to move away from the property. After a quick discussion, the group complied, perhaps deciding that there were easier targets elsewhere. Otto Meyer remained outside the door for the remainder of the day to protect the building from any further attacks. Before Meyer left, late into the evening, Alfred Alexander thanked his friend profusely for his brave and generous support.

  That night the Alexanders discussed the day’s events. Would there be other boycotts? Should they leave, perhaps for Switzerland? After all, Henny’s father was the Swiss consul in Frankfurt, and he could certainly help them rebuild their lives in Basel or Geneva. Henny urged her husband to consider an alternative future, but he refused. Dr. Alexander was convinced that the violence would soon pass and that the German people would come to their senses. During the Great War he had seen the courage and honor his countrymen were capable of, and he was confident that the vast majority of good, virtuous Germans would stand up, just as Colonel Meyer had, and turn away from this Nazi madness.

  Six days after the Jewish boycott, the National Socialists passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, banning non-Aryans from working for the government. This included not only bureaucrats and office workers, but also teachers, singers, dancers, writers and musicians. Jewish artists were now restricted to performing to Jewish-only audiences through a program known as Kulturbund der Juden in Deutschland or the Cultural Association of German Jews. The Alexanders joined the organization, along with 20,000 other people, regularly attending concerts at the Deutsches Theater. Dr. Alexander continued to treat many of the performers.

  On May 10, three weeks after the Jewish boycott, over 40,000 students, along with members of the SA, SS and other Nazi Party supporters, gathered in the Opernplatz—a few hundred yards south of the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse—to listen to a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. “The age of a disproportionate Jewish intellectualism has come to an end,” he said. “So you do well to consign the pernicious spirit of the past to the flames at this midnight hour. Here the intellectual basis of the Weimar Republic sinks to the ground. But the phoenix of a new spirit will rise from the ashes.” After he had finished speaking, the mob set fire to 20,000 books.

  *

  Alfred’s optimism did not reassure all of the Alexanders. The Reichstag fire, the boycott and the street violence had taken their toll. Bella announced that she would now be moving to London with her fiancé, Harold Sussmann, an Englishman whom she had met two summers before. A few days later, Bella packed her belongings and headed for London. For the first time, the Alexander family found themselves no longer living all together under the same roof.

  While Hanns was not especially close to his sister at this time, her decision raised difficult questions. What would this mean for him? Would things get worse for the Jews in Germany? Would the rest of the family have to follow Bella and start a new life in a foreign country?

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. In June 1933, Dr. Alexander was summoned to a meeting by the Waldschule’s head teacher. He was told that the recent passage of the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities imposed strict limits on the number of Jewish students at any given institution; therefore, the twins were no longer welcome. Either the doctor could remove the boys, or they would be “slung out.”

  Alfred returned home and told Hanns and Paul, who were by then sixteen, that they would now be sent to a private Jewish school. Hanns had liked the Waldschule, and even though he had never applied himself to his studies, he had intended to graduate and perhaps even go on to university, as both his sisters had done. Even worse than the rejection by the school, and the strangeness of the law behind it, was the uncertainty: if he could be thrown out of school because of his culture and race, what else could happen?

  But the twins were not the only family members to be affected by the new rules. Following the passage of further anti-Jewish laws over the next few months, it became increasingly difficult for a Jew to run a medical practice, even a doctor as prominent as Alfred Alexander. Furthermore, the government outlawed the reimbursement of Jewish doctors through public health insurance funds, which had previously made up a good part of Dr. Alexander’s income. And with the mayor of Munich having recently forbidden Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, it was only a matter of time before Berlin wou
ld follow suit. If so, he would be forced out of business.

  Conversation at the Alexander table became increasingly tense. Henny argued that eventually they would have to leave the country, and if they didn’t sell the practice it would soon be worth nothing. Meanwhile, Dr. Alexander remained in denial, counseling patience and a low profile until life returned to normal, as he felt sure it would.

  On July 13, 1934, on the twentieth anniversary of the start of the First World War, and within the general context of Germany’s swelling national pride, President Paul von Hindenburg announced the creation of a new commemorative medal, the Cross of Honor. Deciding that it would be useful to have a second proof of national service, in addition to his Iron Cross, Dr. Alexander filled out the paperwork for the new award. A few weeks later, he attended a ceremony at a local government office where, along with other veterans, he was given a bronze cross, with the numbers 1914 and 1918 embossed at its center. Attached to the cross was a red, black and white ribbon: the colors of Imperial Germany and the Nazi Party.

  *

  Bella, meanwhile, was rapidly adjusting to her new life in England. In December 1934 she gave birth to a son, named Peter, to the delight of Alfred and Henny. Alfred traveled to London to see his first grandchild. While there, a family friend, Otto Schiff, who had moved to London from Hamburg, suggested that he register with a British medical institution—just in case he had to leave Germany. Although Alfred still believed that their problems would blow over, he realized that the time had come to hedge his bets and, before returning to Berlin, took a bus into central London, where he put his name down as a student at Edinburgh University. If he wanted to set up a medical practice in Great Britain, he would have to requalify as a doctor.