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

by Thomas Harding

  As their car bumped along the camp’s rock-studded roads, Himmler reminded Rudolf that in a time of war he too would have to adapt. If the soldiers at the front could cope, so could a Kommandant. He had big plans for Auschwitz: Rudolf was to build a new camp capable of housing over 100,000 prisoners. This would become known as Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, and be based three miles from the original camp. He also said that he wanted to build a synthetic rubber plant near the Birkenau site for the industrial chemical giant IG Farben, which would be staffed by an additional 10,000 prisoners. None of the camps had ever housed such huge numbers, and Rudolf was both honored and awed by the responsibility.

  When Ernst Schmauser pointed out their lack of building materials and supplies, Himmler retorted: “The expansion of the camp must be accelerated by every available means. You will have to improvise as you go along. Any epidemics of sickness must be kept within bounds and dealt with ruthlessly. I do not agree with you about the problems at Auschwitz.”

  Later, when the tour was over and the rest of the group had departed, Himmler came to the house to visit Rudolf’s family. The children were bathed and dressed in their best clothes, Klaus and Hans-Jürgen in dark suits, the girls in white frocks with their hair tied back in pigtails. They were brought into the living room to meet Uncle Heiner, the boys bowing and the girls curtsying. Photographs were then taken of the children sitting on Himmler’s lap; enlargements of these pictures were later hung on the wall in the living room.

  Responding to Hedwig’s concerns about the villa’s condition—she felt it too small and its decor too old-fashioned to host visiting dignitaries—Himmler told Rudolf to remodel and enlarge the house as he saw fit. After a quick drink, Himmler said his goodbyes and got back into the Mercedes for the long trip back to Berlin. As he left, the four children stood in front of their parents, waving goodbye.

  Rudolf’s complaints were valid. By this time, the conditions in Auschwitz had dramatically declined. As the numbers of prisoners increased, food became scarce, basic living conditions deteriorated and outbreaks of typhus became common. Equally, as the ratio of prisoners to guards increased, so did the frequency of the guards’ indiscriminate attacks. To control the prisoners, the guards and their Kapos had returned to the “attitude of hatred” philosophy that Rudolf had been so disgusted with during his time in Dachau, but which he was now willing to deploy. Many such beatings ended in death: a warning to others not to disobey orders.

  Beatings, however, were not the principal cause of death in Auschwitz at this time. In July 1941, Rudolf oversaw the introduction of the so-called adult “euthanasia” program. The camp doctors had received an order from Berlin which had been drafted by Enno Lolling, the chief physician at the Concentration Camp Inspectorate: the camp doctors were now to select all the inmates who they believed were incapable of survival and kill them by injection. Following this directive, the doctors walked through the barracks and indicated to the guards which prisoners they wished to be brought to the medical building. These included those with incurable mental diseases, tuberculosis, or those considered too weak to withstand the camp’s harsh conditions. The identified prisoners were then escorted to the medical building housed at Block 20, where they were called in one by one to the “examination room.” Once inside, they were strapped down onto a surgical table. The doctor asked a few questions about their age, background and medical history and then, with two other prisoners holding the victim’s hand and a third covering their eyes, an orderly walked over and injected a vial of phenol straight into the inmate’s heart, killing them immediately. In this way thousands of prisoners were murdered in the early years of Auschwitz, including hundreds of children. Rudolf would not only have been aware of these murders, he would have been given daily updates on the numbers involved and the quantities of medical resources that had been consumed in the process.

  During his visit to the camp, Glücks had reminded Rudolf that Himmler didn’t want to hear about any escapes from Auschwitz. Rudolf therefore decided to implement a draconian policy: for every prisoner that attempted to escape, the guards would select ten from their barracks, drag them to the underground cells in Block 11 and leave them there to starve to death. As a result, the number of prisoners who tried to break out of Auschwitz was low: only two prisoners tried to escape in 1940, rising to seventeen in 1941, and 173 in 1942.

  In this way, Rudolf had adopted the brutal order that he had earlier renounced in Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

  *

  Following the outbreak of war in September 1939, Germany had gained swift and significant victories: Hitler’s troops had pushed north and east, occupying most of Poland and all of Denmark and Norway, and moved west into France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. By March 1941, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania had joined forces with Germany, while others—Spain, Portugal, Switzerland—would remain neutral.

  Great Britain stood alone as the last European power resisting German colonization of the continent. Hitler’s plan to invade Britain, code-named Operation Sea Lion, was delayed following Germany’s failure to gain air superiority during the Battle of Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940. Soon after this, Luftwaffe planes started bombing major British cities, in what became known as the Blitz; Britain retaliated by bombing German cities, including Berlin. However, despite these setbacks, by the spring of 1941, the global domination of the Axis Powers appeared almost unstoppable.

  Then, in June 1941, in one of the most critical decisions of the war, and in clear defiance of the 1939 nonaggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union, Hitler sent almost four million Axis troops towards Moscow, Leningrad and Ukraine. This was the start of Operation Barbarossa, which would place an enormous drain on both the German and Soviet Union armies, as well as the civilian populations of both countries. It would also prove decisive in the final outcome of the war and the fate of Auschwitz.

  According to Rudolf, it was during that same summer that he traveled to Berlin for a historic meeting with Himmler. He arrived at Himmler’s offices at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, a few hundred yards from the Potsdamer Platz, a white-stone building which occupied an entire city block. This building housed not only the headquarters of the SS but also the Gestapo and the Reich Main Security Office. The building had gained notoriety for the torture that took place in its “house prison,” deep in its basement.

  Unlike previous meetings, this encounter with Himmler was short and businesslike. And nobody else was present. Sitting behind his desk, Himmler started without preamble: “The Führer has given orders for the Final Solution of the Jewish question to be implemented, and we—the SS—are to put those orders into practice. The Jews are the eternal enemies of the German people, and must be wiped off the face of the earth. Now, during this war, all the Jews we can lay hands on are to be exterminated, without exception. If we do not succeed in destroying the biological foundations of Jewry now, then someday the Jews will destroy the German people.”

  Himmler continued with his instructions: because it was located on a major railroad line, yet situated in rural isolation, thus hiding it from prying eyes, he had selected Auschwitz for this important task. He told Rudolf that he wanted to see copies of construction plans within four weeks, and that while he wasn’t sure how many people would be sent to the camp, it would probably run into the millions. Normally, he explained, he would not have spoken with inferiors, but he had felt it necessary to talk directly with Rudolf because the task was so critical. He added that he had originally intended to give the task to a higher-ranking officer, but was concerned that this might cause tension with Rudolf, as Kommandant of Auschwitz. He had chosen Rudolf because he had absolute trust in the junior officer’s capabilities, as well as his discretion. Concluding the meeting, the Reichsführer said that this was a geheime Reichssache, a secret Reich matter, and as such, it must not be discussed with anybody, not even Hedwig. He would receive further instructions from the man in charge of the Jewish depor
tations, Adolf Eichmann.

  Rudolf remembered this meeting clearly.

  In the summer of 1941, when [Himmler] gave me personally the order to prepare Auschwitz to become a site of mass annihilations, and then to have those executions carried out, I could not form the slightest idea of the extent and effects of the killings. Of course, it was an unusual and monstrous order. But the reasoning behind the extermination process seemed to me right. I thought no more of it at the time—I had been given an order, I had to obey it. I could not allow myself to wonder whether or not this mass killing of Jews was necessary.

  Rudolf returned to Upper Silesia with mission in hand, but no clear idea how to achieve its objective. He knew he would not be able to kill enough prisoners using Phenol injections, and shooting them would not work either. Not only were bullets expensive but, from his time overseeing the executions in Sachsenhausen, Rudolf had learned that executions have an emotional impact on firing squads—resulting in excessive drinking and increased suicide rates—and therefore could not be scaled up to any large degree.

  Part of the solution was found two months later when Rudolf’s thirty-nine-year-old deputy, Karl Fritzsch, told him about an experiment which he had recently completed. Fritzsch had thrown some Zyklon B granules—used at the time as an insecticide to exterminate the camp’s rats—into a small cell in Block 11 holding a group of Russian prisoners. After waiting only a few minutes, he had observed that all the prisoners had died. There were two problems, he said. First, only a few prisoners could be killed at a time; and second, they had to carry the bodies out by wheelbarrow, which caused shock and anxiety among the other prisoners. Rudolf suggested that if they used the old crematorium on the other side of the block buildings, and adjacent to the villa where he lived, they would be able to kill more prisoners. There would also be an on-site solution to the problem of disposing of the bodies.

  A few days later a second, larger experiment was arranged, this time with nine hundred Russian political prisoners. Jozef Paczynski, Rudolf Höss’s Polish barber, happened to be working in Block 4, which was located next to the crematorium. Hearing some commotion outside, Paczynski raced up to the attic to see what was happening. Once there, he climbed onto a box, lifted a roof tile and looked outside. Down below, on the other side of a high wooden fence that surrounded the crematorium, SS guards were politely instructing about five hundred people to remove their clothes, pile them neatly and move towards the old crematorium. It was eerily calm. Within a few minutes the people were pushed into the building and the doors were locked. An SS guard with a gas mask climbed up the side of the building, dropped powder through a hatch in the roof, and then quickly shut it. Paczynski could hear terrible screaming, even through the thick concrete walls. The guards ran the motors of two small trucks to try to hide the cries, but he could still hear them. Eventually, the screaming died down. An hour later the guards opened the doors and, after ventilating the room, went inside. As he didn’t see any bodies being removed from the building, Paczynski assumed that they must have been dragged into the furnaces that roared only a few feet from the killing room. Numb with shock, he stepped down off the box and returned to his work in the room below.

  Rudolf also witnessed this second experiment. “I felt disquiet, a kind of shudder of aversion, although I had imagined that death from gas would be much worse.”

  Crematorium II, Auschwitz-Birkenau

  Rudolf and his men had found a cheap and quick method to kill hundreds of people at one time and, most important, when compared with other forms of execution such as shooting, it would insulate the guards from their victims.

  There was, however, one more problem. The old crematorium stood just a few feet from two prison blocks. This meant that the gassings could be too easily monitored by the prisoners in the camp. Again the solution seemed obvious to Rudolf. They would kill prisoners in the new Birkenau camp in one of the two old brick farmhouses, the so-called “little white house” and “little red house,” which stood away from the main Birkenau barracks. He would have the interior walls removed and the outer walls cemented, rendering them leakproof and ready for use.

  Rudolf had now “solved” the problem handed to him by Himmler: to find a technique for murdering hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people. As he later wrote:

  Now my mind was at ease.

  8

  HANNS

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  1939

  * * *

  On September 4, 1939, Hanns and Paul Alexander took a number 7 bus to the Royal Air Force recruitment office in Acton, west London.

  Then twenty-two years old, the twins stood in line with the other volunteers. When called, they proceeded to a brief medical examination, at the end of which they were asked for a urine sample, to check that they were not intoxicated and unfit to sign their enlistment papers. Not realizing that there were two Alexanders, the nurse became confused about whose bottle was whose, and asked the twins to return to the toilets. After completing that duty, the twins were called in, separately, to meet the military interviewing officer, who asked about their backgrounds and checked their personal details. At the end of the morning Hanns and Paul were told to go home and await their orders.

  In a letter to his sister Elsie, written a few days later on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Hanns explained his decision to take up arms against Germany: “I am sure we are all glad to see that there is still some justice in the world, although it seems to be a justice of force only.” He felt keenly the significance of the times in which they were living, but held out hope for the future: “This New Year is probably more important for Jews in general and especially for us, than any other New Year ever since the days of Moses. I wish you the spiritual strength, which the Jews have always shown in difficult times, to see through to the better end of things,” to a time when “the human beings in this world become human in the true sense of the word.”

  Hanns’s offer to fight for his adopted country was not immediately accepted. The British government was uncertain about how to deal with applications from newly arrived German refugees. Officially it welcomed all who volunteered and were fit for service, but it was wary of taking in men who it feared might pursue espionage or sabotage. It wasn’t until December 1939, three months later, that the twins received word regarding their enlistment: Hanns and Paul were to be part of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and were ordered to report at once. Hanns was given the army number 264280, Paul 264281.

  The Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps had been created on October 17, 1939, to make use of men who were refugees from Germany and elsewhere who wanted to fight Hitler. For these men the stakes were high. If caught by the Reich, they would be viewed as traitors and shot. Yet, of the more than 70,000 German and Austrian refugees who landed in Britain between 1933 and 1939, approximately one in seven enlisted with the Pioneers.

  On the morning of January 24, 1940, having said goodbye to their parents, Hanns and Paul traveled by train to Kitchener Camp, two miles from the south coast near the town of Sandwich. Kitchener Camp had been used as a military base during the First World War and, from the previous year, as a transit point for German Jews awaiting permits to America and Palestine. Housed in dilapidated barracks that let in snow through the holes in the roofs, the Pioneers jokingly called the place “Anglo-Sachsenhausen,” after the Berlin camp in which some of them had recently been held. The toilets were equally basic, housed in a long line of sheds joined together with a gully that ran from one end to the other with water flowing through it. A favorite prank was to light a newspaper at one end and let it float along, toasting unwary behinds as it went.

  On arriving at the camp, the twins were checked by doctors for lice and typhus and handed stiff khaki uniforms. Hanns, Paul and the fifty other German and Austrian recruits now formed the first enemy alien unit from London: 93 Company.

  Later that evening, Hanns sent a quick note to his parents. It was written on Pioneer Corps stationery, with its em
blem—a crown, a pickaxe, a shovel and a gun—embossed on the top, underneath which was stamped the Corps’ motto: “Labor Omnia Vincit” (“work conquers all”)—eerily similar to the slogan—“Arbeit Macht Frei” (“work sets you free”)—that hung above the gates at Auschwitz. He wrote: “Food very good, much lunch. We will gain pounds and stones easily. Just tried on uniform. Everything fits fairly well. So far, nothing to grumble about.” He added that they would not get weekend leave until they had served a full month but they could leave after their duty was complete around 5:30 p.m. He asked them to send tobacco for his Dunhill pipe, as he preferred to keep his money to purchase drinks in the local pubs, and finished with, “I have never felt happier anywhere. No worries whatsoever.”

  The next day, Company 93 lined up in the dusty courtyard in front of the barracks, where a stocky black-bearded sergeant from Vienna asked them to swear allegiance to the King, in German. This request was in accordance with the British Army’s tradition of asking foreign soldiers to swear in their own languages to avoid the potential injustice of enlistment without true consent. But Hanns and his brother were outraged, insisting on swearing in English. Lord Reading, the Pioneers’ commander, agreed with them and drove to London, where he persuaded his superiors that it would be best to follow the refugees’ wishes. So it was that the next day the new recruits swore an oath of allegiance in their adopted language, and signed the following waiver:

  I certify that I understand the risks . . . to which I and my relatives may be exposed by my employment in the British Army outside the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding this, I certify that I am willing to be employed in any theatre of war.

  But despite his assurance to his parents, being assigned to a refugee army unit irritated Hanns. By this time he had worked and lived in London for four years and he felt he owed his adopted country his loyalty, even if he had mixed feelings about his new home. In another letter to Elsie, who was missing their old life in Germany, he agreed that England did not yet feel like home: “Do not think that London is a place of heaven. I don’t think it is either.” Yet he felt tied to his new country: “We are lucky and very fortunate that we are at least living in one and the same country, amongst people that respect us and perhaps even feel a bit with us, in these also for them uneasy times.” Equal to his new allegiance, however, was his anger towards his mother country: “Although we are told not to hate, I think we are allowed to have some grudge against the people who only want to live, but would not ‘let live.’ ” He had reason to hate the Germans as much, if not more, than any native Briton, so why could he not be trusted to fight in the regular army? Yet, now that he had enlisted, he would have to do as he was told.