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

by Thomas Harding

  “Beyond this, however, they were on their own . . .” According to the Times, in an article published on June 18, 1945, there were “many complications” hampering the war crimes investigators, including the fact that many of the witnesses had already left the camp and those who remained spoke numerous languages. Perhaps most important, according to the article, the British were simply unprepared to carry out the required investigative and legal effort: “The full horror and chaos of Belsen took us [the British] unawares.” Nevertheless, by the publication of this article, 86 SS guards, including 28 women, had been taken into custody and 300 affidavits had been collected.

  “The British wartime policy on interrogation techniques . . .” During the war Colonel Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens ran a London-based detention center that held German spies; after the war he ran an interrogation center for war criminals in Germany. Stephens’s 1945 report, entitled A Digest of Ham, was the British Army’s interrogation bible at this time and provides a snapshot of the techniques that Fox and Hanns would have used. In 1948 Colonel Stephens faced a court-martial, with three others, for the abuse that took place at a British interrogation center in occupied Germany. Two prisoners had died during interrogations, while others would claim to have been tortured with lighted cigarettes, doused in cold water and threatened with execution. Britain, it would be said, had established “concentration camps” similar to those of the Nazis. One soldier would be found guilty; the others, including Stephens, were cleared.

  “Hössler responded . . .” This and the other interrogations by Hanns and Fox come from the transcripts of the Belsen Trial available at the National Archive, London.

  “Hanns had by now developed two sides to his personality . . .” Then in her eighties, Lucille Eichengreen talked to me about her experiences with Hanns during a telephone interview. She had grown up in a Jewish family in Hamburg before being deported to the Łódz ghetto in Poland, then Auschwitz and finally Belsen, which is where she had first met Hanns, just after the Belsen Liberation in May 1945, and stayed in touch with him after the war. “He always had a smile,” she said. “He wanted to be liked. He wanted to be charming, he was very good-looking and he knew it. He was popular, almost easygoing, with a smile and a joke. In a sense he could be very funny and with a fast response. He rather lived life on that basis rather than show his real side.” When I asked her what this “real side” was, she said: “He was a Jew; he was very, very angry at what he saw. He saw it firsthand. He had grown up with it. And then he saw the camp when we were in terrible shape. Well, he would call Germans ‘krauts’ as a matter of course. He spoke to them in a rather harsh voice. There was no kindness showing. He judged them the same way I did because they were Germans and that was very unusual for a British officer.” I asked her then why Hanns left the camp to go looking for Nazis: “Because he felt the injustice of what had been done to us. And as many as he could catch he caught. He felt compelled to do this.” But other people didn’t? “No, because there were not many people in this British unit that were Jewish, could speak German, and had an understanding that it could have happened to them.”

  “Driving around northern Germany . . .” Hanns was not only looking for war criminals during these tours, he was also looking for survivors, or at least word of their fate. His sister Elsie had written to him asking about friends and family members, and he was trying to track them down. In a letter dated June 25, Hanns wrote that he had been able to find only one of the names, which had been published in the Netherlands on the Red Cross list of “saved people.” He encouraged her to write to a contact in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, a Red Cross worker who “is reliable (Dutch underground!).”

  “With Paul by his side . . .” Paul did not look forward to supervising German prisoners of war. In a letter to his parents he wrote: “It is now the third day that I am doing this new job, of which I was so afraid, as I thought I could not manage my temper. It is a most important job, the most important I have done since joining the army. For once we are somewhere useful. It has taught me some very useful lessons for a lifetime, as far as Germany is concerned. I always imagined that these bastards seen in this terrific quantity would make me hate them, but it does not. I thought I might feel pity, but it does not. I thought I might find some happiness to see them behind wire, but nothing of the kind. They make me feel physically sick, they smell, they stink . . . They still believe that Germany will win and must win. They are stubborn idiots but utterly useless for the world. There is only one way out in my opinion. Labor gangs in Bavaria for life. I am sure there is only one good German and that is one who is 6ft below ground. You should see the German officers. Arrogant bastards. The SS and SA is a shocking crowd. I wonder what they would say if they would know I am a German Jew. They would die in their coats.”

  “Despite her repeated requests that he apply for leave, Hanns was too preoccupied . . .” At the end of July, Hanns, Captain Fox and the rest of 1 WCIT had been pulled from Belsen to help with a case involving the deaths of thirty-one SAS soldiers in the French Zone in the small town of Gaggenau. Yet when the WCIT tried to lend a hand, offering to deploy the skills that they had built up in Belsen, their help went unwelcomed. The man in charge of the investigation, a Major Bankworth, criticized them for their lack of experience and dismissed their efforts in Belsen, saying that the only war criminals that should be prosecuted were those who had perpetrated crimes against members of the British Army. As a result, Hanns and his colleagues were marginalized and spent most of the time playing cards and drinking tea. When three weeks passed, Leo Genn decided enough was enough and brought the team back to Belsen.

  “Hanns’s first task was to ensure that the number-one defendant, Josef Kramer . . .” Like the other SS prisoners, Kramer had lost considerable weight in captivity, but he had retained a certain swagger and presented himself as a man who could not be easily intimidated. He had already provided an account of his life in his original affidavit: he had been trained as a guard in Dachau and Sachsenhausen before being moved to Auschwitz in 1940; in 1941 he briefly ran Natzweiler-Struthof, the only concentration camp on French soil; in 1942, he had returned to Auschwitz to run the Birkenau camp; and finally, in 1944, on the recommendation of Rudolf Höss, he had been appointed Kommandant of Belsen by Richard Glücks.

  ‘a total of at least four million had been gassed . . .’ Over the years there has been much controversy concerning the numbers killed in Auschwitz. This has not been helped by the fact that Rudolf Höss himself changed his estimate in his various testimonies. The figure of four million originated with the Soviet Union after its liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. This number was repeated in the prosecutor’s opening statement at the Belsen Trial in September 1945. This figure was quickly modified as additional information came to light. Since the war’s end, and despite the lack of records kept in the camp, it has been possible to make estimates based on witness statements, interviews and contemporaneous documents. According to many historians, including those at the Auschwitz Museum, the most likely figure is that 1.3 million people died in Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were Jewish.

  “For the next few weeks, the world was transfixed . . .” Some of the headlines during the Belsen Trial included: “SS Killed 4,000,000 at Oświęcim prosecutor says at Kramer Trial,” New York Times; “Blonde Beastess has confessed her guilt,” Daily Mirror; “Gas chamber survivor describes horror: We were dumped liked potatoes,” Winnipeg Evening Tribune; “Tell how Nazis experimented on nude women,” Chicago Tribune; “Irma Grese makes three confessions,” Daily Express; “Kramer trial to get story of massacre,” Washington Post; “Inferno on Trial,” Time magazine; “Kramer cross-examined: I gassed prisoners on orders of Himmler,” The Scotsman; “Mass murder, I’m guilty. Belsen head girl admits,” Toronto Star.

  “The defendants’ lawyers had a hard time . . .” When the lawyers attempted to defend the accused, they were reproached by the press for being insensitive to the witnesses and of disloyalty t
o the British cause of justice. Letters were written to the papers, saying that the court was being too fair to the defendants and, given their crimes, that the typical rules of the British legal system should not apply. But the Belsen Trial had been established upon the foundations of this very legal system, and it was believed to be critical to allow the defendants to have a chance to protest their innocence. By giving them their day in court, it was argued, any guilty verdict would carry a greater sense of gravitas and finality.

  “When it came to Josef Kramer’s turn . . .” The Times ran a story on October 9, 1945, under the title “Discrepancy explained,” on why Kramer had retracted his first affidavit claiming no knowledge of the Auschwitz gas chambers: “He had given his word of honour to Obergruppenführer Pohl of the Oranienburg headquarters of the concentration camp system [Amtsgruppe D] that he would say nothing about them. When his first statement was made the war was still being fought: at the time of the second statement Hitler and Himmler, to whom he felt bound to honour, existed no longer.”

  “At 9:34 on the morning . . .” When he heard that the Belsen defendants had been hanged, Hanns wrote a letter to Ann: “I heard tonight that the Belsen thugs were hung yesterday. I am glad of that, so they cannot escape any more and I do not have to start looking again.”

  “he had been promoted to the rank of captain . . .” Hanns was not happy with how long it had taken to be promoted to captain and believed it was because he was not born in England. In a letter to his parents, written in October 1944, Hanns wrote: “I won’t get the captaincy now or at any time. Don’t forget I’m still a b[loody] foreigner. And promotions are still made in the good old-fashioned way. The question is not what you know, but whom you know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Over the course of that summer . . .” The details of Rudolf Höss’s stay in Gottrupel come from a June 2001 Zeit article, titled “Flensburger Kameraden.” This article goes on to say that Rudolf left behind a few articles in the barn, including his black leather coat and his briefcase: “The coat was later used as a painter’s smock by one of the villagers, the briefcase of the mass murderer found employment as a bookbag for schoolchildren.”

  “Rudolf spent the rest of the autumn . . .” This information on Rudolf Höss’s movements during his time in Gottrupel was given by Rudolf to his British interrogators in a statement made on March 14, 1946.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Leo Genn had returned to England . . .” Genn’s next role was playing alongside Vivien Leigh in the film Caesar and Cleopatra.

  “Hanns and his driver . . .” The details of Hanns’s seventeen-day odyssey come to us from the field reports he gave his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Tilling. The Luxembourg newspapers also followed his adventures with great interest, describing Hanns’s journey as “like something from a detective novel” and “a wild goose chase.” For the past seventy years, these documents have been tucked away in files in the Luxembourg and British National Archives.

  “Inside were documents belonging to . . .” In late 1944, Himmler had originally conceived of the Werwolfs as a clandestine force that would fight behind advancing enemy lines. Its mandate had been changed in the spring of 1945, when Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels had announced that the Werwolfs would mount an insurgency against the Allied occupation of Germany. However, despite being made up of former SS soldiers and Hitler Youth, the Werwolfs had failed to mount any serious challenge to the Allies. Nevertheless, any member of the Werwolfs might be armed and dangerous and, though only fourteen years old, “Gustav Henning” would have to be approached with great care.

  “Hanns collected all of Simon’s possessions . . .” Later, this same landlady, Frau Berhorst, would lodge a complaint with the British authorities against Hanns for stealing seven thousand marks’ worth of items from Gustav Simon’s rooms. This accusation resulted in a stern letter sent four months after the arrest, on April 6, 1946, from the head of the British Intelligence Bureau to Group Captain Somerhough, in which the War Crimes Group was admonished for failing to inform them immediately that the Gauleiter had been arrested and then asking that they be “informed of the disposal of this confiscated property and of what it consisted.” In his response, Hanns wrote that he had passed the confiscated items to the War Crimes Legal Department, with the exception of the clothing, which he said he distributed to displaced persons in Belsen. Given the effort that it would have taken for the landlady to complain and the tone of the letter from the Intelligence Bureau, it is possible that some of the Gauleiter’s money had not made it into the War Crimes Group’s evidence room, and had ended up in Hanns’s pocket.

  “There were, however, conflicting reports . . .” Recently unearthed by a number of Luxembourg historians and investigative journalists, including a long article published by Revue magazine, this version of the death of Gustav Simon is based on evidence discovered within the Luxembourg National Archive, along with testimony provided by many of the people involved. This alternative account is bolstered by various inconsistencies with the official version: why, for instance, if Simon had committed suicide in prison on December 18, 1945, was a death certificate not issued until February 8, 1946, a full two months after his death? Equally, how could a man who was 5'3" high possibly hang himself from a bedpost that was 4'6" high? Even if such a feat was technically possible, how could the guard posted outside his door on suicide watch, for twenty-four hours a day, not have noticed what was taking place inside the cell? Finally, if the suicide had taken place, why had so many people come forward saying that the official version was untrue? According to this “unofficial account,” the murder was motivated either by Luxembourg collaborators, who did not want Simon to reveal their identities in court, or by partisans, angry at Simon’s treatment of the Luxembourg nationalists and Jews. When, sixty years later, this alternative account of Gustav Simon’s death was sketched out during a meeting of Hanns’s nephews, nieces and their spouses, not one person raised an objection. They believed that it was entirely possible that Hanns could have disobeyed a direct order, overseen the extrajudicial killing of a senior Nazi, led the cover-up of the story, and kept the secret hidden ever since. Hanns’s nephew Peter Sussmann went further, having spent three years in Luxembourg in the 1970s and having discussed the Gauleiter’s arrest with Hanns when he had visited him in Luxembourg: “He left me with the impression that Gustav Simon was not dead when he picked him up at the prison,” Peter recalled. “Do I think that Uncle Hanns killed Simon himself? No. He was not the kind of man to do that. He was not stupid; he would have known about the Geneva Convention and, if found out, he would have been put behind bars. But do I think that he could have allowed it to happen? Absolutely yes. He hated those bastards. And if asked which way I would cast my vote, of the two versions? I would go with the partisan story, that Simon was killed in the woods and that Hanns then issued the other story to make it all kosher.”

  “Lucille Eichengreen remembers it slightly differently . . .” It is interesting how two people who experienced the same event from the same point of view can have very different recollections. When I asked Lucille Eichengreen why her account of the escape from Belsen was different from Anita Lasker’s—even though they were sitting next to each other at the time—she said: “You can ask ten people who were in the same place at the same time and you will get ten answers. I’m not saying mine is right or hers is wrong or vice versa. I can’t tell you really why.” When I asked if Hanns would have invented a story or stuck to the truth, she answered: “He would have told the truth. But he would have used some curse words and some humor in between.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Leo Helger, for many years . . .” The story about Himmler giving Rudolf various artifacts, and how they came to be returned to Hedwig, comes from Rainer Höss, Rudolf’s grandson. These items are now stored at the IFZ institute in Munich, Germany.

  “But if Rudolf were to flee . . .” When I met Rudolf’s daughter Brigitte, she said tha
t Rudolf struggled with this decision. He wanted to protect himself, and believed that the best way to achieve this was to escape to South America. At the same time he did not want to abandon his family, who he knew would face tremendous obstacles in postwar Germany. But if he stayed, and was caught, it would be in nobody’s interest. In the end, he decided to leave and to bring his family to South America later.

  “Hanns next went to the Red Cross offices . . .” A letter written to the author, on April 1, 2010, from the Czech Republic Red Cross Tracing Service, said that on September 2, 1942, Cäcilie Bing was in fact put on a transport XII/2 from Frankfurt to Theresienstadt (serial number 37); and then on September 29, 1942, she was put on one of the Transport Bs from Theresienstadt to Treblinka (serial number 1473). Sara Graetz, Ann’s grandmother, was put on the same transport. This letter concluded: “Nobody survived the Transport Bs.”

  “Punctilious as ever . . .” Three months later, on May 27, 1946, Oswald Pohl was arrested by these same Haystack investigators. He had taken on the identity of “Ludwig Gniss” and was working on a small farm near the village of Armsen, only thirty miles west of Belsen. Following a lengthy trial, Pohl was sentenced to death on November 3, 1947. He was executed in 1951, following a series of protracted appeals and counter-appeals. To the last he denied responsibility for the Nazi death camps, claiming to be only a bureaucrat.

  “Since May 1945 . . .” To this day we do not know what happened to Richard Glücks. In his unpublished memoirs, Don’t You Know There’s a War On, British Field Security Section agent Fred Warner says that he found Glücks’s body in another Flensburg grave. However, there is no independent confirmation that Warner did in fact find Richard Glücks’s body. Indeed there are stories that Glücks died many months after the May 1945 meeting with Höss and Himmler. For example, a classified cable held in the U.S. National Archive, seen by the author, states: “5 Oct 45. Suicide reported from Flensburg. Died while in custody (Mi14 Report).” Not only does this memo challenge the fact that Glücks died in May 1945, which most historians believe, but it suggests that Glücks was held in British custody. This invites the question: what was he doing during the missing months? Was he helping the British in some way? An alternative version has him escaping from north Germany after the war to South America and involved with the ODESSA network (acronym standing for Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, or “Organization of Former Members of the SS”). The novelist Frederick Forsyth would later build on this rumor, making Richard Glücks the mastermind of the Nazi postwar network in his novel The Odessa File.