Auschwitz commandant’s home from Zone of Interest reclaimed for anti-extremism project - The Jewish Chronicle

For years, there was one house marked on the Auschwitz Museum map: a three-storey home just beyond the perimeter fence once occupied by Rudolf Höss, the camp’s longest serving SS commandant.

Höss was sentenced to death by hanging metres away from the home he shared with his young family — and where he dreamt up the most efficient way to kill 1.1 million Jews, Roma, homosexuals and political prisoners.

After Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945, the house retained the numerical code for Heil Hitler, number 88 at Legionow Street, and fell into the private hands of a Polish family. Widowed mother Garzyna Jurczak 62, raised two sons in the Höss home and told the New York Times it was “a place of safety, silence, and [had] a beautiful garden”.

House 88, the former home of the Commandant of Auschwitz, pictured from the front in September 2024. (Photo by Adam Trzcionka/Counter Extremism Project)[Missing Credit]

Beneath the house, a tunnel connecting number 88 to the camp remained - sealed off at one end by the museum - and upstairs in the attic, Nazi documents, newspaper cuttings, and account books remained untouched as Jurczak’s boys grew up.

But then came the Zone of Interest. In Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning Holocaust film based on a novel by Martin Amis, the house was thrust into the spotlight. Höss’s children play outside, his wife tries on a purloined fur coat and smoke billows from the furnace chimneys of the death camp.

After Glazer’s depiction of the banality of evil, the house in Oswiecim, Poland, became an object of fascination. And with the spotlight came visitors.

“Weird people started turning up,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, told the JC this week. People trampled through Jurczak’s garden and peered into her windows. Some far-right extremists approached her and there were fears the home could fall into the wrong hands.

“We did not want the house to become a memorial for Höss,” Schindler said.

The number on the wall outside the front door of House 88, pictured in September 2024. (Photo by Adam Trzcionka/Counter Extremism Project)[Missing Credit]

So number 88 has been reclaimed. In October, it was bought by the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based charity that has sought to combat extremism since 2014, which is set to open the Auschwitz Research Centre of Hate, Extremism and Radicalisation (Archer) inside the former family home.

The Counter Extremist Project will not reveal how much they paid, but it was market rate, “plus a little bit”.

“We didn’t want to pay a premium for Höss’s house but wanted the family to be comfortable. We had built a relationship with them over many years,” Schindler said.

When members of the Counter Extremism project got the keys, they headed upstairs to the attic and found a hole in the roof plugged with a pair of prisoner’s striped trousers. A faint red triangle and yellow Magen David were still visible scraps of the uniform. An SS-branded coffee jar and mug were perched on the floor.

Items found in House 88, the former home of the Commandant of Auschwitz, in September 2024. The items include a pair of prisoner’s trousers. The Counter Extremism Project is currently working to establish the identity of the Holocaust victim who wore them. (Photo by Adam Trzcionka/Counter Extremism Project)[Missing Credit]

Now a team of historians, architects and extremism experts are working to turn the house into a place of reckoning – a centre to educate about antisemitism and extremism.

Daniel Libeskind, one of the world’s most famous architects who is the son of Polish Holocaust survivors, has been commissioned to redesign the property. Libeskind told the New York Times that he envisages turning the interior of the house into “a void, an abyss," but will leave the external walls untouched as a Unesco preservation order protects them.

Inside, "eternal music” composed by Auschwitz inmates and excavated by contemporary musician Franceso Lotoro will play. Next door, at 88A, an education centre will house researchers, a fellowship, and university studies.

Eventually, a banner with the faces of six million visitors will adorn the walls, representing all that has changed since Höss’s reign.

Schindler hopes the house will bridge the divide between past and present.

“The museum is meant to maintain the history of the Holocaust, which is a very important thing. But we thought there was a gap,” he said.

“People assumed that learning lessons from the Holocaust inoculates against antisemitism, but the events after October 7 — when we saw hundreds of instances of antisemitism around Europe and the West — showed this was no longer true.”

Franceso Lotoro, musician and composer, performs music composed in the death camp in the garden of House 88, adjacent to the Auschwitz perimeter wall. Maestro Lotoro was part of a BBC documentary filmed in September 2024. (Photo by Adam Trzcionka/Counter Extremism Project)[Missing Credit]

Schindler imagines that people will visit the house after touring the Auschwitz Museum. “They will see the site of the industrial killing machine and what happens if you take extremism to its conclusion. It is a warning for us all.”

The Counter Extremism Project investigates contemporary extremism from neo-Nazis to the Taliban — Schindler’s expertise is in advising international bodies on Islamist extremists — and the centre will cover many forms of hatred.

With the risk of universalising the Shoah, Schindler believes the centre will show the Holocaust as “the singular event, the starkest warning against extremism”.

The Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel wrote in 2012, “‘Never again’ becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow” and Mark Wallace, ceo of the Counter Extremism Project, echoed these words this week.

“Eighty years later it is clear that while essential, ‘never forgetting’ is not enough to prevent the hate and antisemitism that right now grips our society,” Wallace said.

Schindler added, “Antisemitism never went away, and we need to be more proactive in combatting it.” A distant relative of Oskar Schindler — the German industrialist who saved more than a thousand Jews during the War — he emphasised the urgency of action. “Commemoration is simple and important,” he said, “but with the last eyewitnesses dying, we fear this will only get worse. The centre gives us a solution.”

“Extremism is not a side issue. Democracy is always going to be under threat by extremists from the far left, far right, from Islamists, from conspiracy theorists.”

Digital initiatives are planned to bolster the centre’s work, including a website to track antisemitic and anti-Roma hate speech, and projects using artificial intelligence to combat extremism.

The house, once a symbol of hate, will open in time for the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. Turning the property into a museum and centre will take many months.

“Today hatred lurks with ubiquity in houses as close to us as next door. House 88 will take up the fight against destructive hatred, and against extremism and antisemitism,” Wallace said.

“We must confront the rise of hate, extremism, and antisemitism. Archer at House 88 will be the centrepiece of the effort to prevent such hatred from continuing to be commonplace. The ordinary house of the greatest mass murderer will now be converted into the extraordinary symbol of that fight."

The transformation began with affixing a mezuzah to the door at number 88, reclaiming the house from its evil past and charting its new future.

Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, Founder and CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, and Francesco Lotoro, musician and composer, place a mezuzah on the doorpost at the entrance to House 88, in September 2024. (Photo by Adam Trzcionka/Counter Extremism Project)[Missing Credit]

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