Rudolf Höss:How the Auschwitz commandant was arrested

In March 1946, Rudolf Höß, the former commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, was discovered in hiding near Flensburg. His captor:a young Jew who hunts Nazis for the British after the war.

by Oliver Diedrich, NDR.de

Ten months after the end of the Second World War:late in the evening on March 11, 1946, a young man banged against the gate of a barn on a farm near Flensburg:the 28-year-old was wearing a British uniform. A few years ago he was still German. As a Jew, he had to flee from the Nazis at the time. Now Hanns Alexander is back - as a Nazi hunter for the British War Crime Investigation Group. And he is about to make his biggest catch:ex-Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höß. "Open up!" Alexander yells. In the barn, a man wakes up with a start. When he opens the door, Alexander rams the barrel of his pistol into his mouth.

Former Auschwitz commander Höß is identified by his wedding ring

He thrusts the gun in the suspect's mouth so he can't take his own life with a cyanide capsule. When it is clear that he has no poison with him, Alexander has his papers shown to him. The man has a provisional identity card in the name of Franz Lang with him. Alexander explains that he thinks he is Rudolf Höss, the former commander of the death camp in Auschwitz. When the man denies, Alexander examines his arm. Many SS members had tattooed their blood group - but none. Then he discovers a wedding ring on the man's hand. "Give it to me or I'll cut off your finger," threatens Alexander. He gets the ring. Two names are engraved inside:Hedwig and Rudolf.

Alexander's hunt for Nazi criminals and the capture of the concentration camp commander Höß are part of the docu-drama "Nazi Hunters - Journey into Darkness" in the ARD media library.

Hanns Alexander flees from the Nazis to England

Hanns Alexander and Rudolf Höß - their paths in life could hardly be more different. Alexander was born in 1917 and grew up in Berlin as the son of a successful Jewish doctor. He spends a happy childhood with his twin brother and two sisters. Her parents often have guests. These include celebrities like Albert Einstein and Marlene Dietrich. The Alexander brothers are always up to pranks, their school performance is rather mediocre. But Hanns Alexander has "grips," as grandnephew Thomas Harding put it in his biography of his uncle. He always knew how to deal with surprising problems. And Alexander was "just as at home on the big boulevards as in the narrow streets". After the Nazis seized power, life for Jews in Germany became unbearable. In 1936, at the age of 19, Alexander fled to England, like most of his family.

Rudolf Höß makes a career in the SS

Rudolf Hoess comes from Baden-Baden. As a young man, after the end of the First World War, he joined an ultra-right Freikorps and joined the NSDAP in 1922. He was imprisoned in 1924 for murdering a "traitor" from the group, but was released early in 1928 when the right in the Reichstag was gaining strength. Höß joins the "Artamanen", a folkish national settlement movement, and starts a family. In 1934, as he later reports, Heinrich Himmler, who knew him from the "Artamanen", brought him into the SS. Höß was deployed as an officer in the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, where the National Socialists imprisoned political opponents. In 1940 Himmler commissioned him to set up a concentration camp in occupied Poland. There in Auschwitz, Höss organized the murder of at least 1.1 million Jews, Sinti and Roma and other prisoners. Höss is a technocrat of state terror, but he is obviously no sadist:"He was a completely normal person. He gave the impression of an honest, calm, rather taciturn person, he didn't hit anyone." This was reported by the Auschwitz survivor Józef Paczyński NDR.de. As a concentration camp prisoner, he was the camp commandant's hairdresser.

Brothers Alexander want to fight against Hitler Germany

In exile in London, Hanns Alexander and his twin brother Paul decide to fight against the Nazis. In 1939, the two join a pioneer unit in the British Army that was set up especially for refugees like them. They dig trenches in France and help to expand naval defenses on the English coast. But the approximately 10,000 volunteers were not given weapons because the English only had limited trust in them. But the Alexanders want to integrate into their new homeland, they want to become British. Finally, they are allowed to take part in an officer's course and are accepted into the regular army in 1943. After the Allies landed in Normandy, Hanns Alexander and his men guarded defeated German officers. Then he becomes his commander's aide-de-camp. He stands out positively. So much so that towards the end of the war, his superiors called Alexander into a newly formed special unit.

Bergen-Belsen:Shock at scale of German war crimes

At the end of April 1945, the British put together a team of investigators to hunt down German war criminals. The trigger is the horrible conditions in the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The first members of the War Crime Investigation Group are sent there immediately. Alexander arrives on May 12th. He is stunned:"Bodies were walking around, corpses were lying around. There were people who believed they were still alive, but in reality they weren't." Thomas Harding writes in his book "Hanns und Rudolf" that Bergen-Belsen completely changed the life of his great-uncle:"Most of the victims were Jews. What happened to them could easily have happened to him too. Hanns was no longer the carefree one A bit of a selfish young man of yore. He was gripped by an uncontrollable anger. And he suddenly saw a purpose in his life, he saw a purpose for himself."

Book tip "Hanns and Rudolf"

Thomas Harding, a great-nephew of Hanns Alexander, wrote down his biography. In parallel, Harding describes the life of Rudolf Höß in "Hanns und Rudolf". The quotes from Alexander in this article are taken from the book.
"Hanns and Rudolf. The German Jew and the Hunt for the Commandant of Auschwitz"
From the English by Michael Schwelien.
© the German language edition:2014 dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich.

The hunt for Rudolf Höß - investigators come across "Rattenline Nord"

At that time, many prominent Nazis were fleeing from the Allies towards South America. Others settled on the "Rat Line North". Just like Rudolf Höß with his wife and five children. You belong to a whole trek of former colleagues. Höß takes his family to St. Michaelisdonn, where his wife's brother lives. Then he moves on. Höß still hopes for the "final victory". Near Flensburg he met Himmler again, his great patron. Höss is horrified when Himmler declares that the war is lost and they should all go into hiding. Höss later wrote that Himmler was in the best of spirits:"The world came to an end, our world." Höß receives the ID card of a deceased sailor - Franz Lang.

Auschwitz commander is hired as a farmer

He marches on to Sylt and reports to the local naval school under the wrong name. On May 8th, Germany surrenders. A few days later, Höß heard about Himmler's death over the radio. He fell into the hands of the British near Lüneburg and committed suicide with a cyanide capsule. Höß is interned as "Franz Lang". But because he states that he has experience as a farmer, he is soon allowed to leave. The employment office assigns him a job. Höß arrives at the Hansen-Hof in Gottrupel on July 5, 1945.

First coup by Nazi hunter Alexander

At the end of 1945, Alexander celebrates his first major success as a Nazi hunter. After weeks of investigations and a hunt all over Lower Saxony and half of Germany, he arrested the former Nazi administrator of Luxembourg, Gustav Simon, on December 10. Simon had boasted that he was making the entire Grand Duchy "free of Jews". At a reception in the palace in Luxembourg, the Grand Duchess personally thanked Alexander for his commitment. The 28-year-old is now considered the War Crimes Group's top investigator. At the beginning of 1946, Alexander was sent to Hoess. The Americans and British already know from interrogations that many former concentration camp administrators fled to northern Germany towards the Danish border. Alexander drives to Flensburg and begins the investigation.

Hedwig Höß:Does she know where her husband is hiding?

An intercepted letter to Hedwig Höß reveals that she probably knows her husband's whereabouts. Military police arrest the wife of the former Auschwitz commandant in St. Michaelisdonn and take her to Heide, where Alexander interrogates her. She is silent. Alexander then drives to St. Michaelisdonn to interrogate her children. They say they don't know where their father is. Alexander grabs his eldest son Klaus and takes him to his mother in prison in Heide. Hedwig Hoess is appalled. But she does not betray her husband. And Klaus also insists that he does not know the whereabouts. Hedwig Höß went on a hunger strike with her son to protest the imprisonment. Alexander keeps questioning her. Now she says:"My husband is dead." Alexander decides to put even more pressure on her:when a locomotive with loud steam drives past the building, he storms into her cell. He explains that if she doesn't testify now, he will put her son on the train and have him deported to Siberia. You have ten minutes. He leaves her pen and paper and leaves. Hedwig Höß breaks in - when Alexander returns, she has written down her husband's address and code name.

Once accessed, the hunters celebrate their catch

On the same day, Alexander rushes to Gottrupel with 25 armed men. They arrive at 11 p.m. After Höss has been identified and arrested in the barn, Alexander realizes that his comrades want revenge on the mass murderer. He allows the men to beat up Höss. After a few minutes, the military doctor says, "Tell them to stop, otherwise you'll have to take a body with you." You drive Höss to Heide. But before they get there in prison, Alexander stops at a pub. His brother Paul is waiting for him there. A day later he wrote a letter to her parents in London:"Hanns had a successful time here. He caught the pig from Auschwitz. We toasted with champagne and whiskey. Must leave the presentation of the story with all its details to Hanns. He's a great guy, but don't tell him that or he'll get conceited."

"Makes me sick to see how many killers I've had to let go"

Rudolf Höß later made an extensive confession. He testifies as a witness in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He himself has to answer to a court in Poland. On April 16, 1947, Höß was executed - on a gallows in the former concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Hanns Alexander leaves Germany a few weeks after Höss was arrested. He vows never to set foot in the country again. He remained true to this, even when decades later he was invited to the Bergen-Belsen Memorial. In May 1946 he married his fiancé Ann Graetz in London. They have two children. Alexander works at a bank. He spends a lot of time in the synagogue. Author Thomas Harding reports that his uncle continued to enjoy pranking people and telling "inappropriate jokes" to the children. The war, on the other hand, was never a topic of conversation for Alexander again:"I didn't want to talk to the children about it because I don't want them to grow up filled with hate. But I'm filled with hate. It makes me sick to see how many murderers I had to let go." In December 2006, Alexander died at the age of 89 as a result of pneumonia.