A three-story house overlooking an Auschwitz gas chamber, formerly owned by the camp's commander, Rudolf Hoss, has been purchased by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) with the aim of opening it up to visitors, the New York Times revealed on Wednesday.
In addition to its historical significance, the house is famous for its prominence in the Oscar-winning 2023 film Zone of Interest.
CEP bought the house from Garzyna Jurczak, who raised her children there but who found living in it too challenging when people began peering into her windows following the release of the film.
The chief executive of CEP, Mark Wallace, a former US diplomat, declined to reveal the price the house was purchased for, saying only that he “wanted to do right” by Jurczak but “did not want to pay a big premium for a former Nazi property, even if we could.”
"Finally, we can open it to honor survivors and show this place of incredible evil," Wallace added.
CEP is now preparing no.88 Legionow Street, situated outside the camp’s perimeter fence, for public visits as part of commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Army’s liberation of Auschwitz.
The NYT added that as part of the preparations, workers had removed all post-war elements, leaving the house as it would have looked when the Hoss family lived there from 1941 to 1944. CEP has, however, added a mezuzah to the front door in honor of Jewish tradition.
Several original items were found after the purchase of the property, including Nazi newspapers and an SS coffee mug. In the attic, workers found the striped trousers worn by Auschwitz inmates being used to fill up a hole.
NYT reported that researchers are trying to identify the trousers' owner, using the faded prisoner number and the presence of a yellow triangle - indicating the owner was a Jew - to narrow down the search.
Plans for the property
Wallace added that CEP planned to convert the house and the one next door into the base of a new organization called 'Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization.'
Daniel Libeskind, an American architect, has been commissioned to redesign the property. Libeskind told NYT 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.
“A house is a house,” said Jacek Purski, who is involved in the project. “But it is in uninteresting, regular houses like this where extremism is happening today.”
Auschwitz director Piotr Cywinski said extremism is not a mental illness but "a method, " and that extremism can turn ordinary people into monsters, he added.
"Höss was a wonderful father to his kids and, at the same time, the main organizer of the most brutal killings in the history of the world.
":The 'paradise' that the Commandant constructed for his family at House 88 was forever out of reach to the more than one million souls lost at Auschwitz and those that survived its horrors—but will now be open to all," Ambassador Mark D. Wallace said,
"In honor of the survivors and families of the victims of the Holocaust, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday, January 27, 2025, CEP will open the former Commandant’s house for the first time."
"The 'ordinary' house where Höss and his family built an idyllic life—recently featured in the Oscar-winning film, The Zone of Interest, and in documentaries—stands directly next door to the Auschwitz death camp. Everyone has or can relate to the “house next door.” But today hatred lurks with ubiquity in houses as close to us as next door. ARCHER at House 88 will take up the fight against destructive hatred, and against extremism and antisemitism. As a potent symbol of a society where extremism and antisemitism became all too normal, the house shall be repurposed into a place for stopping the extreme and antisemitic from becoming ordinary," Wallace said.
"ARCHER will be a global leader in the fight against antisemitism in the most potent symbolic place for that fight."
"Elie Wiesel rightly said that we must “never forget” the holocaust to ensure the end of such hate and to prevent another genocide. 80 years later it’s clear that while essential, “never forgetting” is not enough to prevent the hate and antisemitism that right now grips our society. We must do more. We must confront the rise of hate, extremism, and antisemitism. ARCHER at House 88 will be the centerpiece 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."