The Commandant's Shadow

 

Hoess was much admired by other top Nazis for his
comprehensive establishment of Auschwitz and for his
design of a highly efficient system of annihilation.

Rudolph Hoess
Commandant of Auschwitz 1942-1945
Loving father of five children.

 

I was hugely impressed with The Zone of Interest [see Blog. Feb 21] and now, similarly, with the recently-issued The Commandant’s Shadow, about the same family and the same place. This second film, a documentary, reveals much more to the viewer than its earlier companion piece. I have long been fascinated by the Holocaust and have read widely on it. But these two films investigating the Hoess family are engrossing, particularly The Commandant’s Shadow based as it is on on interviews and exchanges with Hans-Jurgen Hoess, son of Rudolph Hoess, camp commandant of Auschwitz who was responsible for the murder of over 1 million Jews during WW2. In fact, four important people are mainly portrayed in this latest film; two Jews and two Germans though only one of each couple experienced Auschwitz, albeit in different ways. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a Jewish cellist and Holocaust survivor, now 98 and Hans Jurgen Hoess who lived an idyllic family life in the large house adjoining the Auschwitz camp barbed wire; her daughter, Maya, a therapist who seems deeply affected by her mother’s trauma, and Kai Hoess, the grandson, now a Christian pastor living in southern Germany but who works with American military personnel, speaks English with a pronounced American accent and is seen preaching in the American Bible-belt traditional manner. The younger sister of Hans-Jurgen [young daughter of the Commandant] is also portrayed, an early shot of her in her youth as a Balenciaga model showing her striking beauty. Her brother is shown visiting her in her home in Washington but she, always known at Puppi, has absolutely no interest in confronting the past and is dismissive of the subject.

Cellist and Holocaust survivor, 
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch age 98

Left to right: Anita L-W, daughter Maya, Kai Hoess,
grandson, Hans-Jurgen Hoess, son.
[Still from the film.]

Hans-Jurgen Hoess, like his younger sister Brigitte [Puppi], adamantly refuses to accept the actuality of their early Edenic home, fondly reminiscing about his lovely, idyllic childhood in Auschwitz, horrified to be told that it was next-door to a huge killing machine which gassed and burned over 1 million Jews, on the orders of their beloved father while their equally-adored mother turned away. The living contra-evidence comes in the inescapable experiences of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch whose parents died in a concentration camp, while her cellist skills consigned her to the Auschwitz orchestra assigned to the death marches but enabled her, by chance, to live. Both Hoess grandson, Kai, and Lasker-Wallfisch daughter, Maya, pressure the frail, 87 year old Hans-Jurgen to confront his family’s complicity but he wants to resist the shocking enormity of it all.

Four of the five Hoess children in their
beautiful garden

The documentary suggests that trauma and intense pain are passed on from one generation to the next and presents the Jewish therapist daughter as deeply affected by past events while her mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, is seen as astonishingly tough and unsentimental, qualities which have no doubt contributed to her survival during the war and afterwards. I was greatly impressed with Anita’s vibrant good health and composure in the documentary; her strength, fortitude and determination leap off the screen but these may also be qualities which cannot always be easy for family to live with. She declares that she finds it difficult to empathise with her daughter who is busily applying for a German passport and planning to live in Germany, to her mother’s mystification. Daughter Maya is much more fragile in spirit than her doughty mother. Their meeting with the two Hoess men, in Lasker-Wallfisch’s own home, shows both Hoess men as quiet and thoughtful; full of contrition and regret after their confrontation with past events. And for them, the encounter may have been painfully healing; perhaps also for the old lady but less so for her daughter. The extraordinary Lasker-Wallfisch is stunning in her courage, tenacity and resolute survival; she undoubtedly and intuitively knows, and accepts. that people believe what they are told and do what they do to protect their inner selves. Her [only] meeting with Hans Jurgen presents a remarkable conversation made powerful by its understatement.  

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and daughter Maya Joseph-Wallfisch

Anita's father, Dr Alfons Lasker, a lawyer, won the Iron Cross
in WW1; Mother, Edith, was a talented violinist. They died
in Isbica, concentration camp in Poland, in 1942.
Anita entered Auschwitz in 1943; was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, April 15, 1945.
She co-founded the London  English Chamber Orchestra in 1948.
Long association with the Jewish Museum in Berlin.