"My grandfather is the greatest mass murderer in human history," Kai Höss, the grandson of Auschwitz concentration camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, said in a Tuesday interview with Walla at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Höss spoke in front of an audience of Jews who he said, "in essence, should hate me for what my family did."
Speaking of his childhood memories, Höss reflected on how his family hid his grandfather's secret.
"There was complete silence about our family’s past. My father never really mentioned it. I think they were ashamed," he said.
It was only when Höss was in the 7th grade that he discovered who his grandfather was, which he said changed the way he saw himself. He explained that his family had suppressed the matter, showing no regret or sorrow for the past.
"The approach was more like 'it’s water under the bridge. 'Let’s not talk about it. Anyway, we can’t change it.'"
Rudolf Höss was the longest-serving commandant at Auschwitz and was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He also introduced the use of Zyklon B in the gas chambers. After the war, Höss lived under a false identity until the British discovered him and handed him over to Polish authorities.
Höss was convicted of war crimes and genocide in Poland and was executed by hanging in 1947 at Auschwitz. He had five children, including Hans-Jürgen Höss, Kai Höss's father.
Kai Höss: My family used silence to move on with their lives
Following his execution, Höss's family used silence as a tool to move on with their lives, Kai Höss said.
"They never regretted the Holocaust or praised the Third Reich and the Nazi period. It was just kept quiet," Kai Höss noted.
Höss was born in 1962 in West Germany and grew up in Stuttgart. Initially, he worked as a chef and studied hospitality and tourism, later becoming a priest in Germany.
In 7th grade, the grandson of the Auschwitz commander discovered his family secret in a history lesson about the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"And then I saw that name, Rudolf Höss. I saw how the name was spelled, and it was exactly the same spelling as my last name. I went home that day and asked my mom. I said, 'Mom, is he a relative of ours? Are we connected?' My mom said, 'Yes, he’s your grandfather.'"
From this day on, his life changed completely, he said.
"I was ashamed. Complete shame. I felt really bad. I think one of my first reactions was thinking that everyone knows; that the students know, that the teachers know."
But they didn't know. No one around him connected the dots.
When Kai was 17, he found the book 'Commandant of Auschwitz' on his mother's bookshelf, filled with Rudolf Höss's memories. After starting to read, his heart broke.
"It’s a kind of first-person personal account of what he did, what he really did in Auschwitz. He talks about his childhood and how Himmler called him to Berlin to give him the order to build the camp. There are a lot of stories that break your heart. Really tragic stories where people were murdered, and he’s literally recounting it in the first person."
After reading, Kai's first reaction was to think about how he could give something back to the victims, how he could love them.
"I felt so sad when I saw the pictures of those little kids, standing there in their prisoner clothes and their striped pajamas, and I can imagine how cold it must have been. I just felt that these people were murdered in cold blood. For me, it was a heartbreaking experience just to see what my grandfather himself wrote, what he actually admitted to."
Years later, for the first time, Höss visited Auschwitz.
"One of the hardest parts of Auschwitz for me was the platform at Birkenau, where the selection process took place, where hundreds of thousands, millions of Jews arrived by train, cattle cars from all over Europe, in inhumane conditions, and how they were split to the left and right."
He added, "And they told them: Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you, we’ll give you something to eat, you’ll get a hot shower, all that. A few hours later, or even less, those people were murdered and cremated. Can you imagine what that does to a child? That little heart is beating and crying, and there are people holding it apart. For me, that was Auschwitz-Birkenau. That whole week for me was very hard.""
As a father, Höss took it upon himself to teach his family's story, aiming to make his children understand that they had a great responsibility on their hands.
Höss: It is our responsibility to stand by Israel
"It was very clear that we would share with them who we are, where we came from, and our responsibility as a family to stand by Israel, and show the world that what happened there was a mistake, it’s horrible, it’s shocking, and we must stand with the truth."
Höss chose to avoid contact with some of his family members on his grandfather's side, since they used to avoid admitting that Rudolf Höss's life was fulled with wrongdoing.
"They never really called it a bad thing. They never really called it what it was. Of course, they also didn’t regret it, because it was politically incorrect, and everyone is careful to say the right thing."
Throughout his life, Kai came to see his grandfather's past as a journey of healing. Initially, he worked as a chef and studied hospitality and tourism, later becoming a priest in Germany. In 2003, he co-founded the Evangelical community in Stuttgart. Over the years, Kai has often spoken about his grandfather's crimes during the Holocaust, the importance of memory, his opposition to antisemitism and neo-Nazism, the need to learn lessons from history, and the dangers of extreme ideologies.
In regard to the German and the world's current way in which Nazism is viewed, as more people started to admire Hitler and his ideology, Höss said that seeing these changes broke his heart, but, being a priest, his choice was to see Israel as something based on the scriptures.
"I see Israel from this perspective. It’s not a political thing or emotions or feelings. I see Israel as rooted in the scriptures. It’s a rock I stand on. It never changes. It’s God’s word."