For the first time in history, the house of Rudolf Hess, commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz) concentration camp, which operated during World War II and where more than a million Jews and people of other nationalities were killed, will be open to the public for the first time in history.. The house is located next to a concentration camp and the life of the commandant and his family was depicted in the 2023 Oscar-nominated film Zone of Interest.. Daily Mail writes about this.

The house of Rudolf Hess, where he lived with his wife Hedwig and five children, is located at Legionov, 88. Hedwig called the villa “paradise,” and a high wall blocked the inhabitants of the house from seeing what was happening in the concentration camp..

The former house of the extermination camp commandant stands on a busy road in the town of Auschwitz.

Now, more than eight decades since Hess, his wife Hedwig and their five children lived in the villa, it will be opened to the public for the first time. This will happen on January 27, exactly 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops..

“Since the previous Polish occupant moved out last August after more than four decades in the house, only minimal furnishings were left,” notes the journalist, who was among the first to visit the villa.

Prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp worked at the villa in the 1940s, which they later testified to in court and which the commandant’s wife wrote about in her diaries.. During the inspection of the house, striped trousers worn by one of the workers were found in the attic, as well as a Nazi newspaper dated December 1944, handwritten household notes, children's scribbles, a stamp with the head of Adolf Hitler, an empty German cigarette pack and a mug with a stamp..

Research experts will try to figure out who wore the trousers by deciphering the barely visible prisoner number. The fabric features a yellow star, indicating that the owner was Jewish..

The former owner of the house, 62-year-old Grazyna Jurczak, raised both of her sons in this house. She sold her stake in the property to the New York-based Counter Extremism Project (CEP).

As part of the project, CEP will transform Hess's former home into an exhibition space dedicated to countering extremism. The central idea of \u200b\u200bthe project is the concept of the “house next door” - extremism can be found behind the walls of any “ordinary” house.

The interior of the building is planned to be completely dismantled. The renovation plan will be developed by the famous architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The home's furnishings have changed somewhat over 80 years, but the main bathroom—with the green tiles described by the Hess family's housekeeper, his and hers medicine cabinets, and a door lock marked "

Also preserved is a shell next to the tunnel that Hess used to travel between his home and his “office” in the concentration camp.. It was used by actor Christian Friedel, who played Rudolf Hess in the 2023 film Zone of Interest.. Some scenes from the film were filmed in this house.

Although the tunnel on the side of the camp has long been filled in, most of it has been preserved. Also on the floor is the date the house was built - 1937..

The house was built for a Polish officer, and was seized by the Nazis after the invasion of Poland in September 1939.

In May 1940, Hess was appointed commandant of Auschwitz in western Nazi-occupied Poland, where political prisoners were held. He then embarked on a massive project that led to the construction of four large gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II and Birkenau.

Although he was replaced as camp commandant in 1943 following a promotion, Hess's wife and children continued to live in the villa. In May 1944, Hess returned to Auschwitz to spend three months killing 400,000 Hungarian Jews..

The original interior of the house was described in the diary of Polish housekeeper Anela Bednarska, which also detailed that some of the furniture in the house was made? camp prisoners.

“The furniture was durable and tasteful,” she wrote.. In 1942 the attic was converted into servants' quarters. The family's bedrooms were located on the floor below. One of the children's rooms overlooked the administrative buildings of the death camp and the camp crematorium chimney, until Hess ordered a hill to be built to hide it from the children.

After Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II in 1945, Hoss hid for almost a year under the name "

Hess testified at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. When he was accused of killing three and a half million people, he replied: " Only two and a half million, the rest died of disease and hunger."

He was hanged on April 16, 1947 in Auschwitz.

Former concentration camp prisoners were present at the execution. All five Hess children refused to condemn their father.

Recall that 100-year-old Gregor Formanek, a former guard at the Nazi camp Sachsenhausen, who was in Oranienburg, Germany, during World War II, will stand trial for allegedly helping in the “insidious murders” of thousands of prisoners.. The internment camp was famous for its gas chambers and horrific medical experiments and executions, used as a model for Auschwitz.