The Polish home of the commandant of Auschwitz, which was at the center of the 2024 Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, has been purchased by an organization fighting antisemitism and will be converted into a center dedicated to combating antisemitism, extremism, and hate.
Standing out among a myriad of award-winning Holocaust-inspired Hollywood films is The Zone of Interest, a historical drama loosely based on the novel of the same name, which took home the 2024 Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
Rather than explicitly depicting the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime, the film is unique in that it centers on the family home of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz.
Originally charged by Heinrich Himmler with opening the camp, Höss experimented with Zyklon B gas and built what ultimately became a place of mass extermination, where about one million people were sent to their deaths.
As he planned for the gas chambers and crematorium, he and his wife were also raising five young children at their upscale Polish residence on 88 Legionow Street, called “House 88.” The number 88 was code for “Heil Hitler.” H is the 8th letter of the alphabet.
The focus on daily life in the Höss home, which sits just beyond the camp’s infamous barbed-wire brick walls, creates a chilling portrayal of the banality of evil and sheds light on the stark dichotomy of life and death that persisted under the Nazis.
In addition to the three-story villa, once famously referred to by Höss’s wife as “paradise,” the property also features lush gardens and a swimming pool. It was known to play host to Hitler’s most senior SS officers, including Himmler and Josef Mengele, the “angel of death” doctor.
While the real house remained out of public eye since it fell into the hands of a private family after the war, the film’s popularity led to unprecedented – and much unwanted – attention to the property and its Polish owners, leading them to eventually sell.
“I had to get out of there,” Grazyna Jurczak, the home’s former owner, told The New York Times earlier this year.Enter Mark D. Wallace, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and founder of the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based nonprofit, and fellow philanthropists Elliott Broidy and Dr. Thomas Kaplan.
Center dedicated to combating antisemitism
Recognizing the urgent need to push back against the normalization of Jew-hatred, they purchased Höss’s former home with the intention of converting it into a center dedicated to combating antisemitism, extremism, and hate.
“I cannot imagine a more symbolic form of justice for the millions of lives lost at the hands of the Nazis than turning what was once a breeding ground for evil into a space that fights against evil,” Broidy said. “And that starts with reclaiming the site by putting up a mezuzah.”
Unlike the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88 will not only serve to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust but also as a space for research, education, and advocacy.
“Elie Wiesel rightly said that ‘we must never forget’ the Holocaust to ensure the end of such hate and to prevent another genocide,” Wallace said at a recent event to mark the first time the home’s doors were open to the public since the war. “The ordinary house of the greatest mass murderer will now be converted into the extraordinary symbol of that fight.”
The repurposed house and its surrounding grounds will include an additional new building. Famed architect Daniel Libeskind, who has been commissioned for the project, is a Polish American and the son of Holocaust survivors. He has designed iconic buildings, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Last month, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Broidy and Kaplan announced the launch of a major fundraising campaign for the ARCHER at House 88 initiative.