The Commandant’s Shadow
Probably the most powerful impression made by this gripping documentary comes with a nauseating punch of awareness of the horrific history. Hans Jürgen Höss, the now elderly son of the Nazi Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (executed in 1947), is brought back to visit his childhood home: the wartime house where the naturalised ‘paradisiacal flower garden’ was located right next door to the camp where paradisiacal paradissi of the Höss family, who might have been thought of as far removed from the horrors of the concentration camp, resided completely oblivious to or so they claim the horrors just behind the wall. For the construction of this house and garden were not far from the original site by filmmakers Jonathan Glazer and production designer Chris Oddy for the terrifying and award winning The Zone of Interest, for some viewers of that film it is indeed a grotesque surprise to see the house again almost like a demonic sequoll.
The sense of detachment exhibited by the participants in this documentary is also quite illuminating in that it indicates the kind of narrative many Germans spun for themselves after World War II which helped them distance themselves from blame and the disabling stupidity previously defined by the film may not have in fact been the precise factual reality even amongst the kids themselves. For instance no one here seems to be required to ask whether or not they have watched The Zone of Interest, however the expression is mentioned when introducing the subtitles and this film must certainly have its kitchen.
A filmmaker, Daniela Volker, begins by interviewing Hans Jürgen and his son Kai Höss, who today is a Pastor in Germany who works quite a lot with members of the US armed forces, and was bringing it too when preaching from the pulpit in a thick accent akin to that of a southern American. Even more striking was the fact that Anita Lasker Wallfisch, a survivor of the holocaust living in London, in particular welcomed the two gentlemen in her house, with her daughter Maya present. Both men are taciturn and pensive and full of remorse and, although it was perhaps some sort of a therapeutic exercise, Lasker-Wallfisch deems it “wonderful”. This scene is, for example, very different from that in the 1998 Oscar winner documentary The Last Days where a Jewish doctor who worked with nazis Hans Münch is interviewed with the view to getting information from the sister of a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Instead of providing support or closure to the sister extraction details, Münch, is so argumentative and on edge that it is disturbing.
Next on the list is Hans Jürgen’s sister, Inge Brigitt annoying “Püppi” Höss who used to be a fashion model, and waits for Hans Jürgen’s visit in front of the cameras at her home near Washington during an official visit. (She died after filming, in October 2023.) It is a horrible and unintentional feeling that Hans Jürgen of all people plays the part while pretending to casually appear with his ‘Frog King’ crown, this being the children’s game they used to play in the garden in Auschwitz. She has no desire to face the past and regards this topic as a non-starter. The other viewed sister Annegret of Hans Jürgen is not included in the interviews as she thinks was just an infant in the war and was too obtuse to remember anything specific itself for the course of the war yet she may easily be of interest on the memories of the mother, Hedwig who was the widow of Rudolf and what were her thoughts on everything before she passed away in 1989. As it is tol most operatives and interviewed like Rainer Höss the controversial brother of Kai who was imprisoned for fraud and for abusing the historical fascination with his family had also done.
The film examines somber issues such as the inheritance of trauma and pain through the generations and comes up with a rather enthralling sketch of Maya, somehow faced by this issue as she now works as a therapist, Lasker Wallfisch’s daughter. On the emotional scale where Maya is located, there is also a mother, tough and unemotional, perhaps the very qualities that helped her to survive for decades after the war: here in her late 90s she appears vividly healthy and alert. Lasker-Wallfisch explains that it was difficult for her to “understand or experience the other person’s feelings” for her daughter and perhaps it was with mixed feelings that she heard Maya wished to acquire her German nationality and actually relocation to Germany. Perhaps, as she says, to revive the past, but perhaps too, in some convoluted sense to revive her right to face up to something which she had no personal experience of, or even to run away from her mother. That call perhaps has a different effect the meeting in the front room just does not tie up any fascination the reader may have regarding Lasker Wallfisch. A remarkable historical canvas however.
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