{"id":118854,"date":"2025-02-03T17:05:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T15:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=118854"},"modified":"2025-02-02T12:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T10:41:12","slug":"02-00-107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=118854","title":{"rendered":"How the Auschwitz Commandant\u2019s Infamous Home Has Been Turned Into a Center Against Antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>How the Auschwitz Commandant\u2019s Infamous Home Has Been Turned Into a Center Against Antisemitism<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Pini Dunner<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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British teens placed pictures of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on the train tracks leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi death camp. Photo: JRoots<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It was the most jarring moment of last year\u2019s Academy Awards: as Jonathan Glazer accepted the Oscar for \u201cThe Zone of Interest,\u201d a harrowing film set in the shadow of Auschwitz, instead of using his speech to honor the victims of the Holocaust, he made a political statement that many saw as an astonishing trivialization<\/a> of the very subject his film had purported to explore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than acknowledging the unfathomable suffering of the Jews murdered at Auschwitz in particular, and the dangers of pathological antisemitism in general, Glazer chose to equate the Holocaust with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, implicitly drawing a moral equivalence between Nazis and the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

The setting made it all the more disturbing \u2014 delivered amidst the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, Glazer\u2019s so-called virtue-signaling call for universal resistance to \u201cdehumanization\u201d felt less like a plea for moral clarity and more like a cynical weaponization of the Holocaust to delegitimize Jewish self-defense and undermine the fight against the malignant evil of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d is a film about the chilling banality of evil, loosely based on the novel of the same name, centering on Auschwitz commandant Rudolf H\u00f6ss<\/a> and his family as they go about their daily lives in a picturesque home just beyond the camp\u2019s walls.<\/span><\/p>\n

The film\u2019s unsettling premise lies in its depiction of the H\u00f6ss family\u2019s mundane existence \u2014 gardening, swimming, and dining \u2014 while the machinery of genocide operates just out of sight. It is a study in complicity, yet it deliberately omits the suffering of Jewish victims, leaving their fate largely unseen and unheard.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, somehow, Glazer\u2019s acceptance speech managed to be even more disturbing than this conscious erasure. Instead of honoring those who perished, he co-opted the memory of the Holocaust to push a political agenda against Israel, without once mentioning the horrific evil perpetrated against Jews \u2014 fellow Jews! <\/em>\u2014 on Oct. 7, 2023. Not a word about the deliberate murder, torture, and rape of 1,200 Jews, whose only sin was being Jewish in the land of their heritage, Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Hollywood \u2014 even, sadly, some within Jewish Hollywood \u2014 may be lost in its own navel-gazing world of self-righteousness, many Jews and Gentiles across the United States and beyond have been utterly shocked by the alarming resurgence of antisemitism in the 16 months since the Oct. 7 massacre.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter Ambassador Mark D. Wallace<\/a>, who founded the Counter Extremism Project<\/a> (CEP) in 2014. Recognizing the urgent need to push back against the normalization of Jew-hatred, he enlisted my good friend Elliott Broidy<\/a> and fellow philanthropist Dr. Thomas Kaplan<\/a>. Together they purchased Rudolf H\u00f6ss\u2019s former home in O\u015bwi\u0119cim, just outside the Auschwitz compound, the very setting of \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d \u2014 and created the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, whose goal is not just to remember the victims of the Holocaust but also to find the best ways to combat the spread of antisemitism and advocate for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of allowing the Auschwitz commandant\u2019s house to remain a grotesque relic of history, they are turning it into a global center<\/a> dedicated to combating antisemitism and extremism, ensuring that the lessons of the past are neither distorted nor forgotten \u2014 by Hollywood directors or by anyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, Elliott was in Poland for the 80th anniversary commemoration of Auschwitz\u2019s liberation. As part of the events, H\u00f6ss\u2019s house at 88 Legion\u00f3w Street was opened to visiting dignitaries for the first time since the Holocaust.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just steps from the site where 1.1 million Jews, along with 20,000 Roma and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners, were murdered, this house was once home to the man who orchestrated that industrial-scale slaughter: Rudolf H\u00f6ss. But for nearly eight decades, the Polish family that occupied it since 1945 refused to let anyone inside, despite its profound historical significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the macabre site is just the tip of the spear. A major fundraising campaign has been launched to support ARCHER at House 88\u2019s mission to transform the H\u00f6ss home into a global center for research, education, and advocacy against extremism and antisemitism. With comprehensive programming designed for college students and educational tools set to be used worldwide, the initiative aims to confront hate where it festers most.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, Ambassador Wallace emphasized the center\u2019s crucial role as a global hub for combating hate, while former US Senator Norm Coleman<\/a> called the project a direct and urgent challenge to antisemitism and extremism.<\/span><\/p>\n

I spoke to Elliott while he was in Poland. \u201cRudolf H\u00f6ss\u2019s house stood untouched for decades, a silent witness to history\u2019s darkest crimes,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe refused to let it remain a relic of evil. House 88 will be transformed into a center for fighting antisemitism, extremism, and hate. The lesson of House 88 is so disturbing: a neighbor can be fanatically antisemitic, and the result is the death of millions of Jews \u2014 or 1,200 innocent Israelis on the border of Gaza.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His words carry the weight of history and urgency. This project isn\u2019t only about preserving the past \u2014 it\u2019s about ensuring the world understands where unchecked hate leads, and giving future generations the tools to resist it.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of ARCHER at House 88\u2019s board members is another good friend of mine, George Schaeffer<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m a child of Holocaust survivors,\u201d he told me, \u201cand I know how important it is for us to never forget what antisemitism can lead to. The more we know about the past \u2014 the horrors of the past \u2014 the more we can correct the future, and change the future.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

George\u2019s commitment to this project is deeply personal. \u201cWhat we are constructing next to Auschwitz is an important way of teaching what the real dangers are,\u201d he added. \u201cThe commandant and his family lived next door to Auschwitz as if it was normal \u2014 we need to make sure that it\u2019s never normal to allow antisemitism to flourish, especially if it is on our own doorstep.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In synagogues across the Jewish world, we are currently reading the Torah portions that recall the slavery and persecution of the Jews in ancient Egypt. One of the primary directives of Jewish tradition is incorporating the Hebrew phrase Zecher Li\u2019yetziat Mitzrayim <\/em>\u2014 a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt \u2014 into our prayers and blessings. But this is not just an exercise in historical memory \u2014 it is a directive for vigilance.<\/span><\/p>\n

A just society can only thrive and survive if persecution and hatred are identified, combated, and rooted out. We must never be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking the danger has passed. Antisemitism may have begun more than three millennia ago in Egypt, but it has reared its ugly head in every era and every location since.<\/span><\/p>\n

And now, as we face yet another alarming resurgence, ARCHER at House 88 stands as a powerful new initiative to ensure that this latest iteration of Jew-hatred is confronted and defeated \u2014 just as Pharaoh was in Egypt, just as Hitler and H\u00f6ss were in their time, and just as every other vicious antisemite throughout history has ultimately been overcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How the Auschwitz Commandant\u2019s Infamous Home Has Been Turned Into a Center Against Antisemitism Pini Dunner British teens placed pictures of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on the train tracks leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi death camp. Photo: JRoots It was the most jarring moment of last year\u2019s Academy Awards: as Jonathan Glazer accepted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119006,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118854\/revisions\/119006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}