T.S. Eliot

Rudolph Höss had a strict catholic upbringing, was even expected to become a man of the cloth. Instead he chose to commit murder on an industrial scale. Not that he had any illusions about the nature of what he was doing, in fact he understood that this was not right. But from a screwed up sense of duty or "sacrifice" he not only followed orders, but agreed with Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's chief of the SS, that somebody had to do it, so that normal people could find rest in their sleep and not be held accountable for the implementation of the Nazi's eugenic laws. At least, that's the perception, for which Höss himself would have liked to be remembered.

His perverted sense of heroism should fool nobody, but the truly scary aspect is not the monster in uniform. What is really disturbing is the perfectly humdrum persona of a committed and efficient executive manager and devoted family man, somebody who in different circumstances easily could be your next door neighbor, or partner on the golf course.

In 1881 an enterprising Jewish family moved from an obscure place, called Birkenau, to Oldenburg in Prussia. Herr Cohn was an enthusiastic believer in assimilation, his wife a great fan of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They christened their oldest son "Emil." At the age of 19 the young man had made his A-levels, but decided against an academic career. From his tiny inheritance he bought one of those high wheel velocipedes, and pedaled all the way to London. There he rented a two room basement flat in Tottenham Court Road, hung up his vehicle in the window and opened a bicycle shop. A few years later we find him associating with a group of enterprising gentlemen who recently had broken Brazil's latex monopoly.

Acting for the British Government in 1876, Henry Wickham had smuggled rubber seeds and shoots out of Matto Grosso. The seeds were germinated at the Tropical Herbarium in Kew Gardens, London, and from there exported to Ceylon and Singapore. For young Cohn this meant, he did well in the tire business and made a fortune from his possessions in India. An early widower, he employed a mail-dating agency to find his second wife and in 1911 he married my grandmother at a registrar's office of his Majesty, King George V. The British Raj is now merely a footnote to history, but the paperwork still exists and when the Brits packed their duffel bags on August 15, 1947 they took the files with them to the Indian Office in London where it still can be found. Had it ever been made available to German authorities, I probably wouldn't be around. Because after the assassinations in Sarajevo, Emil Cohn chose to be a patriot, sold his possessions, expatriated himself and his family to Germany, and, already in an advanced age, enlisted in the Kaiser's army.

In 1933 it was the Fatherland's turn to repay his patriotic services. Since there had never been papers filed with the German authorities, Emil’s crafty Aryan wife and the four surviving children slipped through.

But for old Cohn there was a boxcar waiting, which in 1942 shipped him back to his place of birth, Auschwitz. The German Reichsbahn (imperial railway) debited the fare for him and his travel companions to the "resettlement department" (Referat IV B44). We all have heard of its chief of operations, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. The office squared its accounts from funds extorted from Jewish emigrants and from the precious metal in the tooth fillings of victims in the death camps. After the war 1,200,000 railway employees and their uncounted friends and families protested to have been utterly oblivious to the nocturnal transmigrations of the rolling stock in their charge.

On arrival my grandfather went through the selection procedure - an old man of failing health, what chance did he have? - and Dr. Mengele directed him to file in into the column who was made running to the phony shower rooms. There is a possibility that Commandant Höss had been present on the platform to oversee the selection procedure. But I am not sure; I don’t know the exact day.