User:15/Articles/Rainer Höss

Rainer Höss (born 25 May 1965 in Stuttgart) is the grandson of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss. He has described himself as a tolerance preacher. He is one of the co-founders of Footsteps, a small group of volunteers that claims to be a Holocaust education organization. Since 1991 Höß was convicted at least 13 times in German courts for fraud, scam, falsifying documents and usage of violence. His last conviction dates June 24, 2020.

Family
He is the son of Hans-Jürgen Höss, born in 1937. He never knew his grandfather Rudolf, who was executed at Auschwitz in 1947, eighteen years before he was born. When he was 12 years old, he learned about the history of his grandfather in school. His mother divorced his father in 1983; he himself is divorced and has three children. He states:


 * Before he was hanged, my grandfather wrote to my grandmother that she should change her name. Both my grandmother and my father were in complete denial of his crimes, and so they adamantly refused to change their names. ‘Höss will remain Höss,’ my grandmother would say. I decided that if I kept the name, this would enable me to do my part in repenting in my grandfather’s name. It’s not so simple, of course – you always need to be careful about everything you say, because people are judging you. Sometimes people curse me on the Internet, and neo-Nazis are always trying to contact me. Ultimately, the name Höss is connected with Auschwitz, where millions of people were murdered.

The Holocaust
After his parents divorced, Rainer started to search historic documents in German archives to find the real history of his grandfather. He worked together with the Institute of Contemporary History (IFZ). He received the rights to his grandfather’s archive, after research in Mauthausen and Buchenwald. He participated in the documentary Hitler's Children, and has made contact with victims and survivors of the Holocaust. From family archives and personal knowledge he testifies about the life his grandfather had in private and explains to youth, whom he visits in schools, how to see this in today's context.

During his life, he has made multiple visits to Auschwitz in person, the first time in 2009. During the visits, he talks with visitors and answers people's questions. He has stated that he would kill his own grandfather if he had the opportunity to meet him. In 2013, Holocaust survivor and public speaker Eva Mozes Kor agreed to symbolically "adopt" Rainer Höss as her grandson.

He wrote The Heritage of the Kommandant: On being part of a terrible family (German: Das Erbe des Kommandanten/Berlin: Belleville, 2013).

Reactions
The Israeli journalist Eldad Beck has stated he considers Rainer Höss' involvement in Holocaust issues to be "motivated by pure opportunism." Beck, who exposed in 2009 Rainer Höß’s offer to sell Yad Vashem personal effects of his murderous grandfather, travelled with Höß to Auschwitz on November 2009 and interviewed Höss for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot and German daily BILD. The documentary film Hitler's Children shows the second trip they both made to Auschwitz a year later. By the time the film was produced Beck had already received information about the criminal activities of Höß and was convinced that Höß was a serial liar. However, this information was not included by the director in the film. Beck stated that Höß "continues trying to trade with his family's belongings dating back to the Holocaust." In a report published by Israel Hayom on July 24, 2020 Beck exposes Höß' criminal past and interviews for the first time Rainer Höß’ elder brother. Later Beck exposed that the Holocaust survivor, Eva Mozes-Kor, severed in 2015 all contacts with Höß, which she symbolically adopted few months before. Mozes-Kor accused Höss of lying the whole time“.

Books

 * L'Héritage du commandant : le petit-fils du commandant d'Auschwitz raconte, Paris, Notes de Nuit éditions, 2016.