Located at 88 Legionów Street in the southern Polish city of Oświęcim, the house sits near the former camp’s perimeter fence.
The property became the focus of public attention after last year’s release of The Zone of Interest, a British-Polish-American film that depicted the domestic life of Höss and his family living in the shadow of Auschwitz from 1941 to 1944.
According to The New York Times, CEP bought the house from its latest owner, Grażyna Jurczak, who "found living in it too challenging when people began peering into her windows following the release of the film."
Rudolf Höss (right), pictured in 1944 with Richard Baer (left), the last commandant of Auschwitz, and Josef Mengele (centre), the notorious camp doctor known as the "Angel of Death." Photo: Bernhard Walther or Ernst Hofmann or Karl-Friedrich Höcker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
'Place of incredible evil'
The daily quotes Mark Wallace, chief executive of CEP and a former US diplomat, as saying: "Finally, we can open it to honor survivors and show this place of incredible evil."
Wallace added that CEP planned to convert the house and the one next door into the base of a new organisation called Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization.
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Piotr Cywiński, has told the media that the museum is following the American project with interest, but is not involved in its creation.
However, he did not rule out the possibility of future cooperation.
Photo: Alecto Chardon, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The property is being redesigned by American architect Daniel Libeskind, who told The New York Times that his idea is to turn the interior of the house into “a void, an abyss."
The newspaper reported that "workers had removed all post-war elements, leaving the house as it would have looked when the Höss family lived there."
The original items that were found in the house include the striped trousers worn by Auschwitz inmates. They were used to fill up a hole in the roof.
Höss’s former house is due to be opened to visitors on January 27, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
(mk/gs)
Source: PAP, New York Times