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I met the family who lived next door to Auschwitz – the horrors of The Zone of Interest isn’t the full story
It was a chilly night in October 2023 when I took my seat for a preview screening of The Zone of Interest – the film about Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz who lived next to the camp with his family. It was a subject I knew a fair bit about.
As an author and biographer, I’ve spent many years researching the Höss family. I was the first person to interview the commandant’s daughter and visited Auschwitz with members of his family: his daughter-in-law and grandson.
I had unearthed dozens of archives and read scores of witness statements and memoirs. The result was a bestselling book Hanns and Rudolf published 10 years ago, which won the Wingate Prize literary award.
