Brigitte Hoess, now in her 80s, is pictured to the far left of this family photo taken she was a young girl and her father was the commandant of Auschwitz. The photo is held by her nephew Rainer Hoess, who is the one family member to go public with his distaste for the crimes his grandfather committed.
In April , with the war clearly lost, the family fled north. They waited for the right moment to escape to South America, but in March they were found. Shunned because of their connection to the Nazi regime, Brigitte and her family spent the following years in extreme poverty. During the s she left Germany to make a new life in Spain where she worked as a model for three years with the up-and-coming Balenciaga fashion house.
In she married an Irish American engineer working in Madrid. Secret: The women of the Washington elite who were dressed by Hoess would have had no idea of her history.
Actress Elizabeth Taylor, pictured left, poses for the crowds and Hillary Clinton, right, dances with Bill. His work took them to Liberia, Greece, Iran and Vietnam before they moved — together with a young daughter and son — to Washington in Initially Brigitte struggled to adapt to her new life, but it helped the she had found a part-time job in a fashion boutique. For more than 30 years Brigitte Hoess was a sales assistant at the well known Saks Jandel store.
The upscale store's clientele included wives of several presidents, prominent Washington socialites and Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor. As one of the most trusted and experienced sales staff until her retirement eight years ago, it is very likely Hoess would have come into contact with the First Ladies.
Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush are all known to have shopped at the upscale fashion store.
Defiant: Rudolf Hoess boasted at the Nuremberg trials that he 'ran the greatest extermination centre of all time'. Imprisoned: Children behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. They would have had no idea that the sales assistant with a thick German accent dressing them was hiding such a dark family secret. Some who do, defended her however.
One said: 'The only time she leaves the house is to go to the hospital. Her son drives her there once a week. To be honest it would not change our opinion of her as she was just a child. She cannot decide who her father is.
Hoess helped dress not just First Ladies but some of the most wealthy and powerful women at one of the best known fashion stores close to the US capital. Slaughter: Hoess is ashamed of her father's deeds but has also questioned that if six million Jews perished in the Holocaust: 'How can there be so many survivors if so many had been killed?
Today it is still well known as a supplier of Vera Wang bridal gowns. Marx, who died from cancer, is understood to be one of only two people Hoess confided in about her father. Not long after she was hired, she confessed her family background to her bosses Ernest and Sally.
Fortunately for Brigitte, the owner told her that she understood that she had not committed any crime herself and she ended up working at the same boutique for the next 35 years. Brigitte and her husband divorced in and her daughter is dead, but her son lives with her. She sees her grandchildren often but as yet has not been able to bring herself to discuss her dark secret because she doesn't want to upset them.
She tells The Washington Post that her mother used to visit her in Washington from the s up until the late s when she died while staying with her and as a result she is buried somewhere in Northern Virginia. Her other siblings live in Germany, although one brother is dead. One family member who has made public that he is related to Hoess, is her nephew Rainer, who once told Harding: 'If I knew where my grandfather was buried, I would piss on his grave. Brigitte has spent much of her life afraid to talk about her father and even though she knows what he did was terribly wrong, she does remember him fondly.
When she is told about an incident at the camp, when her father was spoken to by a pregnant Jewish woman on her way to the gas chamber with her children, she has had enough. He did what he did. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.
Argos AO. Privacy Policy Feedback. Share this article Share. DE Hiding in N. Virginia, a daughter of Auschwitz - The Washington Post. Share or comment on this article: Rudolph Hoess' daughter Ingebirgitt talks of life near Auschwitz concentration camp e-mail 1. Comments Share what you think. View all. Bing Site Web Enter search term: Search. The momager, 66, calls him 'special' as Khloe says he has good 'energy' and Kim refers to him as a 'step-dad' Emily Ratajkowski shares cute snaps of her 'big boy' Sylvester A few days later, the prisoner was transferred to a British army jail in the town of Minden, where he underwent a rigorous interrogation.
After having admitted emotionlessly that he was responsible for the murder of more than two-and-a-half million Jews the estimate today is that there were 1. There was no technical problem, Hoess replied, and it could have been done in even large numbers. You see, in Germany it was understood that if something went wrong, then the man who gave the orders was responsible. I suppose you want to know in this way if my thought and habits are normal … I am entirely normal.
Even while I was doing the extermination work, I led a normal family life. Hoess added that he was a lone wolf who felt at his best when he was by himself. Hoess was condemned to death by hanging in the Auschwitz camp itself. On April 11, , five days before the sentence was to be carried out, he wrote a last letter to his wife.
Harding met with her, too, while conducting the comprehensive research for his book. She died in her sleep during one such visit, in Her daughter had her body cremated; the ashes were buried secretly in a cemetery on the outskirts of Washington. Brigitte Hoess has never visited the national Holocaust museum in Washington. It is horrible. He decided that he preferred to stick to historical testimonies, documents and sources, and not provide an outlet for a sick, elderly Holocaust denier.
They both loved their country and their families. I found it fascinating to follow their careers and the decisions they made, and to compare and contrast them.
He found the same book on the living room table of Hanns Alexander, the man who caught Hoess, after Alexander passed away. Ofer Aderet Mar. Get email notification for articles from Ofer Aderet Follow.
Open gallery view. Hoess second from right touring Auschwitz with Heinrich Himmler. Credit: U. Holocaust Memorial and Museum. Hoess after his capture. Hoess experimented with various methods of gassing.
He later introduced hydrogen cyanide prussic acid , produced from the pesticide Zyklon B. In the last days of the war, Hoess was advised by Himmler to disguise himself among German Navy personnel. He evaded arrest for nearly a year. When he was captured by British troops on 11 March , he was disguised as a farmer and called himself Franz Lang. His wife had told the British where he could be found, fearing that her son, Klaus, would be shipped off to the Soviet Union, where she feared he would be imprisoned or be tortured.
During his trial in Poland, while never denying that he had committed crimes, he contended that he had only been following orders. He had no illusions about the fate that awaited him. To the end, Hoess contended that, at the most, a million and a half people had died at Auschwitz, not 5 or 6 million.
Hoess was sentenced to death by hanging on 2 April The sentence was carried out on 16 April immediately adjacent to the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp.
The gallows constructed specifically for that purpose, at the location of the camp Gestapo. Rudolf Hoess was led out punctually at 10 a. He was calm.
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