Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz

The extraordinary true story of the German Jew who tracked down and caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

Hanns and Rudolf is the extraordinary true story of the German Jew who tracked down and caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz. Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s. Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for some of the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators; Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.

Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s; from the horror of the concentration camps to the trials of Belsen and Nuremberg, Hanns and Rudolf is both a gripping, moving and deeply felt work of history, and the story of a remarkable quest for justice. Thomas Harding reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss’ capture, and of two lives that diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.

Thomas Harding is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, among other publications. He co-founded a television station in Oxford, England, and for many years was an award-winning publisher of a newspaper in West Virginia.

The book will be available for purchase at the event.

Register to tell a friend about this lecture.

Comments

If you would like to comment about this lecture, please register here.

©2003-2006 Niminim Limited. Created by

Any ad revenue is entirely reinvested into the Lecture List's operating fund