New Auschwitz research center to bring music to notorious Nazi’s reclaimed home
Once a ‘paradise’ occupied by commandant Rudolf Höss, the center will now host research, education, professional training, policy advocacy, and art

AUSCHWITZ — Given the number of world leaders and diplomats touring the house on the edge of the Auschwitz concentration camp once occupied by Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss, the property is eerily quiet.
The house, once a luxurious “paradise” where the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz lived from 1940 to 1944, is being converted into a research center fighting against antisemitism and extremism, and operated by the non-profit organization Counter Extremism Project (CEP).
CEP purchased the massive property recently, and the rooms are still bare, save for several displays arranged around the house. Journalists walk quietly through the rooms, reading stories on the walls and speaking with representatives.
CEP timed the center’s opening with International Holocaust Memorial Day Monday, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Russia’s Red Army. Throughout the day, the center is temporarily closed for security arrangements, as world leaders pay their visits. (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was touring the grounds as this article was written.)
The recently launched project is still under development, which is why the massive multi-story house is empty. Many rooms are still in the home’s original condition, or hastily redecorated with artifacts and information for visitors.
In one room, one can see several Höss family artifacts discovered during excavations over the past several months — an old newspaper, some empty beer bottles, a coffee jar, and a pair of pants worn by an Auschwitz inmate, whose identity and fate are as yet unknown.
In another, a sign on the wall tells the story of Lore Sternfeld and her lenses. Sternfeld worked as a mechanic for the German lens company Astro Berlin before she was deported and likely murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. As part of the project, a London-based lens maker called Focus Canning acquired several lenses made during her time and is featuring them in an exhibit of Sternfeld’s work.

“Essentially, we are colleagues, connected across time, and when these lenses were discovered, we felt compelled to honor Lore in some way,” said Ben Mitchell, Focus Canning’s managing director.
During their time there, the Höss family built themselves a paradise of gardens, pools, a stable, and a sauna, all just across the wall from Auschwitz barracks. A tunnel discovered underneath the home gave Rudolf Höss the means to depart from his family with ease and access the buildings where he raped female inmates.
Höss’s notorious sadism was depicted in several Hollywood movies, including “Schindler’s List” and “The Zone of Interest.”

The new Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization (or as it is more commonly called, ARCHER at House 88) will become a center of research, education, professional training, and policy advocacy, a CEP spokesman explained. It will host panels and seminars, and maintain a team of resident research fellows.
The project “will provide a unique opportunity to remember the victims of extremism, while at the same time taking action to prevent the radicalization of future generations,” said ARCHER director Jacek Purski. “This is a wonderful opportunity to look forward and imagine a better world.”
The center will house a gallery for art and music, exploring the power of art to confront extremism. Italian pianist and composer Francesco Lotoro, who has been collecting music written in concentration camps for more than 30 years, will maintain a permanent exhibit, playing the music of thousands of song sheets discovered in the camps on a loop.

“My hope is that these pieces will provide a musical accompaniment to the work of undoing the same hatred that created the unspeakable conditions in which they were written,” Lotoro said.
The property was purchased “a bit above fair market value” from the family that lived here previously, the CEP spokesman said.
The center will be maintained under the patronage of UNESCO, and designed and developed in collaboration with the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, best known for his work on the Jewish Museum in Berlin.