Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding

Author:Thomas Harding [Harding, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

Four days later, he wrote to his parents. First, he thanked them for his prized Dunhill pipe, which they had had repaired and returned to him. Then he congratulated his father on having built up his doctor’s practice, comparing it with the work he was doing as a Nazi hunter: “I am very pleased about the practice. It is marvelous what you have done in only a few years, after all under adverse conditions, war after all is war and it has upset almost everybody one way or another. 1800 [patients], jolly good show. I wished I could already say that I have helped to make 1800 SS swing, but I suppose that will never happen. It is amazing, but the least said about it the better. Thank God some die off in the meantime, at last some satisfaction, of those I am certain, but the others, one never knows.”

Throughout the summer of 1945, Hanns made short forays into the countryside, interviewing hundreds of German soldiers and civilians, but few provided any useful information. Despite his lack of success, he was driven to continue.

*

Meanwhile, back in London, Alfred and Henny Alexander were still trying to rebuild their lives. After the celebrations of VE Day in May 1945, they had struggled like the rest of the population. Food was still rationed—bacon, butter, jam, eggs, chocolate—as was gasoline. The doctor could not make journeys out to the countryside as he liked to do, and it was difficult to move around the city, as the streets were full of construction crews and the public transport system had not recovered from the years of bombing. So while he waited for his sons to return home, the doctor focused on his work. He rented rooms on Wimpole Street and continued to build up his practice.

Elsie and Erich had spent the war living in the countryside outside of London, keeping their children safely away from the Blitz. Each day Erich traveled into the city to run his leather business, which had benefited from the war demand. For Bella, though, the war’s end had brought tragedy. A week after VE Day her husband, Harold, had been killed in Wiltshire when his car was hit by an airplane that had missed the runway. Bella was now faced with bringing up two little boys alone.

Ann was living with her parents in a small flat in Finchley, north London. She kept herself busy by working at the North London Metal Company, where she helped produce supplies for the postwar effort. She was also a member of the League of Jewish Women, whose aim was to “intensify in each Jewish woman her Jewish consciousness and to deepen her sense of responsibility to the Jewish community,” spending many weekends delivering food and offering company to the sick and elderly.

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