Hanns and Rudolf

July 1, 2013
Rudolf Höss (1900–1947), the coldly efficient lapsed-Catholic commandant of Auschwitz, the Third Reich’s most notorious killing machine, oversaw the murder of more than a million men, women, and children. Hanns Alexander (1917–2006) was a German Jewish émigré in the service of the British Army dead-set on hunting down Rudolf (throughout the book, Harding refers to them by their first names in order to humanize them) and bringing him to justice. In this gripping biography-based history, Harding, a former documentary filmmaker and journalist, profiles both men in chronological alternating chapters, starting with their births and childhoods, moving on to their experiences in WWII, and concluding when Hanns and Rudolf finally come face to face on a farm where the war criminal had been desperately trying to elude his pursuers. Rudolf emerges as a loyal, workaholic, career Nazi who, upon his capture, is chillingly candid about his role in the Final Solution, and readers will revel in Hanns’s admirable determination to avenge the deaths of his countrymen and the years of vicious anti-Semitism that forced his family to flee Berlin. 8-page b&w photo insert, 47 b&w photos throughout. Agent: Patrick Walsh, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency, U.K.