INTERVIEW: Thomas Harding, author of Hanns and Rudolf

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I'm very glad to welcome Thomas Harding to my blog today. He is the author of one of the most fascinating and chilling non-fiction books I have read in a long while: Hanns & Rudolf: The German Jew and the Kommandant of Auschwitz which I reviewed earlier this week (you can read the review here). 

1. Tell me all about your book.

This is the story of my uncle, a German Jew, who tracked down and caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz. It is about two men, who grew up in Germany, whose lives diverged and then intersected in an extraordinary way. It's about what makes a man face his persecutors, it's about revenge, and it's ask how does someone became one of the greatest mass murderers in history. 




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2. How did you get the first idea for it?

In 2006 I heard the eulogy for my uncle Hanns. Much was familiar: the family in Berlin before the Second World War, their flight to Britain in 1936, my uncle joining the British Army and arriving in Belsen shortly after its liberation. But there was something that I had never heard before, that my uncle was a war crimes investigator at the war's end, and that he had caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz. I was gripped by curiosity, and decided to write about this amazing story. 





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Rudolf Hoess and a grave pit found at Auschwitz




3. What was the most interesting thing you learned while writing it?

Two things. My uncle's decision to allow his men to beat Rudolf Höss during his arrest, but to stop them from killing him, therefore allowing the Kommandant to give evidence in Nuremberg which changed the momentum of the trial. This showed enormous foresight and control. And the fact that while the Kommandant orchestrated this appalling mechanism of mass murder at Auschwitz he was deeply loved by his family.  This is so interesting to me, that one man can exhibit such opposite sides to his personality. 



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Hanns and Rudolf after he had been caught & beaten by Hanns's men
 

4. What was the most difficult or challenging aspect of writing this book? 

Writing about the horrors of the camp, I found this very difficult, and meeting with the family of Rudolf Höss, making Auschwitz so real, so close. 



 


5. What are the best 5 books you've read recently?

• Alone in Berlin by Hanns Fallada

• The Spy Who came in from the cold by John Le Carré


• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

• A Good Life by Ben Bradlee

• The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary  by Caapar Henderson




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6. What lies ahead of you now? 

I am on a book tour in USA and Canada to promote Hanns and Rudolf (and loving getting to hear people's reactions to it) and working on two other books