Safety, silence and a chilling past

Visitors at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, the site of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in Oswięcim, Poland. The home of the death camp’s wartime commandant, Rudolf Hoss, which was the subject of the Oscar-winning movie ‘The Zone of Interest’, will soon welcome visitors.— ©2025 The New York Times Company

FOR 42 years, Grazyna Jurczak lived in a three-storey house in Oswiecim, southern Poland, adjacent to Auschwitz.

Overlooking a former gas chamber and gallows, the home once belonged to Rudolf Hoss, Auschwitz’s wartime commandant.