St George’s was delighted to welcome bestselling British author Thomas Harding into School this Thursday, 10^th July. Harding will be spending two days in Luxembourg with the British Ambassador, The Honourable Alice Walpole, who also accompanied him on his visit to St George’s. St George’s Chairman of the Board of Governors, Mark Turner, and Trevor Rowell of the Council of British International Schools were also in attendance.

Harding has published a book – now translated into 13 languages – titled “Hanns and Rudolf – The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz”. The book tells the story of two men: Hanns Alexander, the author’s great uncle, and Rudolf Höss, chief commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Harding shared the engaging details of their lives and accompanied his stories with unique personal photos that he had collected during his research.

Alexander had been a mischievous, affluent Jewish teenager living in Berlin when his family fled to Great Britain just prior to the war. As part of the Pioneer Corps he fought for the British Army and later became a war crimes investigator. He was responsible for the capture of Gustav Simon, who was the Chief of the Civil Administration in Luxembourg while it was occupied by Nazi Germany, and Rudolf Höss.

Höss had joined the German army at the young age of 14, being promoted to Sergeant during WWI. Following time in a German prison he became a farmer and married his sweetheart. It was at a military parade that he met Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Nazi SS, who recruited him as a prison guard and soon promoted him to 2^nd in command at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then later he was sent to establish and build a concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. He eventually was responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of camp inmates and deportees.

Students were given the opportunity to ask questions after the extremely interesting 45 minute presentation. Amongst other things, Harding revealed that the book had taken roughly six years of research and work before publication, and that he thought his great uncle would have been pleased that the story was finally told – although he did not ever speak of it to friends and family.

Harding stressed the point that, although he indeed was responsible for genocide, that Höss had been startlingly human – thus providing evidence that the danger of genocide happening again is in fact very real. He urged students to be vigilant and to stand up for the rights of others. In writing the book, he said, he had become aware that humans were capable of both incredible beauty and horrendous atrocities.