An Infamous Auschwitz Home Will No Longer House Families

She describes it as an idyllic place to raise her sons, apart from the fact that Auschwitz sat on the other side of the wall. Now, the home that Grazyna Jurczak occupied for more than four decades—one the public learned housed the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss via the Oscar-winning Zone of Interest—will cease to be a residence. The New York Times reports the 62-year-old decided to sell her home last year, in part because her husband's death left her alone in the place, in part because moviegoers had started "tramping through her garden, peering through her windows, and reminding her of her home's connection to the Holocaust," as the Times puts it.

The home in Oswiecim, Poland, was purchased in October by the NY-based Counter Extremism Project, which plans to open it to the public for the first time. Counter Extremism Project CEO Mark Wallace says the house and an adjacent property will ultimately become the newly formed Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization, which will focus on combating modern-day extremism. "This house has been closed for 80 years. It was out of reach to the victims and their families. Finally, we can open it to honor survivors and show that this place of incredible evil is now open to all," Wallace said.

The price hasn't been disclosed, though Jurczak indicated she got more than the estimated value of $120,000; Wallace says the sum was "significantly more" than Jurczak indicated, though the organization "did not want to pay a big premium for a former Nazi property, even if we could." To ready the home, postwar changes like wallpaper were removed and debris was carted off, leaving it in much the state as it was in during the Höss family's 1941 to 1944 occupation of it. After the war, the home was returned to its original owner, who later sold it to the family of Jurczak's husband. The architect hired to help turn the property into the research center says he envisions making the home's interior "a void, an abyss"; the exterior walls must remain as they are due to a UNESCO preservation order. (More Auschwitz stories.)