The grandson of the Auschwitz commandant, who headed up the notorious concentration camp where more than a million Jews were murdered, is now a church pastor with a great love for the Jewish people.
As we mark this coming Tuesday’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day (on the very day of the camp’s liberation in 1945), it’s an ideal opportunity to join with Kai Höss in helping to ensure such terrible evil is never allowed to happen again.
Pastor of the Bible Church of Stuttgart in Germany, Kai has been sharing his story on YouTube’s Facing the Canon hosted by evangelist J John.
He did not grow up in a Christian home and knew nothing of his grandfather Rudolf until he was a teenager. But the discovery left him with “a very strong sense of shame”.
He explained that though his countrymen recognised the Nazi era was bad, it was generally regarded as water under the bridge and no-one ever talked about it.
However, Holocaust education in school was mandatory and he soon joined the dots, realising with horror that his own family had contributed to the slaughter of six million Jewish people.
But he got on with life and made a success of hotel management until, in Singapore, he fell ill and ended up in intensive care after an operation went wrong. Struggling with depression and pain, he found a Gideon Bible in the cabinet beside his bed and began reading it.
“And Psalm 51 hit me right between the eyes. King David had just committed the most atrocious sin (of adultery and murder) and breaks down before God, asking forgiveness. Was I so different? I realised I probably would have been capable of the same great evil (as his grandfather).”
He duly recovered and later, in a Singapore hotel, got into conversation with a lovely Christian couple who kept coming back and eventually invited him to church.
Finally, over Easter 1989, he committed his life to Jesus, which has given him the opportunity and platform to give something back to God’s chosen people. “I consider myself a Gentile saved by Yeshua (Jesus in Hebrew).
“Our Creator allowed the creatures he made to nail him to the cross. And yet, as the hymn says, his amazing grace has saved a wretch like me! And I want to serve a purpose in his redemptive economy.”
As part of this, Kai has since shared something of God’s love for the many Holocaust survivors he has met. “It’s always a very humbling experience, and I just want to give them a hug. It’s heartbreaking.”
One man who lost his entire family at Auschwitz came up to embrace him, saying: “I love you and I forgive you.” And in London he met an elderly lady still with a camp tattoo on her arm who remembered his grandfather. “I felt joy that God had enabled me to show her love in this way.”
As J John himself put it, “We cannot alter the past, but we can bring the past to the altar of God.”
Rudolf Höss was tried and sentenced to death by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal and hanged on April 16, 1947.
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
