Rosamund Fischer’s Real Name

A literary debut inspired by true events by one of Italy’s most promising screenwriters.

In the suburbs of Washington D.C. lives an elderly woman who has erased her past until a call from a journalist forces her to reckon with her true identity.

On the other side of the telephone is a journalist, whose great uncle had fled Berlin in the 1930’s. His research on Rudolph Hoess’s capture led him to Virginia, where Hoess’s daughter, IngeBritte has been living under the alias of Rosamund Fischer.

Born in 1933 on a farm on the Baltic Sea, she grew up in a villa in Poland, a “little paradise” where, the pavilions and the prisoners of Auschwitz, simply did not exist. In this cat and mouse game with the journalist, she claims she was unaware of the sounds around her and the role her father played. But Rosamund Fischer is a liar. She has lied to her husband, her children, and she lies to herself.

In 1947, Rudolph Hoess was tried and hanged in Poland. IngeBritte moved to Spain, became a model for Balenciaga and then changed her name. She might have forgiven her father, like her mother whom she nurtured towards the end of her life, but we will never know. Because there is no changing history, she rewrote her own.

A novelized first-person reconstruction of the life of the daughter of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Hoess. To date, all we know of her lies in a single, disturbing interview she gave in 2015.

My whole life, I deluded myself that no one would ever discover my secret.
But one day, the past found me, and I was forced to recognize the secrets
I had kept from everyone, including myself