The Auschwitz kommandant

Barbara Cherish's upbringing under the Nazi regime was one of wealth and comfort. But her father's senior position in the Nazi party meant that she and her siblings lived under stress. The year she was born, 1943, her father, Arthur Wilhelm Liebehenschel, became commandant of Auschwitz. In researching her father's story, she found that he kept his relationship with his family and the demands of his job separate. He was found guilty of war crimes at the end of the war and executed in January 1948. At the age of six, she and her siblings were placed into foster care and she was adopted when she was thirteen She arrived in America in December 1956. Forty years later she publicly acknowledged who her birth father was and began her search for her identity.