Josef Paczynski: Inmate of Auschwitz who was chosen by the notorious commander Rudolf Höss to become his personal barber

Paczynski was asked why he didn't use his sharp tools to slit the throat of the man responsible for over a million deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Paczynski: he was one of the longest survivors at Auschwitz (AP)

Jozef Paczynski, who has died at the age of 95, was a Polish political prisoner at Auschwitz who became the personal barber to the notorious camp commander, Rudolf Höss.

For much of the Second World War, Paczynski was led to Höss's home and ordered to cut the mass murderer's hair. For decades afterward he was asked why he didn't use his sharp tools to slit the throat of the man responsible for over a million deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps. His answer was that it would not have stopped the killing, but would have meant certain death for himself and many others.

"I thought about it," Paczynski said in a speech in January in Krakow. "But when I realised what the consequences would be I simply could not do it."

Paczynski was imprisoned at Auschwitz in June 1940 as punishment for trying to flee German-occupied Poland to join the Polish army in France. He was arrested after crossing into Slovakia and was taken in the first transport to Auschwitz, becoming prisoner No 121. At the camp he was assigned to work in a barber shop where the SS had their hair cut. One day Höss showed up and singled out Paczynski from the other barbers to come to his family home at the edge of the camp to trim his hair.

Paczynski recalled in his Krakow lecture that he was terrified when he was taken to cut Höss's hair. "My voice was shaking, my hands were shaking and my legs were shaking," he said. Yet Höss was apparently satisfied and had Paczynski return repeatedly, even getting him to cut his childrens' hair, although he never said a word to him.

Paczynski, who remained at Auschwitz until 18 January 1945, was one of the prisoners who survived there the longest. He was among a group the Nazis moved out days before the Soviet army liberated the camp and was later freed by US soldiers in Germany.

Paczynski said he never witnessed any brutality by Höss, who developed and oversaw the implementation of gas chambers where over a million Jews and others were murdered. Höss was tried by Polish authorities after the war and sentenced to death by hanging in 1947. The sentence was carried out at Auschwitz next to a crematorium.

After the war, Paczynski became a mechanical engineer and a teacher. In 2001 he was honoured with the Commander's Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland. In 2010 he met Rainer Höss, Rudolf's grandson, who had visited Auschwitz in his struggle to understand what his grandfather had done. Paczynski asked him to walk about the room, then told him: "You look just like your grandfather."

VANESSA GERY

Jozef Paczynski, Holocaust survivor: born Poland 20 January 1920; died Krakow, Poland 26 April 2015.