Amon Göth
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Amon Leopold Göth (or Goeth; December 11, 1908 – September 13, 1946) was a Hauptsturmführer of the SS and was the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Płaszów, Poland.
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[edit] Early life and career
Göth was born in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a family in the printing industry. At the age of 22, Göth became a member of the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party. In 1930 he was assigned the Party Number 510764. Göth simultaneously joined the Austrian SS and was appointed an SS-Mann with the SS Number 43673.
Göth's early SS activities are little known, largely due to the fact that the Austrian SS was an illegal and underground organization until the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. Between 1932 and 1936, Göth was a member of an Allgemeine-SS company in Vienna and, by 1937, had risen to the rank of SS-Oberscharführer. Between 1938 and 1941, he was a member of SS-Standarte (Regiment) 11 operating from Vienna and was commissioned an SS-Untersturmführer on July 14, 1941.
[edit] Płaszów
In August 1942, Göth left Vienna to join the staff of the SS and Police Leader of Kraków. He was appointed as a regular SS officer of the Concentration Camp service, and on February 11, 1943 was assigned to construct and command a forced labor camp at Płaszów. The camp took one month to construct via slave labor and, on March 13, 1943, the Jewish ghetto of Kraków was closed down with the surviving inhabitants imprisoned in the new labor camp. Approximately 2,000 people died during the evacuation, many of whom Göth personally executed.
On September 3, 1943, Göth was further tasked to close down the ghetto at Tarnow, where an unknown number of people were killed on the spot. On February 3, 1944, Göth shut down the concentration camp at Szebnie by ordering the inmates to be murdered on the spot or deported to other camps, again killing several thousand people. On April 20, 1944, Göth was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer, having received a double promotion and thus skipping the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. He was also appointed a regular officer of the Waffen-SS. His assignment as Commandant of the Płaszów Labor Camp continued, now under the direct authority of the SS Economics and Administration Office.
In Płaszów, Göth tortured and murdered prisoners on a daily basis. During his time at Płaszów, Göth allegedly shot over 500 Jews himself; Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews, famously said, "When you saw Göth, you saw death."
[edit] Oskar Schindler
The exact nature of the relationship between Göth and Oskar Schindler is not known, but it is suggested that in order to save the lives of the Jews working for him (and keep his own profits), Schindler made friends with Göth. These Jews initially lived in a sub-camp in his factory.
On September 4, 1944, with the Soviet army approaching Kraków, this sub-camp was closed by the Nazi authorities and the Jews were forced to move to the Płaszów camp. To save his workers, Schindler continuously bribed Göth with money and black market goods.
When Płaszów itself was shut down on October 15, 1944, Schindler managed to establish his famous list of Jews that were not to be murdered, but instead sent to a new kriegswichtige (war-essential) factory at Brnenec-Brunnlitz in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Czech Republic.
[edit] Later military career
On September 13, 1944, Göth was relieved of his position as Commandant of Płaszów and was assigned to the SS Office of Economics and Administration. Shortly thereafter, in November 1944, Göth was charged with theft of Jewish property (which, according to Nazi legislation, belonged to the Reich), and was arrested by the Gestapo. He was scheduled for an appearance before SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen, but due to the progress of the Second World War, and Germany's looming defeat, a tribunal was never assembled and the charges against him were summarily dismissed.
He was next assigned to Bad Tölz, Germany, where he was quickly diagnosed by SS doctors as suffering from mental illness and diabetes. He was committed to a sanitarium where he was arrested by American troops in May 1945. At the time of his arrest, Göth claimed to have been recently promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer and, during later interrogations, several documents list him as "SS-Major Goeth". Rudolf Höß was also of the opinion that Göth had been promoted and, when called to give testimony at Göth's trial, indicated that Göth was an SS-Major in the Concentration Camp service.
Göth's service record, however, does not support the claim of a late war promotion and he is listed in most texts as having held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer.
[edit] Execution
After the war, the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland at Kraków found Göth guilty of murdering tens of thousands of people. He was hanged on September 13, 1946, aged 37, not far from the former site of the Płaszów camp, saluting the Führer in a final act of defiance.
In 2002, an interview book with Göth's daughter, Monika, was published in Germany under the name Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder? (But I must love my father, must I not?). For the first time, Göth's daughter spoke of her mother, who unconditionally glorified her father until faced with his role in the Holocaust, and had committed suicide after giving an interview in the 1980s, leaving Monika to bear her father's legacy alone.[1]
[edit] Depiction in Schindler's List
Göth's career at Płaszów Labor Camp became internationally known through his depiction by Ralph Fiennes in the movie Schindler's List; Fiennes earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and his portrayal ranked 15 on AFI's list of the top 50 film villains of all time. This grim portrayal (where, for shooting practice, he sniped Jews from the balcony of his house) showed only a subset of Göth's crimes.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ Kessler, Matthias (2002). Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder? (in German). Eichborn. ISBN 978-3821839141.
- ^ Bülow (2007). The Nazi Butcher: Amon Goeth. Retrieved on 2007-03-12.
