Amon Göth
Amon Göth | |
---|---|
Executed | |
Spouses | Olga Janauschek
(m. 1934, divorced)Anny Geiger
(m. 1938; div. 1944) |
Conviction(s) | Crimes against humanity |
Trial | Supreme National Tribunal |
Criminal penalty | Death |
SS career | |
Nickname(s) | The Butcher of Płaszów |
Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
Service/ | Schutzstaffel |
Years of service | 1930–1945 |
Rank | Hauptsturmführer |
Unit | SS-Totenkopfverbände |
Commands held | Płaszów labour camp |
Amon Leopold Göth (German:
Göth was tried after the war by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland at Kraków and was found guilty of personally ordering the imprisonment, torture, and extermination of individuals and groups of people. He was also convicted of homicide, the first such conviction at a war crimes trial, for "personally killing, maiming and torturing a substantial, albeit unidentified number of people."[1]
Göth was executed by hanging not far from the former site of the Płaszów camp. The 1993 film Schindler's List, in which Göth is portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, depicts his running of the Płaszów concentration camp.
Early life and career
Goeth was born on 11 December 1908 in
Göth began working for the party in the
Göth served with the SS Truppe Deimel and Sturm Libardi in Vienna until January 1933, when he was promoted to serve as adjutant and Zugführer (platoon leader) of the 52nd SS-Standarte, a regimental-sized unit. He was soon promoted to SS-Scharführer (squad leader).[6] He fled to Germany when his illegal activities, including obtaining explosives for the Nazi Party, made him a wanted man. The Austrian Nazi Party was declared illegal in Austria on 19 June 1933, so it set up operations in exile in Munich. From this base, Göth smuggled radios and weapons into Austria and acted as a courier for the SS. [7] He was arrested in October 1933 by the Austrian authorities but was released for lack of evidence in December 1933. He was again detained after the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed Nazi coup attempt in July 1934. He escaped custody and fled to the SS training facility at Dachau, next to Dachau concentration camp.[7] He temporarily quit the SS and Nazi Party activities until 1937 because of differences with his Oberführer (commander) Alfred Bigler, and lived in Munich while trying to help his parents to develop their publishing business. He married on the recommendation of his parents, but was divorced after only a few months.[8]
Göth returned to Vienna shortly after the Anschluss in 1938 and resumed his party activities. He married Anna Geiger, a woman he met at a motorcycle race, in an SS civil ceremony on 23 October 1938.[9] Prior to the wedding, the couple had to pass a set of strict physical tests administered by the SS to determine the suitability of the marriage.[10] The couple had three children: Peter, born in 1939, who died of diphtheria aged seven months;[11] Werner, born in 1940; and a daughter, Ingeborg, born in 1941.[12] The couple maintained a permanent home in Vienna throughout World War II.[13]
Initially assigned to
He was transferred to
Płaszów
Göth was assigned to the
In addition to his duties at Płaszów, Göth was the officer in charge of the liquidation of the ghetto at Tarnów, which had been home to 25,000 Jews (about 45 percent of the city's population) at the start of World War II.[29] About 10,000 were sent to Płaszów to be slave labourers.[14] By the time the ghetto was liquidated, 8,000 Jews remained. The final roundup began on 1 September 1943, when the remaining Jews were assembled in Magdeburg Square, which was surrounded by heavily armed guards. The trains were loaded and departed by midday the next day. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp; less than half survived the journey.[29] Most of the survivors were deemed unsuitable for slave labour and were murdered immediately on their arrival at Auschwitz. According to testimony of several witnesses as recorded in his 1946 indictment for war crimes, Göth personally shot between 30 and 90 women and children during the liquidation of the ghetto.[29]
On his birthday in 1943, Göth ordered Natalia Karp, who had just arrived in Płaszów, to play the piano. Karp performed Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor so well that Göth allowed her and her sister to live.[30]
Göth was also the officer in charge of the liquidation of Szebnie concentration camp, which interned 4,000 Jewish and 1,500 Polish slave labourers. Evidence presented at Göth's trial indicates he delegated this task to a subordinate, SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Grzimek, who was sent to assist camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Kellermann with mass killings.[31][32] Between 21 September 1943 and 3 February 1944, the camp was gradually liquidated. Almost all of the Polish inmates were transferred to Płaszów or the Bochnia Ghetto, where Göth was also in command. Around a thousand Jews were taken to the nearby forest and shot, and the remainder were sent to Auschwitz, where most were gassed immediately on arrival. After the liquidation, Göth had all the camp's supplies sorted and transported to Płaszów.[31][33]
On 28 July 1943, Göth was assigned to Section F, the SS and Police Fachgruppe (section of experts) that specialised in ghetto liquidation and transport. By April 1944, Göth had been promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain), the highest of the company grade ranks, having received a double promotion, skipping the rank of SS-
The camp housed about 2,000 inmates when it opened. At its peak of operations in 1944, a staff of 636 guards oversaw 25,000 permanent inmates, and an additional 150,000 people passed through the camp in its role as a transit camp.
As a survivor I can tell you that we are all traumatized people. Never would I, never, believe that any human being would be capable of such horror, of such atrocities. When we saw him from a distance, everybody was hiding, in latrines, wherever they could hide. I can't tell you how people feared him.
— Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig[48]
Poldek Pfefferberg, another Schindlerjude (Schindler Jew), said: "When you saw Göth, you saw death."[49]
Göth believed if one member of a work team escaped or committed some infraction, the entire team must be punished. On one occasion, he ordered the shooting of every second member of a work group because one of the party had escaped.[50] On another occasion, he personally shot every fifth member of a crew because one had not returned to the camp.[51] If inmates were caught smuggling food, they were shot.[52] The main murder site at Płaszów was Hujowa Górka ("Prick Hill"), a large hill that was used for mass killings and murders.[53] Pemper testified that 8,000 to 12,000 people were murdered at Płaszów.[54]
Dismissal and capture
On 13 September 1944, Göth was relieved of his position and charged by the SS with theft of Jewish property (which belonged to the state, according to Nazi regulations), failure to provide adequate food to the prisoners under his charge, violation of concentration camp regulations regarding the treatment and punishment of prisoners, and allowing unauthorised access to camp personnel records by prisoners and non-commissioned officers.
Trial and execution
After the war, Göth was extradited to Poland, where he was tried by the
He was sentenced to death and was hanged on 13 September 1946 at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków, not far from the site of the Płaszów camp.[61] His remains were cremated and the ashes thrown in the Vistula River.[62]
Family
In addition to his two marriages, Göth had a two-year relationship with
In 2002, Hertwig published her memoirs under the title Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder? ("I do have to love my father, don't I?"). Hertwig described her mother as unconditionally glorifying Göth until confronted with his role in
In a subsequent interview, Jonas-Rosenzweig recalled:
It's hard for me to be with her because she reminds me a lot of, you know ... she's tall, she has certain features. And I hated him so. But she is a victim. And I think it's important because she is willing to tell the story in Germany. She told me people don't want to know, they want to go on with their lives. And I think it's very important because there's a lot of children of perpetrators, and I think she's a brave person to go on talking about it, because it's difficult. And I feel for Monika. I am a mother, I have children. And she is affected by the fact that her father was a perpetrator. But my children are also affected by it. And that's why we both came here. The world has to know, to prevent something like this from happening again.[48]
Hertwig also appeared in a 2011 documentary called Hitler's Children, directed and produced by Chanoch Ze'evi , an Israeli documentary filmmaker. In the documentary, Hertwig and other close relatives of infamous Nazi leaders describe their feelings, relationships, and memories of their relatives.[70]
Jennifer Teege is the daughter of Monika Hertwig and a Nigerian man with whom Hertwig had a brief relationship. She was raised in foster care.[71] She discovered that Göth was her grandfather through Hertwig's 2002 memoirs. Teege addressed her coming to terms with her origins in the book, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me[71] (originally published as Amon. Mein Großvater hätte mich erschossen in 2013).[72]
In media and culture
Göth's actions at Płaszów Labour Camp became internationally known through his depiction by Ralph Fiennes in the film Schindler's List (1993). In an interview, Fiennes recalled:
People believe that they've got to do a job, they've got to take on an ideology, that they've got a life to lead; they've got to survive, a job to do, it's every day inch by inch, little compromises, little ways of telling yourself this is how you should lead your life and suddenly then these things can happen. I mean, I could make a judgment myself privately, this is a terrible, evil, horrific man. But the job was to portray the man, the human being. There's a sort of banality, that everydayness, that I think was important. And it was in the screenplay. In fact, one of the first scenes with Oskar Schindler, with Liam Neeson, was a scene where I'm saying, 'You don't understand how hard it is, I have to order so many—so many metres of barbed wire and so many fencing posts and I have to get so many people from A to B.' And, you know, he's sort of letting off steam about the difficulties of the job.[73]
Fiennes won a
Notes
- the list of 1,200 Jews whose lives were saved when they were sent to Oskar Schindler's camp in Brněnec, Czech Protectorate, in October 1944.[39]
Citations
- ^ a b c d Rzepliñski 2004, p. 2.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 217.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 218–220.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 217–220.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 29.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 220.
- ^ a b Crowe 2004, pp. 220–221.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 221–223.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 30.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 223.
- ^ Sachslehner 2008, p. 41.
- ^ Sachslehner 2008, p. 43.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 210, 223.
- ^ a b Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team 2007.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 224–226.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 228.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 226–227.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 227.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 270.
- ^ a b MacLean 1999, p. 22.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 227, 241.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 34.
- ^ Longerich 2010, p. 376.
- ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 33.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 241.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 87.
- ^ a b c Megargee 2009, p. 865.
- ^ a b c Crowe 2004, p. 232.
- ^ Heslop 2007.
- ^ a b Crowe 2004, pp. 234–236.
- ^ Bracik & Twaróg 2003.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 362.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 233.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 21.
- ^ SS service record.
- ^ a b c Crowe 2004, p. 256.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 378.
- ^ Mietek Pemper obituary.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 242.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 317.
- ^ Wieliński 2012.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 237, 242.
- ^ Teege 2015, pp. 37–38.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 257.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 259–264.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 37.
- ^ a b c d Fishman 2009.
- ^ Keneally 1993, p. 360.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 258.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 259.
- ^ Megargee 2009, p. 864.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 265.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 237.
- ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 354–355.
- ^ MacLean 1999, p. 17.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 359.
- ^ a b McKale 2012, p. 201.
- ^ a b Teege 2015, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Simmons 2019.
- ^ Museum of the Polish Army.
- ^ Crowe 2004, p. 211.
- ^ Sachslehner 2008, p. 167.
- ^ a b Crowe 2004, p. 210.
- ^ Teege 2015, pp. 61–62.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 77.
- ^ Gritten 1994.
- ^ Teege 2015, p. 93.
- ^ PBS, Inheritance.
- ^ IDFA 2011.
- ^ a b Shapira 2015.
- ^ Schaaf 2013.
- ^ Fiennes 2010.
- ^ Freud 2012.
- ^ American Film Institute 2003.
- ^ Corliss 1994.
References
- "27 August 1946: Polish tribunal sentenced SS-Hauptsturmführer Göth to death by hanging". Major events after May 9, 1945 (in Polish). Muzeum Wojska Polskiego (Museum of the Polish Army). Retrieved 27 July 2013.
- "Amon Göth". Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. 2007. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
- "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains". AFI.com. American Film Institute. 4 June 2003. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
- Bracik, Jacek; Twaróg, Józef (2003). "Obóz w Szebniach" [Camp in Szebnie]. Region Jasielski (in Polish). 39 (3). Archived from the original on 1 February 2010. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
Oberscharführer Josef Grzimek conducted mass extermination actions at the Dobrucowa Forest outside Szebnie in the fall and winter of 1943.
- Corliss, Richard (21 February 1994). "The Man Behind the Monster". Time. Archived from the original on 7 February 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
- Crowe, David M. (2004). Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-465-00253-5.
- Fiennes, Ralph (4 March 2010). "Voices on Antisemitism – A Podcast Series". ushmm.org. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
- Fishman, Aleisha (26 February 2009). "Helen Jonas, the Holocaust Survivor". Voices on Antisemitism — A Podcast Series. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- Freud, Emma (9 January 2012). "Ralph Fiennes: In Conversation". British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
- Gritten, David (27 February 1994). "The 'Schindler' Everyone Forgot About—Until Now : A decade ago, Jon Blair's documentary won a British Academy Award". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
- Heslop, Caroline (11 July 2007). "Obituary: Natalia Karp". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
- "Hitler's Children". International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. 2011. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- "Inheritance". POV. Public Broadcasting Service. 2011. Archived from the originalon 24 April 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
- ISBN 0-671-88031-4.
- ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
- MacLean, French L. (1999). The Camp Men: the SS Officers Who Ran the Nazi Concentration Camp System. Atglen, PA: Schiffer. ISBN 978-0-7643-0636-5.
- McKale, Donald M. (2012). Nazis after Hitler: How Perpetrators of the Holocaust Cheated Justice and Truth. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-1316-6.
- Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2009). "Krakau-Płaszów Main Camp". ISBN 978-0-253-00350-8.
- Roberts, Jack L. (1996). The Importance of Oskar Schindler. The Importance of ... Biography Series. San Diego: Lucent. ISBN 1-56006-079-4.
- Rzepliñski, Andrzej (25 March 2004). "Prosecution of Nazi Crimes in Poland in 1939–2004" (PDF). First International Expert Meeting on War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity. Lyon, France: International Criminal Police Organization – Interpol General Secretariat. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- Sachslehner, Johannes (2008). Kalder Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Wien: Leben und Taten des Amon Leopold Göth [Death is a Master From Vienna: The Life and Deeds of Amon Leopold Göth] (in German). Wien: Styria Verlag. ISBN 978-3-222-13233-9.
- Schaaf, Julia (14 September 2013). "Jennifer Teege: Ich bin mehr". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 20 September 2013.
- Shapira, Avner (6 February 2015). "When a black German woman discovered her grandfather was the Nazi villain of 'Schindler's List'". Haaretz. Retrieved 9 April 2015.
- Simmons, Shraga (9 July 2019). "The Holocaust Survivor Who Captured Amon Goth". aishcom. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
- Staff (15 June 2011). "Mietek Pemper". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
- SS service record of Amon Göth, College Park, Maryland: National Archives and Records Administration.
- Teege, Jennifer (2015) [2013]. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past. Translated by Carolin Sommer. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-4736-1622-6.
- Wieliński, Bartosz T. (10 July 2012). "Amon Göth myśliwy z KL Płaszów" [Amon Göth, the hunter of KL Płaszów]. Column alehistoria (in Polish). Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
External links
- The Trial of Amon Göth
- An Interview with Monika Göth Hertwig on YouTube
- C-SPAN Q&A interview with Jennifer Teege on My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past, 15 September 2015