Amon Göth was one of the most brutal and grotesque figures of the Holocaust. He served as commandant of the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp and was later featured in the film Schindler's List for his sadistic running of the camp. He was a man who took great pleasure in killing innocent people.
Göth joined the Nazi Party in September 1930 in Austria and was involved in youth groups as a young adult. He also joined the SS inside Austria and was granted full membership in 1932. He served in the SS in Vienna and was promoted to Scharführer.
He left Austria for Germany after being investigated for illegal activities, including stockpiling and gathering explosives for the Nazis. After the Nazi Party was outlawed in Austria, he remained in Munich. He smuggled radios and weapons into Austria as a courier for the SS and was later arrested for the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.
Göth escaped custody and went to the SS training facility near Dachau. He resumed his SS activities after a short hiatus and became a Wehrmacht officer. He also became a financial officer for the Reichskommissar for the consolidation of German nationhood, where he was involved in isolating, deporting, and organizing the mass killing of Jews.
In the summer of 1942, Göth was transferred to Lublin and became involved with SS and police forces in the area. He participated in rounding up Jews and deporting them to concentration and extermination camps as part of Operation Reinhard. He was then assigned to the SS Death's Heads unit, the SS Totenkopfverbände, which was in charge of the concentration camp system.
His first job inside the unit was to oversee the building and construction of the 200-acre Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp. He was told he would command the camp once it was built. It is likely he had an interview for the position with Heinrich Himmler, who favored commandants that were brutal and obsessed with efficiency.
The camp took one month to build using backbreaking slave labor. On March 12, 1943, the ghetto of Krakow was liquidated. Those fit enough to work were sent to the new camp at Plaszow, while many thousands considered unfit were sent to extermination camps and gassed within minutes of arriving. A number were shot dead on the streets as the SS cleared out the ghetto.
As new arrivals came to the camp, Göth made a speech in which he claimed to the prisoners that he was their god and that he had complete control and authority over the camp. He was then appointed to be in charge of the liquidation of the ghetto at Tarnow, which held 25,000 prisoners.
Of those, 10,000 were sent to the new camp to be slave laborers. Final roundups occurred in September 1943, when trains were loaded and Jews were taken to extermination camps, many to Auschwitz. It was said that less than half survived the arduous journey, and Göth was in control of these deportations. He later admitted that he shot between 30 and 90 women and children with his own pistol during the liquidation of the ghetto.
Göth was also placed in control of other liquidations, including that of the Shebnik concentration camp, which held around 6,000 slave laborers. Around half were sent to other places, including his camp, while around 1,000 Jews were sent to a nearby forest under his command and shot dead. The rest were sent to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival on his orders.
He gained a horrific reputation in Himmler's eyes for efficient liquidation, extermination, and killing. He was promoted to the rank of SS Hauptsturmführer for his work. Inside his concentration camp, however, he was incredibly sadistic.
Amon Göth was known for shooting prisoners randomly from the balcony of his villa as if they were game. He would take out his rifle and wait for a prisoner to come past, taking shots at them on a daily basis. If prisoners were walking too slowly or resting in the yard, he would fire at them. He saw killing prisoners as a sport.
He trained his two dogs, Rolf, a Great Dane, and Ralph, an Alsatian, to kill. He would set them on prisoners, and they would tear prisoners limb from limb. One account stated, "I saw Goeth set his dog on a Jewish prisoner. The dog tore the victim apart. When he did not move anymore, Goeth shot him."
A prisoner also commented on Göth's torturous nature, describing him as a hideous and terrible monster who reached a height of more than two meters. The prisoner said Göth set the fear of death in people and ran the camp with extremes of cruelty beyond the comprehension of a compassionate mind.
For even the slightest infraction of the rules, Göth would rain blow after blow upon the face of a helpless offender. He would observe with sadistic satisfaction as the victim's cheek swelled and turned blue, teeth fell out, and eyes filled with tears. Anyone being whipped by him was forced to count each stroke aloud, and if they made a mistake, they had to start counting again.
During interrogations in his office, he would set his dog on the accused, who was strung by the legs from a specially placed hook in the ceiling. In the event of an escape from the camp, he would order the entire group from which the escapee had come to form a row, give the order to count to ten, and personally kill every tenth prisoner.
At one morning parade in the presence of all the prisoners, he shot a Jew because, as he complained, the man was too tall. As the man lay dying, Göth urinated on him. On another occasion, he caught a boy who was sick with diarrhea and unable to restrain himself. Göth forced him to eat all of the excrement and then shot him.
His mate testified against him at trial, saying, "As a survivor, I can tell you 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, everyone was hiding in the latrines, wherever they could hide. I can't tell you how people feared him."
He was known for mindless killing, and whenever he was seen, it was associated with murder and death. He even shot a Jewish cook once because the soup he had made was deemed too hot. He was a firm believer in collective punishment, and if one person from a barrack or work team committed an infringement, the whole group would be punished.
One evening a prisoner managed to escape, so Göth ordered the shooting of every second worker inside the work group where the prisoner had fled. He also shot every fifth member of a crew when one prisoner had not returned to the camp. If a prisoner stole food out of desperation, Göth would shoot them.
Much of his brutal murdering occurred at the Hujarowa Górka, a big hill used for shootings, mass killings, and murders. It is estimated that Göth ordered the executions of 12,000 people there.
Göth was sacked as commandant of Plaszow after being accused of stealing Jewish property that was deemed to belong to the state and the Nazis. He was also accused of giving prisoners adequate food and of violating rules regarding the punishment of prisoners. He was seen as running a poor camp and was deemed mentally ill.
He was sent to a mental institution in Bavaria and was arrested by the US after the war. He was then handed over to the Polish authorities and placed on trial for his horrific crimes. He was convicted of murder and of personally killing, maiming, and torturing a substantial, albeit unidentified, number of people.
For his crimes, Göth was sentenced to death. Close to his camp at Plaszow in Krakow, he was hanged at Montelupich prison. Amon Göth was a brutal and barbaric concentration camp commandant and a cold-blooded murderer who saw the killing of Jews and prisoners as a sport. His involvement in the Holocaust was clear, and many of his crimes remain untold today.