Goetz, Amon Leopold “The Butcher of Płaszów”.

Goetz, Amon Leopold, born 11-12-1908 in Vienna, Wien Austria, the son of the prosperous publisherto, Armon Franz Goeth, then age 28 and his wife Bertha, born Schwendt, who was then 31 years old, he was raised Catholic by his parents .Goeth was married twice, divorced in 1934  of Olga Janauschek and again in 1944, with . He had two children. He studied agriculture in Vienna until 1928, then from 1928 until 1939 he was employed by the company of ‘Verlag fur Militar und Fachliteratur’ in Vienna.

His grandfather and father owned a printing house where they printed and bound books on military and economic history. At secondary school, Amon mainly took exact subjects. He was not a thinker, although he saw himself as a true philosopher in later life. At a young age, Amon joined the Austrian National Socialists, as a pan-German movement. At the age of 17, he became a member of the Austrian Nazi youth movement   and as an adult he joined the Austrian Nazi party in 1930. In 1930, Göth fled to Germany because, according to the Austrian authorities, he had been involved in crimes involving explosives. In the early 1930s, Göth smuggled money, weapons and information from Germany to Austria for the Nazi party. A foundation for his later criminal existence was laid here.

In 1932, Göth joined the NSDAP (party number 510764). In Austria, he played a role in the failed Nazi coup in Vienna in 1934. He was arrested by the Austrian police, but managed to escape. He settled in Munich and tried to start a publishing house there. He married in Munich, but the wedding was soon followed by a divorce. Because of this divorce, he also broke with the Catholic faith. After the divorce, Göth returned to Vienna where he remarried in 1938. This marriage lasted and in 1939, Göth’s first child was born, who died after 7 months. Göth later had two more children in this marriage.

In 1940, Göth joined the Schutzstaffel (SS number 43673). His career as a professional murderer had begun. Until 30-05-1942, Göth served as an SS-Untersturmführer at the “Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle” in Katowice (Poland), and was then added to the staff of Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik,

  the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, on 12-06-1942. He was deployed here in the “Judenumsiedlung” area of ​​operation, a term that simply referred to the deportations under Aktion Reinhard.Under the code name Aktion Reinhard (also known as: Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhard(t), named after Reinhard Heydrich), approximately 1.5 to 2 million Polish Jews were murdered in 1942 and 1943, mainly in the gas chambers of the Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps. Aktion Reinhard was one of the largest non-military operations of World War II.

On 11-02-1943, SS and Police Leader SS Oberführer Julian Scherner appointed Göth as camp commander of the Plaszow camp. SS Oberführer Scherner on 28-04-1945 (aged 49) in Niepołomice, Poland was found dead shortly before the war ended in a wooded area near Heidesee between Märkisch Buchholz and Halbe.

The Plaszow camp was established in 1942 as a labour camp (Arbeitslager) and became a concentration camp in January 1944. The number of prisoners in Plaszow varied from 2,000 in March 1943 to 24,000 in May 1944. A large number of the prisoners came from the Krakow ghetto. Many Jews died in the Plaszow camp. They were buried in mass graves where the victims who died during the evacuation of the Krakow ghetto were also buried. As camp commander, Amon Leopold Göth was probably one of the most cruel and sadistic within the entire SS camp organisation. In Plaszow, prisoners were often hanged in public. People were often punished collectively for the crime of an individual and torture was the order of the day. Goeth’s infamous morning ritual was to shoot innocent victims with his rifle from the balcony of his villa, which overlooked the camp grounds. In Plaszow, as a prisoner, your life was never certain; death was always present. Or as one of the prisoners, Poldek Pfefferberg, here with Oscar Schindler described it: “When you saw Goeth, you saw death.”

A prisoner with the surname Pankiewicz described Goeth as follows: “Tall, handsome, heavily built with thin legs, a proportionate head, blue eyes and he was about 40 years old. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, held a whip in one hand and a small automatic pistol in the other, and two huge dogs were nearby.” These dogs, Ralf and Rolf, were trained to attack and tear prisoners to pieces on command. Many prisoners were seriously injured or killed by the dogs’ jaws.

Uncertainty about their lives was probably the most difficult thing for prisoners about their captivity in Plaszow. Goeth murdered random victims without any reason, as ex-prisoner Anna Duklauer Perl

describes: “I knew Goeth, one day he hanged a friend of mine just because he was once rich. He was the devil!” Unlike, for example, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss

(the camp commander of Auschwitz, who was hanged on 16-04-1947 (aged 45) in Auschwitz, Oświęcim, Poland) and Adolf Eichmann

(organizer of the deportations to the extermination camps), Goeth was not a bureaucrat who incited subordinates to murder, but a sadist who seemed to have no qualms about killing his prisoners single-handedly. He felt a kind of contempt for the officers who left the abuse and murder to their men and non-commissioned officers. Excessive alcohol consumption and chronic lack of sleep contributed to Goeth’s unpredictable and ruthless character.

After Goeth was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer on 20-04-1944 (he skipped the rank of SS-Obersturmführer) , a health roll call (Gesundheitsaktion) took place in Plaszow on 7 May. Prisoners were called to roll call naked and it was the task of Goeth, his staff and camp doctor Blancke to separate the healthy prisoners from the weak and sick prisoners. The action was carried out to the accompaniment of music by Johan Strauss, ballads and love songs. Banners with the message “For every prisoner a suitable job!” were hung on the ‘Appèlplatz’. The prisoners who were considered healthy during the health roll call were still able to work, but the sick and weak prisoners were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp where they were gassed. After this action, 1,400 prisoners would eventually be deported to Auschwitz on Goeth’s personal initiative. In Plaszow, this ‘clearing operation’ freed up more space for new prisoners. As the Russians approached Plaszow camp, many more prisoners would be deported in July and August 1944, including to Stutthof, Flossenbürg and Mauthausen  This became the famous death marches. A death march is a deportation, wholly or partly on foot, under life-threatening circumstances. The procession is accompanied by guards who chase the prisoners and kill those who linger and those who straggle.

The poor conditions often claim many victims, in addition to the violence by the guards..

Between 700,000 and 800,000 people were forced on death marches, the majority of whom were Jewish. During the marches, approximately 250,000 people died from exhaustion or frostbite, or were shot by the SS. Some death marches did not reach their destination because they came close to Allied troops along the way. Their guards then fled, leaving the prisoners to walk to freedom.

In addition to his function as camp commander, Göth was also involved in the evacuations of ghettos and labor camps in the vicinity of Krakow from the beginning of 1943. On March 13 and 14, 1943, the Krakow ghetto was completely evacuated under Goeth’s tactical leadership. As of  21-03-1941, this ghetto had housed approximately 68,000 Jews. The strategic leadership of the evacuation of the ghetto was in the hands of SS-Sturmbannführer Willi Haase   here together with General Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich  Willi Haase died 23-05-1952, age 46 in the Montelupich prison, in Krakow, Poland)

Under his supervision Goeth led this operation. Approximately 8,000 Jews were deported to the Plaszow camp. Approximately 2,000 Jews were murdered on the spot and the rest were deported to extermination camps. During this evacuation, Goeth personally killed several Jews. An evacuation had already taken place in the Tarnow ghetto in June 1942 and in September 1942. The last evacuation took place on 02-09-1943. Goeth was again in charge and was assisted by approximately 200 SS men. During this evacuation, Goeth is said to have personally shot between 30 and 90 women and children. The Jews who were fit for work were taken back to Plaszow, while the rest were deported to Auschwitz.

The evacuation of the Szebnie labour camp near Jaslo was also led by Goeth. The evacuation began on 21-09-1943 and lasted until February 1944. On the first day of the evacuation, 700 prisoners were murdered. They were transported to a forest in Tarnowiec where they were murdered on Goeth’s personal orders.

During this and other ghetto evacuations, Goeth profited extensively from the clothing, jewellery, furniture and other possessions left behind by the former ghetto inhabitants. He confiscated these goods and sold them on the black market or kept them for himself. The value of these goods stolen by Goeth amounted to millions of zlotys. In addition to the theft of these goods that actually belonged to the Reich, Goeth was active on the black market. He was also bribed by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler.

In Plaszow, there were approximately 900 Jews who were employed in Schindler’s enamel factory. In order to profit from this cheap Jewish labor, but ultimately out of compassion, Schindler wanted to protect his Jews from the terror in the Plaszow camp. Schindler satisfied Goeth with luxury goods from the black market and was thus able to protect his Jewish employees from Goeth’s murders. A relationship developed between Goeth and Schindler that Goeth possibly interpreted as friendship. It was striking that Goeth and Schindler were born in the same year and that they were raised with the same religion at home. In addition, they both had a weakness for alcohol and for women. Both Schindler and Goeth had a mistress in addition to their wife.

The corrupt life that Goeth led was reason for the SS to arrest him on 13-09-1944. A higher SS man named Hans Eckert investigated Goeth’s corrupt life. As evidence, he found approximately 80,000 Reichsmarks in Goeth’s villa. Goeth could not explain how he had acquired this money. In addition, a million cigarettes were found in the same villa. Goeth’s Viennese apartment looked more like a warehouse than a home due to the large amount of stored stolen goods. Goeth was charged with black market trading and corruption, but it never came to trial. There was no time for this because the end of the war was approaching. In January 1945, Goeth was released due to illness (diabetes) and transferred to a sanatorium in the Bavarian Bad Tölz. The prisoners in Plaszow were meanwhile transferred to other camps and the evidence of mass murder was destroyed. The bodies from the mass graves around Plaszow were dug up and burned. On 14-01-1945 the last 2,000 prisoners were deported to Auschwitz.

Death and burial ground of Goetz, Amon Leopold “The Butcher of Płaszów”.

Goeth was arrested in an SS sanatorium in Bavaria by George Patton‘s troops .

He was imprisoned in the Dachau camp. He was subsequently indicted by the Polish Supreme Court for the mass murder of Jews and the violent liquidation of several ghettos and camps. The trial was held from 27 to 31 August and from 2 to 5 September 1946.

Goeth accepted responsibility for what happened in his camp, but found himself not guilty because he claimed he acted entirely according to what was expected of him. He claimed that killing prisoners was part of his responsibilities and that all orders for his executions and deportations were signed by superiors and were therefore not his crimes. Goeth claimed that the number of murders he had committed was greatly exaggerated. According to his own statement, he only executed saboteurs and this was simply part of everyday wartime business. However, many former prisoners were called as witnesses and they were able to give an accurate description of his crimes. Goeth asked the president of the court for forgiveness for his actions, but he did not receive it. The court ruled that Goeth did more than was expected of him; most of the massacres in Plaszow were carried out on Goeth’s own initiative. He was therefore found guilty of all charges. On 05-09-1946, Goeth was sentenced to death. He was hanged on 13-09-1946, age 46, in Krakow, not far from the infamous camp where, under his command, approximately 8,000 Jews were murdered and many others were abused, humiliated and traumatized. Before his death, he gave a final salute to Adolf Hitler; Goeth showed by this that he had no remorse for his actions.

Amon Leopold “The Butcher of Płaszów” Goeth was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the river Weichsel the largest river in Poland.

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