Villains Beginning With 'S'

SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Leopold Göth

(November 12, 1908 - September 13, 1946)
Schindler's List film (1993)

Amon Leopold Göth was a Hauptsturmführer of the SS and was the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Plaszów, Poland.

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. 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.

In August 1942, Göth joined 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 Plaszów. 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 Plaszów Labor Camp continued, now under the direct authority of the SS Economics and Administration Office.

In Plaszów, Göth tortured and murdered prisoners on a daily basis. During his time at Plaszów, Göth allegedly shot over 9000 Jews himself; Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews, famously said, "When you saw Göth, you saw death." Göth spared the life of a Jewish prisoner Natalia Hubler, later famous as Natalia Karp, after hearing her play a Nocturne by Chopin on the piano the day after she arrived at the Plaszów camp.

On September 13, 1944, Göth was relieved of his position as Commandant of Plaszów 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, 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 World War II, and Germany's looming defeat, a tribunal was never assembled and the charges against him were 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 Göth". 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.

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 Plaszów camp. At his execution, Göth's hands were tied behind his back. The executioner twice miscalculated the length of rope necessary to hang Göth, and it was only on the third attempt that the execution was successful.

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