Amon Göth

Lore & Background

Göth was born in Vienna to a family involved in book publishing. As a young man, he joined a Nazi youth group and also belonged to an antisemitic nationalist paramilitary group before dropping that membership to join the Austrian Nazi Party. He subsequently joined the Austrian SS. His early illegal activities for the party, such as obtaining explosives and later smuggling radios and weapons into Austria while acting as an SS courier, made him a wanted man, forcing him to flee to Germany. He was arrested by Austrian authorities on two occasions but was released once for lack of evidence and later escaped custody after a failed Nazi coup attempt. After a period of inactivity due to disagreements with a commander, he returned to party work following the Anschluss. During the war, he served as an action leader and financial officer in East Upper Silesia, gaining a reputation as an administrator in the Nazi efforts to isolate, relocate, and kill the Jewish population. He was then transferred to Lublin to serve under Odilo Globočnik as part of Operation Reinhard, where he was responsible for rounding up and transporting victims to extermination camps. His first assignment as a concentration camp commandant was to oversee the construction of the Kraków-Płaszów camp, built on the grounds of two old Jewish cemeteries using slave labor. In his opening address to the newly populated camp, he declared to the prisoners, "I am your god." After the war, he was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland and convicted of personally ordering imprisonment, torture, and extermination, as well as homicide for personally killing, maiming, and torturing a substantial number of people. He was executed by hanging near the former site of the camp.

Reader's Guide

Göth’s behaviour as commandant was defined by extreme, personal brutality. He told prisoners at Płaszów that he was their god, and he exercised total authority, particularly in the camp’s early phase. He was convicted of personally killing, maiming, and torturing a substantial but unidentified number of people, a homicide conviction that was the first of its kind at a war crimes trial. His ecological impact was indirect but severe: he oversaw the construction of the 200-acre Płaszów camp on the grounds of two old Jewish cemeteries, using slave labour to complete it in one month. He also liquidated the Kraków ghetto, sending those fit for work to his camp and dispatching thousands deemed unfit to extermination camps, while hundreds more were murdered in the streets. His significance in Holocaust history stems from his role as a direct perpetrator of genocide, remembered for his personal violence and for administering a key node in the Nazi extermination system. His legacy is further cemented by his depiction in the film *Schindler’s List*, which brought his conduct to a global audience. Göth’s trial and execution near the former Płaszów site marked a rare instance of a camp commandant being held legally accountable for individual acts of murder.

Did You Know?

• Göth was the first person convicted of homicide at a war crimes trial for personally killing, maiming, and torturing a substantial number of people.
• He was executed by hanging near the former site of the Płaszów camp.
• During the liquidation of the Tarnów ghetto, he personally shot between 30 and 90 women and children.