Amon Goeth - The Butcher of Płaszów Documentary

Explore the chilling transformation of Amon Leopold Goethe in this gripping episode of "Amon Goethe: From Viennese Boy to Holocaust Perpetrator." Dive into the depths of history as we unravel the story of a man who became one of the most notorious figures of the Holocaust. From his isolated upbringing in affluent Vienna to his ascent through the Nazi ranks, Goethe's life is a stark representation of the era's brutality.

This episode offers a comprehensive examination of Goethe's early rebellion against his bourgeois roots and his subsequent embrace of the National Socialist Workers' Party at just 17. Follow his journey through the turbulent political landscape of post-World War I Austria and his involvement in pivotal events like the assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss.

We juxtapose Goethe's merciless actions with those of Oskar Schindler, whose efforts saved countless lives. As the war concluded, their fates diverged dramatically, offering a poignant reflection on justice and legacy.

Delve into the psychological complexities of Goethe's character, questioning whether his cruelty was fueled by ideology or inherent imbalance. Join us in this historical discourse as we introduce our series of short-form documentaries on The History Chronicles, providing deeper insights for those eager to understand the past.

Engage with this narrative of power, peril, and morality, and ponder the questions that continue to resonate through history. Subscribe to gain more intriguing content that sheds light on significant historical figures and events.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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The man known to history as AmonGert was born as Amon Leopold

(00:20):
Gert on the 11th of December 19 O 8IN Vienna, which at the time
was the capital of the vast Austro Hungarian Empire.
His father was Amon Fransgurt, the owner of the Viennese
publishing house for Lag and Stalt Amon Fransgurt.
The company specialized in military books, but also sold

(00:40):
religious publications and postcards.
It did quite well and as a result, the younger Amon was
born into an upper middle class family of the Vienna business
community. Amon's mother was Berta
Svengurt. He was the couple's only child
and as such. He could look forward to a
comfortable life and his family's prosperity.

(01:01):
Young Amon was afforded a good education for the time.
He was sent to an upper middle class Catholic school in Vienna
and would eventually attend the Weithoven Undertire College,
close to what today is the Czechborder.
This was an agricultural collegewhich Gert began attending.
When he was still in his mid teens.

(01:22):
But despite the affluence of theGood family, Aman's childhood
was troubled in its own way. Aman Frans Good often travelled
for his work, sometimes very widely, in an effort to open up
new markets for the publishing houses, books and other printed
material. Back in Vienna.
The day-to-day labour of actually managing the office and

(01:42):
its employees consequently felt a better Good.
And so, with both his father andmother largely indisposed, Aman
was largely raised by his aunt. This, combined with being an
only child, left him somewhat isolated, but also resentful of
his parents. Thus the beginnings of the
bitter, savage man that would later emerge were already making

(02:03):
themselves felt when Amon was just a teenager.
Years later, he would reflect onthis to his mistress in Poland,
Route Irena Calder, who noted inan interview in 1975 that Amon
felt as though his parents had neglected him.
We are fortunate to know extensive details about Gert's
earlier life, not because he kept a diary or composed A

(02:26):
memoir, such as is the case withsome other senior Nazis such as
Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer, but because there is an
extensive file on Gert's in the Bundes Akif Berlin Documentation
Center. This was compiled by the
Schutzstafel or S S, the Nazi Party paramilitary organization
which Gert would subsequently join, and includes statements by

(02:49):
Gert himself. About his youth and early adult
years. Supplementing this are the
extensive details about Gertz's wartime record and war crimes,
which was produced as part of his trial after the conflict.
And which gives further extensive details on his actions
in the 1930s and 1940s. This contains first hand

(03:09):
accounts by some of those who witnessed Gertz's actions during
the Second World War. And all of this is supplemented
by accounts by individuals who would eventually escape from the
concentration camp in Poland which Good ended up commanding.
Furthermore, the interview whichhis former mistress Ruth Irena
Calder gave in 1975 to the Israeli historian Tom Segev is a

(03:33):
very useful personal account of Good's views, although probably
biased in many respects. As a consequence, we are able to
develop a more detailed picture of Good's life and actions
during the war than we otherwisewould be able to for a good many
of the other. Of the concentration camps,
Gert's childhood years were spent in a country which was

(03:56):
mired in war. For years, the major European
powers had been aligning themselves into two armed camps
driven by a wide range of forces, including colonial
rivalry, regional conflicts in areas such as the Balkans and
rivalry, particularly between Britain and Germany.
The Empire of Austria Hungary, in which Gert was born and grew

(04:17):
up, was mainly concerned in thismale with the Balkans, where it
was vying with Czarist Russia for influence as the Ottoman
Empire collapsed. However, the government in
Vienna was also concerned about the increasing nationalist
movements amongst people such asthe Croats and Serbs.
In the summer of 1914, a Serb nationalist assassinated the

(04:38):
heir to the Austro Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, and the crisis which ensued in the weeks that
followed eventually spiraled into a European wide war between
Germany and Austria, Hungary on one side and Britain, France and
Russia on the other. Eventually others would involve
themselves until it became a global conflict.

(04:59):
The First World War would last until 1918, with Britain and
France finally emerging as the main victors.
At its conclusion, the German Empire collapsed and a New
Republic named after the town ofWeimar was created, while the
Austro Hungarian Empire was dismembered, with major regions
such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia acquiring their

(05:20):
independence from a new, smallerstate of Austria.
Gert began to rebel against his social and familial background
in his late teens. He would later claim that he did
so in order to turn his back on the bourgeois social values
which his parents had tried to instill in him.
They wished for Ammon to be educated in a way that would

(05:41):
prepare him for taking over the publishing business one day.
But although Ammon was clearly an intelligent student.
He showed little. Commitment to his work and
eventually dropped out of the agricultural college he attended
at Weidhoven after just a few months.
Rather, Gert was more interestedin athletics and physical
activity, and more concerning was an interest he had developed

(06:04):
in politics during his few months in college.
In 1925, when he was still just 17 years of age, he joined the
youth chapter of the Austrian branch of the National Socialist
Workers Party, a pan Germanic party which had been established
in Germany and the aftermath of the First World War.
The Nazi Party, as it was commonly known, was committed to

(06:26):
the idea of reversing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles,
which had ended the war, creating a strong Greater
Germany and fighting against theperceived influences of the
Jewish people and communists in Germany and surrounding nations.
Headed by a fellow Austrian called Adolf Hitler, they had
attempted a military insurgency in Munich in November 1923 and

(06:48):
were thereafter regarded as. As an extremist party in both
Germany and Austria, Gert had been drawn to the Nazi party for
a number of reasons. Many Austrians were interested
in Nazism owing to its insistence that the peace terms
offered to Germany and Austria in the aftermath of the First
World War. Were overly punitive and most

(07:09):
historians today agree that the treaty terms were indeed overly
harsh and created severe economic problems in these
countries. But Gert, with his interest in
sport and athletics, was also attracted by the party's
emphasis on the physicality of the German people and their
Marshall and sporting prowess. It's associations such as the

(07:31):
youth branch of the party. Also.
Fasted camaraderie, And for an individual who had been raised
as an only child and had distantparents, the Nazi Party perhaps
offered the promise of some companionship.
But if these were some of the more benign things which
attracted good, they were also less positive aspects to his
liking of the party. He was openly anti-Semitic and

(07:54):
possessed of racial hatred towards the Jewish people.
This was made clear in 1927 when, while having returned to
Vienna to work in his parents publishing house, he joined the
Styrian Home Protection Organization, a rabidly
anti-Semitic branch of the Austrian Home Guard, another
fascist group operating in the country at the time.

(08:16):
Goetz continued to work for sometime with his parents in Vienna,
but without undergoing the sort of academic training which would
have prepared him to succeed hisfather as head of the firm one
day. It was clear he viewed his
position there at the time as a temporary employment which he
would possibly move on from. It was in Vienna in 1930 that he
became caught up in a power struggle within Austrian

(08:39):
fascism. Following the Wall Street crash
in 1929 and the Great Depressionwhich followed it, the Nazis had
moved from being a fringe party with the support of little more
than 5% of the German people to quickly becoming a major force
in German politics. As they did, the Austrian branch
of the party sought to consolidate its hold over

(08:59):
Austrian fascism by forcing the Austrian Home Guard and other
groups to merge with them. This did not succeed, and the
Nazis now decreed that Austrian members could not also be
members of the Home Guard. Gert was aligned with both, but
tied his flag to the Nazi Party after some deliberation.
Accordingly, in May 1931, Gert, who until this time had remained

(09:23):
a member only of the youth wing of the Nazis, became a full
member #510,764 This would laterqualify him as an old fighter, a
party member who had joined before January 1932.
Once he had become a fully fledged member of the Party,
Gert's involvement in its various branches and

(09:45):
organizations became more extensive.
For instance, he had become a member of the essay the Sturm of
Tailong, or Brown Shirts, a paramilitary wing of the party
which wore brown shirts as theirmilitary uniform.
Members participated in militarydrills and parades as part of
Nazi militaristic activity, and it was possible through his

(10:06):
initial involvement with the essay that Gert developed an
interest in the more hardline branch of the Nazis, the
Shudstaffel or s s Meaning Protection Squad, which was,
like the essay, a paramilitary grouping within the Nazi Party.
It was originally established asa small bodyguard unit for
Hitler. However, unlike the Essay, the s

(10:27):
s placed an overt emphasis on the racial ideology of the
Nazis, particularly so after Heiner Himmler became the new
head of the organization in 1929.
Himmler's appointment also saw amassive increase in the size of
the s s, from just hundreds of men to thousands and eventually
10s of thousands. Gert had seemingly applied to

(10:49):
become a member of the S S in 1930.
But his? Application was only accepted in
1932 when he became the 43,600 and 73rd member of the
organization. It would be a fateful
association as the S S would in time become the body which
orchestrated the worst of the Nazis.
War crimes across Europe in 1933was a significant year for both

(11:13):
goods and the Nazi movement overall.
As the economic situation had deteriorated in Germany in 1931
and 1932, the Nazis had risen tobecome a major force in German
politics. Elections to the Reichstag in
1932 confirmed them to be the leading party in the country.
While still only able to commandjust over 1/3 of the vote, the

(11:35):
Communists, regarded as their ideological opponents, were the
second strongest performance forming party.
And so Germany was now engaged in a tussle between the right
wing Nazis and the left wing communists.
Eventually the Nazis won out as the center right leaning
business community in Germany decided to back Hitler.
Early in 1933 he became Chancellor and within weeks a

(11:58):
dictatorship was established through an enabling act which
allowed the Nazis to rule by decree.
For Goetz in Austria, the implications of this centered on
the response of the Austrian government.
It was concerned by the rise of the Nazis and the party's call
for a greater Germany. Consequently, in 1933 it began
cracking down on the Nazi movement in the country and

(12:20):
eventually prohibited the party entirely.
On the 19th of June 1933, Gert, who was already being sought for
engaging in terrorist activitiesaround Vienna on behalf of the
party, fled Austria and relocated to Germany later in
the year. Goods now followed the exodus of
senior members of the Austrian Nazi Party who was streaming N

(12:42):
over the Austrian border with Germany towards Bavaria and the
city of Munich, where Hitler andthe main leaders of the German
Nazi Party had risen to prominence a decade earlier.
And he quickly established himself here within a sort of
Austrian Nazi Party in exile, one which sought to continue to
disseminate the Nazi message throughout Austria from southern

(13:03):
Germany. Goods specific involvement was
trying trying to use the new medium of radio to broadcast
Nazi programs and messages over the airwaves which could be
picked up on in Austria, and he was also working during this
time as a Courier for the s s moving between Germany
clandestinely over the Austrian border.

(13:24):
It was this activity which led to him being arrested in October
1933 as the Austrian government of Chancellor Engelbert Dolphus
was trying to purge Austrian Society of its Nazi The Element
a campaign which saw some 50,000Austrian Nazis incarcerated by
April 1934. Gert was not among them, though,

(13:46):
as he was released in the final days of 1933 owing to a lack of
evidence and returned to Germany.
Our understanding of Gertz activities in the months and
years that followed is aided by the interview Gertz mistress
Ruth Erina Calder gave in 1975. She noted how Amon continued his
activities with the Austrian Nazi Party in exile following

(14:09):
his return to Germany. But his brief arrest and
imprisonment late in 1933 did not deter him from making
further forays over the border into Austria in 1934, as the
politics of his home country wasbecoming increasingly turbulent.
In an effort to suppress the Nazis, Chancellor Dolphus
increasingly cemented a brand ofAustro fascism distinct from

(14:32):
that of the Nazis. And after an attempted uprising
by the Nazis in February 1934, he established a new
constitution which gave himself near dictatorial powers.
However, he would not live long to exercise them.
On the 25th of July 1934, Dolphus was assassinated by a
squad of nearly a dozen AustrianNazis in the Chancellery

(14:54):
building in Vienna, and it seemsclear that Good had played a
part in the planning of the assassination.
Moreover, he was one of several 1000 Austrian Nazis who were
detained in the country in the weeks that followed.
But somehow he managed to escapefrom custody and yet again fled
over the border to safety in southern Germany.
It was a near escape, one which might have otherwise led to a

(15:17):
lengthy jail sentence or even his execution.
In the aftermath of the failed Nazi coups in Austria in the
spring and summer of 1934, a newgovernment emerged there under
Kurt Sushnik, which maintained Dolphus's anti Nazi stance with
greater success in the mid 1930s.
As a result, many of those Austrian Nazis who had been

(15:40):
attempting to seize power in Austria by operating from
Germany resigned themselves to the fact that this would not be
possible for some time. Accordingly, from late 1934,
Gert began to focus on advancingwithin the ranks of the s s in
Germany by finding a position atDachau concentration camp, which
had recently been established inBavaria to detain political

(16:03):
prisoners. However, he temporarily left the
organization just a few months later when he fell out with his
immediate commander, Alfred Biegler.
This was a time during during which the Austrian members of
the s s declined quite considerably following the
failure to establish control over their native land.
Consequently, in the mid 1930s, Gert turned for some time to

(16:25):
working for his family's publishing business to handle
its activities in Germany. He also married shortly after
settling fully in Germany, to Olga Yanoshek, a woman who was
recommended to Gert by his parents, who knew her family,
but the marriage was immediatelytroubled and they divorced
within just a few months. Amon's years in exile from

(16:46):
Austria in Germany in the mid 1930s coincided with a period
during which the Nazi state was becoming increasingly
belligerent on the European stage.
It had always been the intentionof Hitler and his followers to
overturn the terms of the Treatyof Versailles.
Accordingly, from their first seizure of power in 1933, a
gradual rearmament began throughout Germany.

(17:08):
Then, in March 1936, the Rhineland region was
remilitarized under the terms ofVersailles.
This region was to remain strictly empty of German armed
forces in order to prevent any future buildup of power along
the French border and the borderwith the Low Countries.
The Allied powers though were willing to appease Hitler in

(17:29):
this respect as the area had been demilitarized for nearly 20
years. Yet it was also the first sign
of a strategy of appeasement by Britain and France, which was to
prove catastrophic in the years that followed.
Additionally, a new German Air Force called the Luftwaffe had
been established under the command of Helman Goering.
This new found belligerence and rearmament spoke of a

(17:52):
willingness by Hitler and the Nazis in Germany to increase
racingly confront its neighbors and the main victors of the
First World War, Britain and France.
This would soon have consequences for Austria and for
Gut. Gert was relatively inactive
between his moving away from thes s between late 1934 and early

(18:13):
1937, as he largely continued working for his parents company
from within Germany. First signs that he had returned
to being an active Nazi and S S member came in the summer of
1937 when he wrote a letter to the headquarters of the Austrian
Refugee Society in which he requested the transfer of his
Nazi Party membership number from Austria to Munich.

(18:37):
The timing of this is significant.
Throughout 1937, political pressure was again being
employed by the Nazis to try to bring Austria under its control.
By the summer of that year, Hitler was determined to annex
Austria and was offering renewedsupport to a resurgent Austrian
Nazi movement. In response, Kurt Sushnik's

(18:57):
government in Vienna tried to crack down again on these
initiatives by mass arrests of Austrian Nazis, but this had a
limited effect. Accordingly, on the 9th of March
1938, he called a referendum on the issue of unification with
Germany, hoping that a victory in this vote would shore up
support for the government. But what the result might have

(19:18):
been in a fair election is difficult to determine.
Before he could ever be held, Hitler ordered the German 8th
Army to cross the border into Austria under the German
occupation. The referendum was held on the
10th of April and passed by a clearly manipulated vote of
99.7%. The Angelus, or Union, had

(19:40):
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year, this Union of Austria withGermany was a triumphant moment

(21:09):
for Gert. He could now return to his
native Austria, and Julie did sowithin days of the Angelus
occurring, and he was now under pressure to marry quickly.
The s s had a rule which the head of it, Heinleich Himmler,
had promulgated that all s s menbetween the ages of 25 and 30
were required to get married andstart a family.

(21:30):
This directive was issued with the intention that these men,
the supposed best of the Aryan race, would have numerous
children which would go on to flood Germany and its dominions
with ideal German citizens. Gert was already 28 years of age
and needed to settle down quickly to conform with this
rule. Thus it was that he quickly

(21:50):
established a relationship with Annie Geiger, a 23 year old
Austrian woman whom he had met at a motorcycle race.
They were wet on the 23rd of October 1938, but not before
passing a series of stringent physical tests and interviews
set by the S S, and they would have three children in quick
succession in the years that followed.

(22:12):
Peter was born in 1939, but diedin infancy.
Vienna arrived soon after in 1940, and Ingeborg appeared the
following year. Gert would have little contact
with them as Annie and the children spent most of the war
which was to follow living in Vienna while Gert was stationed
in Poland and elsewhere. Good's eagerness to abide by

(22:35):
Himmler's directive for men of the s s of his age to marry and
start a family was indicative ofhis new found commitment to the
organization in the aftermath ofthe German annexation of
Austria. He now moved away from working
with the family business again and committed himself fully to
the s s. Much of this activity focused on
the extension of the Nazi regime's brutal anti-Semitic

(22:58):
policies into the newly acquiredterritory.
The Nuremberg Laws in Germany had earlier robbed the country's
Jews of their citizenship and made them into second class
individuals in business and social terms.
Now these were extended into Austria and the persecution of
the country's Jewish community began.
The severity of it was particularly apparent during the

(23:21):
Crystal Nacht Night of the Broken Glass pogroms in November
1938, when Jewish homes and businesses all across Nazi
Germany and Austria were destroyed and thousands
thousands of Jews were either killed or seriously wounded.
The attacks were particularly severe in Vienna, where most of
the city synagogues were burnt as the capital's people and fire

(23:43):
departments looked on and watched.
No doubt Gert was involved in some capacity, and by early 1939
he was serving in the S S Standard to 89.
A group of. Highly organized shock troops in
Vienna. It appears on a largely full
time basis, although he maintained some minimal links
with the family publishing business.

(24:05):
As Good was establishing his family in Vienna, the new German
Third Reich was becoming ever more aggressive in its approach
and willingness to test the patience of Britain and France.
Following the union with Austria, Hitler almost
immediately began making noises about the Sudeten land.
A. Region in Czechoslovakia.
With a large. Population of ethnic German

(24:26):
people living in it. Hitler insisted that if the
Sudetenland was ceded to Germany, it would.
Be the last. Claim he would make on territory
in Europe taking the bait, the British and French agreed to
this at a conference in Munich in September 1938, but it was
nowhere near the end of Hitler'sterritorial ambitions.
But the spring of 1939 he pressed forward again,

(24:49):
effectively annexing the rest ofCzechoslovakia and bringing
Hungary into the German sphere of influence.
By now the situation was clear, and the British and French
insisted that any further aggressive action would result
in a declaration of war that duly followed when the German
army invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939.

(25:10):
Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Hitler's
Germany. The Second World War had.
Had begun, Goetz was soon involved in combat.
At the start of hostilities he was transferred to the S S
combat unit Stromban 111, and onthe 9th of March 1940 he was
promoted by Himmler to serve as a Fervaltons Fiora or

(25:33):
administrative leader of a sonder commando or special unit.
These units would soon be centrally involved in the Nazis
war crimes and after serving as the administrative leader in
Upper Silesia. Here for several months, Goet
was promoted again to become a technical.
Sergeant and was stationed by now in Katowice or Katowice in

(25:55):
Upper Silesia in Poland. This was an area of western
Poland on the Czech border whichwas of major industrial
significance to the Reich, beinga huge.
Producer of coal and iron. Consequently, in the early
stages of the war, a strategy was being developed here to
deport or otherwise remove much of the population and

(26:15):
effectively recognize it with German settlers.
Gertz was involved in this initiative during 1941, working
as a financial officer and administrator within the Office
of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German
Nationhood. His ardent commitment to this
work was recognized when he was given a certificate of service
by his commanding officer, praising his service and his

(26:37):
commitment to Nazi ideology. Despite the recognition of his
usefulness in Katowice, or perhaps because of it, Gert
would soon be employed in a somewhat different fashion.
With the outbreak of war the Nazi states attitude towards the
Jewish community had become morebrutal.
In the 1930's the Nazis had begun persecuting its Jewish

(26:59):
population through a series of anti-Semitic laws which strip
the Jewish people of their citizenship and through attacks
on Jewish businesses. But much worse was to follow up
on the outbreak of the war. There was now an unfolding
policy of forced exile. The Jews of Central Europe, and
in particular the huge Jewish population within Poland, would

(27:21):
be brutalized until they agreed to leave the Nazi Reich
altogether, while pogroms and killings of Jewish people
increased. And things grew more radical
still as the war effort expanded.
In the spring of 1940, the Germans conquered Denmark and
Norway, followed very soon afterby France and the Low Countries.

(27:41):
With its dominance of continental Europe largely
achieved, the Nazis began considering the possibility of
mass forced deportations or evenmassacres of the Jewish people,
10s of thousands of whom were now being rounded up and forced
into Jewish ghettos and a network of concentration camps
which were being constructed across Central and Eastern

(28:02):
Europe. Gert would have been entirely
familiar with the camp system from his time in western Poland,
but it took on an even more sinister hue in late 1941 and
early 1942 when the Nazi regime determined that it would begin
mass murdering Europe's Jews in the concentration camps,
generally by gassing hundreds orthousands of people everyday and

(28:25):
immediately burning their corpses.
The Final Solution, as it was termed, was adopted as Reich
policy by Hitler and the other leaders in the summer of 1941,
and news of its employment was relayed to a conference of
senior Nazi administrators at Vanzee outside Berlin in January
1942, and Goet was quickly involved in this sinister

(28:46):
activity. In the summer of that year he
was reassigned to Lublin in eastern Poland, where he worked
under Ordilo Klobochnik, himselfan Austrian Nazi.
Klobochnik was charged with a senior role in constructing and
expanding 3 concentration camps,Belzig, Sobibor and Treblinka,
and rounding up and sending hundreds of thousands of Polish

(29:09):
Jews to these camps, which wouldbecome some of the most horrific
centers of the Holocaust which was just commencing.
In the months that followed, Gert observed Glopochnik's
methods, which included a mix ofsevere brutality towards the
Polish Jews being sent to these camps and also a striking level
of corruption. Globochnik used the inmates of

(29:31):
the camps as mass slave labor, and he was siphoning off much of
the profits from the work they performed to benefit himself.
Good would follow these same practices himself before long.
On the 11th of February 1943, Gert was promoted again.
It was a major elevation. He was to become commandant or

(29:51):
governor, effectively, of a new concentration camp which was to
be constructed at Krakov Borsov,on the site of an already
existing smaller labor camp. His reputation preceded him.
Already before he arrived. The Jewish people of Krakov knew
Gert as the bloody Dog of Lublin.
His behavior at his new station would more than justify that

(30:14):
designation. Good's first task upon arrival
was to see to the camp's construction on a 200 acre site,
which, to add insult to injury, was being built over 2 Jewish
cemeteries. To facilitate this, on the 13th
of March 1943, the Jewish ghettoin Krakov was liquidated and the
remaining Jewish prisoners from within it were moved to the new

(30:36):
camp as slave laborers. Though a significant proportion
of the ghetto residents was simply killed on the spot or was
sent to 1 of of the death camps,the facility was quickly
constructed at Krakov Poasov using the newcomers and within
weeks it was a fully operationalconcentration camp.
Upon its completion, Gert delivered a speech to the camps

(30:57):
inhabitants in which he ominously stated, I am your God.
The concentration camp of KrakovPoisov was not one of the
foremost centers of the Holocaust, which eventually led
to the mass murder of approximately 6,000,000 Jews
across Europe between 1941 and 1945, as well as the murder of

(31:18):
hundreds of thousands of Roma people, Soviet prisoners of war,
and other groups which the Naziswish to eradicate.
That distinction lay with the major death camps such as
Auschwitz Birkenau in western Poland and Treblinka, where
hundreds of thousands of people were gassed to death over
1,000,000 alone. In the case of Auschwitz
Birkenau, Rather Krakov Poisov was strictly A concentration

(31:42):
camp in so far as it was a source of slave labor, and a
camp where people were held or concentrated for periods of time
until they were shipped out to Auschwitz or one of the other
death camps. There were no gas chambers or
crematoria here, as they were atthese more notorious death
camps. As such, Krakov Poisov was

(32:02):
primarily a way station before Polish Jews were sent off to
Auschwitz, while it also functioned to produce war
material and other goods for theGerman war effort or civilian
population back in Germany. Gert was a particularly sadistic
administrator in all of this when he organized the
deportation of train loads of the camp's Jewish children to

(32:24):
Auschwitz. He would refer.
To them as being sent to kindergarten.
This is not to suggest that no deaths occurred at Krakov
Poarsov. Many thousands died there.
A large proportion of these fatalities occurred owing to the
appalling conditions of the camp, where diseases such as
typhus ran riot. Others simply died of a

(32:45):
combination of malnutrition and being overworked.
The average daily ration of foodfor the Jewish inmates consisted
of just a few 100 calories, typically comprised of watery
soup and stale bread. When this inadequate diet was
combined with a punishing daily work schedule but between 10 and
14 hours of hard labor, the inmates could only last for so

(33:06):
long before their physical condition began to deteriorate
sharply. Some agreed to collaborate with
the camp authorities and became guards in order to acquire a
double ration of food. However, a greater proportion of
the deaths that Krakov Poasov were owing to pure brutality,
infringements of the camp's rules, or any effort at
insubordination or attempt to escape could result in an

(33:30):
immediate execution. These were carried out in a
staged fashion much of the time with the goal of terrorizing the
camps inmates by having them witness the systematic shooting
of those who had dared disobey the rules or would not work hard
enough. Central to this brutality, Aman
Gert would often order mass shootings as an example to the

(33:52):
entire camp. Others later testified that he
would regularly find reason to shoot somebody before he had
even had his breakfast. In the daytime, during which
Gert was often quite drunk, he would parade through the camp
with his two dogs, Rolf, a GreatDane, and Ralf and Alsatian, who
were trained to viciously attackindividuals.

(34:13):
Occasionally shots were fired out of the window of Gert's
village where he lived in the center of the camp at workers
which he had observed as workingtoo slowly.
If one member of a work team committed an offence, Gert saw
to it that everyone was punished, the most brutal
instance being when he killed every fifth member of a team
from which one individual had seemingly escaped.

(34:36):
These murders were often carriedout of Hooyuva Gurkha, a large
hill in the camp, where it is estimated that between 8012
thousand people were murdered inthe 18 months or so the Krakow
Pasov was under the command of Gert, or roughly 20 people per
day. Unsurprisingly, the camp inmates
were terrified of Gert and oftentried to hide when he walked

(34:58):
about the camp. One survivor later testified
that when you saw Gert, you saw death.
During Gerd's time at Lublin andthe first months at Krakov
Poisov, the war effort more broadly for Germany and its
allies was turning sour. In the summer of 1941.
Hitler had decided to abandon the campaign, which had been

(35:19):
initiated against Britain the previous year, of forcing it to
surrender through a naval blockade and a major bombing
campaign. Instead, the Nazis turned
eastwards once again and invadedthe Soviet Union.
At first the. War on the Eastern Front was
incredibly successful. By the late autumn, the
Wehrmacht had advanced near to Moscow and Leningrad and had

(35:40):
captured vast swathes of territory in Ukraine, Belarusk
and western Russia. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin
even. Considered negotiating a peace
in which he would cede much of this captured territory to
Germany. Yet he refrained from doing so,
and as the bitter Russian winterset in, the German advance was
stops and hundreds of thousands of men began to freeze by 1942.

(36:04):
The Russians were pushing back. And a major victory in the
southern city of Stalingrad in the autumn and winter of 1942
broke the deadlock. The Russians began pushing the
Germans westwards in 1943. Moreover, the United States had
entered the war in December 1941, and in the course of 1943
the Western Allies defeated the Italians and Germans in North

(36:26):
Africa. And then opened a southern front
in Europe. In Italy, defeat was now assured
for the Nazis. Amon goods activities are
Kharkov, poisov and the camp more generally are perhaps much
more well known today for havinginvolved Oscar Schindler.
Schindler was a German industrialist who hailed from
the Sudetenland region and had something of a dissolute early

(36:50):
adulthood, being arrested for public drunkenness on several
occasions in the early 1930s andflitting from job to job in the
mid 1930s. He became involved with the Nazi
movement in Czechoslovakia and became an informant to the party
as it tried to gain influence inthe Sudetenland region.
His role as a party intelligenceofficer continued even after the

(37:12):
Sudetenland was annexed. He was rewarded for his party
activity in 1939 when he was given an enamel wear factory in
Krakow, and it was in this capacity that he would become
involved in the events at the Krakow Poisov concentration
camp. Schindler's factory was steadily
staffed with Jewish slave laborers from the camp in the

(37:32):
early 1940s as the number of Polish Jews being detained and
imprisoned steadily increased. Thus, there is an irony in that
an individual who would eventually come to save many of
the Jews, Akrakov Poisov, was paradoxically a long standing
Nazi himself. Schindler became the mastermind
behind the rescuing of approximately 1200 of Krakov,

(37:56):
Poisov's Jewish inmates, and perhaps many more indirectly
made famous by the 1993 Steven Spielberg film.
Although. Jewish Labour was used in his
factory in Krakov. He did not treat.
His work as. Poorly, like so many other
factory owners throughout the Reich did.
In fact, he was especially kind to them as he began spending

(38:16):
large proportions of his own income and accumulated wealth
from the factory in order to obtain black market goods and
supplies to better feed and carefor the workers and their
families. Most significantly, he attempted
to save hundreds of individuals.Often this was accomplished by
bribing s s officers in the campto refrain from killing workers

(38:36):
or having them sent to Auschwitzor to one of the other death
camps later when a decision. Was taken to begin scaling back
the size of Krakov Poisov as theRussians advanced towards
Poland, Schindler convinced goodto allow him to move.
Of his factory and its workers to Berlin Yetz in
Czechoslovakia, Gertz agreed on the basis of economic necessity.

(38:57):
But for Schindler, what it meantwas that he saved the lives of
roughly 1200 Jewish inmates of the camp, whose names he
allegedly added to a list which may or may not have existed.
These. People would otherwise almost
certainly have been executed or sent to one of the death camps
as Krakov Pwasnov was wound down.
Schindler accomplished his valiant work even in the face of

(39:20):
an increasing level of terror atKrakov Pwassov.
By mid 1944, the camp's population had increased to its
largest size. Originally it had housed just
roughly 2000 inmates, but at itspeak some 25,000 people were
detained there, overseen by approximately 630 guards.
And this was also the most intense period of the Holocaust

(39:43):
throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and a large proportion
of the 150,000 Jewish people whotransited through Krakov Poisov
on their way to the death camps was sent through here in the
spring, summer and autumn of 1944.
Moreover, Good's behaviour continued to cast a pall of fear
around the entire camp. Morning parades were now a

(40:04):
common feature of life there. 1 morning Good shot a man for
being too tall. He then urinated on him as he
lay dying. Sometimes prisoners would escape
executions but be whipped severely from.
Not working hard enough. As one prisoner, Joseph Bao
later reflected, Gert was a hideous and terrible monster who

(40:25):
set the fear of death in people.He ran the camp through extremes
of cruelty that are beyond the comprehension of a compassionate
mind. The intensification of the
brutal activities of Krakov Poisov was occurring as the war
was slowly drifting into its final stages.
By mid 1944, the Russians were advancing into Poland.

(40:46):
Hitler's Italian allies had decided to denounce their own
leader, Benito Mussolini, and formed a new government in Rome
which sided with the allies. However, Mussolini was soon
rescued by a mission sent by Hitler to central Italy and a
pro German government was established in northern Italy,
initiating a civil war in Italy on the southern front.
Then in the summer of 1944, the Western Allies, led by the

(41:10):
United States and Britain but with significant support from
Canada and other nations, openeda long planned Western Front in
France following the D-Day landings in Normandy in the late
summer and autumn of 1944. These landings were followed by
the liberation of Paris and several other major cities in
the Low Countries. By the time the winter of 1944

(41:31):
set in, the Western Allies were preparing for the push into
Western Germany, while the Russians were beginning their
military buildup in Poland for astrike on Berlin in the spring
of 1945. While the Russians advanced ever
westwards, the camps in eastern Poland were beginning to be
wound down and dismantled in thesummer and autumn of 1944.

(41:54):
For instance, on the 6th of August 1944 alone, Gert shipped
7500 Jewish women to Auschwitz, and just four days later over
4500 Jewish men were sent to theMalthausen concentration camp.
This reduced the population of the camp to about half its size.
However, Gert had departed from Krakov Poisov before it was ever

(42:15):
fully closed. By the summer of 1944, his
conduct in running the camp was being investigated by the s s.
Despite his supposed ideologicaladherence to the Nazi cause,
Good had actually been profitingenormously from his role as
commandant of Krakov Poisov. There was big money to be made
in running one of the slave labor camps.

(42:36):
Factories produced huge amounts of goods which, if siphoned off
and sold on the black market, could result in a rich reward
addition. As inmates arrived to any of the
concentration camps, they were generally stripped of their
remaining possessions. Sometimes valuable items of
jewelry and gold and silver watches were found, and these

(42:57):
were often claimed by the seniorcamp administrators as their own
private loot. Such avenues of profit were
exploited at most camps. Amon Gert was no exception in
profiteering from his time as Commandant Ted Krakov Poisov.
Since the spring of 1943 he had been accumulating money and
goods which he sent westwards, often back to his wife and

(43:20):
children or the offices of his parents publishing firm in
Vienna. This activity became even more
frenzied at the camp as it became clear that it would be
dismantled in 1944. And one of the reasons why
Schindler was able to convince Gert to allow him to move his
factory and workers westwards into Czechoslovakia was that
this action would provide Gert with a smokescreen for also

(43:43):
shipping some of his acquired goods westwards.
Word of this corrupt activity onGert's part reached the
authorities within the s s. It was combined with reports of
Gert holding wild drinking parties at the camp with his
mistress Root Irena Calder, and excessive brutality towards the
inmates. The latter action was not

(44:04):
criticized on humanitarian grounds.
It was simple, I believe that good should not have been
killing workers who were still fit and healthy to be used as
slave labor, and these accusations combined were enough
to have him removed from his position as commandant of Krakow
Poasov. On the 13th of September 1944 he
was sent back to Berlin to be prosecuted, but as the war

(44:26):
effort was becoming ever more desperate, the charges were
simply dropped in the winter of 1944 and he was released.
Gertz had presided over the expansion of the camp at Krakov
Poisov, as well as its darkest days in 1943 and 1944, but now
it was nearing its end. Administration of the camp had

(44:47):
been placed in the hands of s s Oberstdumfilr Arnold Buscher
following Gert's departure. Under Buscher, the mass
deportations which had begun under Gertz in the summer of
1944 continued until there were just a few 1000 inmates and
guards operating there. By the early center of 1944, the
final flurry of activity centered on exhuming the remains

(45:10):
of the thousands of bodies of individuals who had been
executed in the camp during Gertz reign of terror.
These were dug up and their remains burnt on mass pyres.
Similar scenes of s s officers attempting to destroy the
evidence of the mass murders which had occurred at the
concentration camps were seen throughout Eastern and Central

(45:30):
Europe in the closing months of 1944.
Finally, in January 1945, the few remaining camp authorities
learned that the Soviets were closing on Krakow.
Accordingly, they dismantled some of the last parts of the
camps and fled. Unlike other camps where
buildings, fences, guard towers and even considerable numbers of

(45:50):
prisoners were found, when the Soviets arrived on the 20th of
January 1945 they found little sign of any concentration camp
at all, having been at Krakov Poisov.
As all of this was occurring, Gert was moving wildly around
Central Europe following the dropping of the charges against
him and his release. Gert's primary concern was to

(46:12):
ensure that the ill gotten wealth he had acquired through
his corrupt dealings at Krakow Poisov was preserved.
Accordingly. In the early spring of 1945 he
was travelling around Central Europe locating large shipments
of goods which had been sent from eastern Poland.
This included a visit to Oscar Schindler's new factory in
Czechos, Slovakia, to try to retrieve some of what had been

(46:35):
sent there during the relocationof the factory.
However, as he was attempting these actions, Gert was taken
ill and ended up in a hospital, initially for some chronic
stomach problems he was having, but then he was subsequently
moved to an s s medical facilitywhere he was deemed to be
mentally unfit. As a result, as it entered the
late spring of 1945, Gert was being detained in a mental

(47:00):
institution in Bavaria, where hehad spent so many years a decade
earlier in exile. It was here he would witness the
last stages of the war. The Second World War in Europe
had entered its death throes in the winter of 1944.
As the snow set in. In December, the Western Allies
were preparing to build up theirforces in Belgium, Luxembourg

(47:22):
and northeast France for a majoroffensive into western Germany.
In the late winter, a final pushby Hitler to counter attack into
the Bastonia region saw some brief reverses for the Allies,
but eventually the Battle of theBulge ended in Allied victory in
January 1945. Moreover, the concentration of
some of Germany's last armies inwestern Germany to attempt the

(47:46):
counter offensive drew resourcesaway from the Eastern Front, and
as the Russians moved into northwest Poland and northeast
Germany in the opening months of1945, they did so with
remarkable speed. It was now a race to Berlin for
the Allies. The Russians got there 1st and
it was they who laid siege to the city in the spring of 1945.

(48:09):
Finally surrounded and unwillingto surrender, Hitler killed
himself in the Reich Chancellerybunker on the 30th of April
1945. His successor as head of the
Nazi state, Joseph Goebbels, followed his example the
following day. Exactly one week later, the
chief of the Wehrmacht, Wilhelm Keitel, signed the official

(48:30):
surrender of Germany, bringing the war in.
Europe to a conclusion Goetz wasa marked man in the aftermath of
the war the Americans, British and Russians had determined in
the course of 1944 and early 1945 that there should not be
excessive retribution sought against the German people in the
aftermath of the war. Many Germans were simply

(48:52):
innocent bystanders of a regime which had seized power with
roughly the support of just one third of the country in 1933.
Moreover, even those who had fought in via Marked between
1939 and 1945 were more often than not young men who had been
conscripted into service or who had shown minimal adherence to
the Nazi ideological stance. Fewer still were guilty of

(49:16):
actual war crimes or of having committed the worst atrocities
associated with the regime. However, this clemency would
only extend so far. Those who were at the top of the
German government or who had been involved in committing war
crimes were to be prosecuted. To the full.
Extent, while the s s of which Gert was a senior member were

(49:36):
all to be charged with crimes asthe most ideological branch of
the Nazi Party and also the organization which had overseen
the concentration camps and the mass murder of millions of
Jewish people, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and other
political dissenters. As such, good would be
prosecuted if captured. It did not take long for him to

(49:58):
be apprehended, and there was noflights or attempt to evade
capture. The former commandant of Krakow,
Poisov, was still being held in a mental institution in Bavaria,
and he was arrested there by theUnited States military.
Gert had donned the uniform of an ordinary rank and file German
soldier in order to cover up hisidentity as a senior s s

(50:19):
officer. As a result, he was not
immediately detained as somebodywho was to be prosecuted for war
crimes and was sent to Dachau concentration camp nearby, which
had been repurposed by the Allies as a holding Center for
German soldiers while they were being investigated to see if
they were to be tried on any charges.
Here he was finally identified by 1.

(50:40):
Yosef Yevkovic. Yevkovic had met Gert several
years earlier, in early 1943, when the Khrakov Poysov camp was
first being expanded after Gert's arrival.
At that time, Gertz had once pointed his gun at the teenage
Yevkovic, his head. He survived only because a
Jewish policeman there assaultedthe teenager and then told Gert

(51:03):
to save his bullet because Yevkovich was dead.
Now, nearly three years later, he identified the man who had
once nearly killed him, and oncethe Allies knew who he was, Gert
was extradited to Poland for prosecution.
Gert was sent to Poland in 1946 with Rudolf Hearst, the
commandant of Auschwitz. During much of the period of the

(51:24):
Holocaust, while the major surviving leaders of the Nazi
regime itself, such as Helman Goering, Albert Speer and
Joachim von Ribbentrop were being tried at the main war
crimes trial in Nuremberg in Germany, individuals such as
Hearst and Gert, who had run theconcentration camps on Polish
soil and murdered hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens,

(51:47):
were to be tried in Poland. Accordingly, Gertz trial
commenced in Warsaw on the 27th of August 1946.
It lasted just 10 days. The Gertz that entered court was
different to the one who had been arrested in Germany a year
earlier. During the war he had gained a
lot of weight and drank heavily while he oversaw the camper

(52:07):
Krakov Poisov. The very fact that he had been
admitted to a mental institutionin the dying stages of the war
is evidence enough of his shattered state of mind in early
1945. But as he entered the courtroom
in Warsaw he was more composed and had determined to provide
his own defence and cross examine witnesses himself.
Nevertheless, there was no doubtfrom the very beginning that

(52:30):
Goett was going to be found guilty.
The indictment, after all, directly accused him of being
responsible for murdering at least 8000 people at Krakov,
Poisov and other locations such as the Krakov ghetto.
The prosecution called 70 witnesses over 10 days, many of
which provided damning evidence of Good's actions at Krakow,

(52:51):
Poisov and elsewhere. Unlike hers, who freely admitted
during his trial that he had done what he did at Auschwitz,
but who based his defence on theargument that he was simply
following orders, Good consistently tried to deny the
truth of the claims made againsthim.
One of his arguments was that individuals were only shot at
the camp if they were found to be in possession of explosives.

(53:14):
It was all a paltry display and even the few people that Gert
called as witnesses in his defense instead corroborated the
prosecution witnesses statementsabout Gert's brutality.
It was no surprise when on the 5th of September the court found
Gert guilty of all charges and sentenced him to be hanged.
The execution was carried out just eight days later.

(53:36):
He was hanged on the grounds of the Krakov Poisov Labour camp on
the 13th of September 1946, after which his body was
cremated and the ashes thrown into the Vistula River.
He was survived by his wife and two surviving children.
Annie Gert had earlier applied for divorce.
He also had an illegitimate child, Monica Heltwig, through

(53:58):
his affair with Root Calder. Root continued to defend Gert
and his actions for decades to come before committing suicide
in 1983. But what of Gertz Binary
opposite a Krakov Poisov Oskar Schindler was briefly A
fugitive. After the war.
Some of the Jewish people whose lives he had saved prepared

(54:19):
letters for him to carry with him, attesting to his actions,
but his fear was of falling intoRussian hands.
As such, he set off westwards with little more than the
clothes on his back, having spent all the profits from his
factory on bribes and black market goods earlier.
Eventually he and his his wife made it to the American lines

(54:41):
and arrangements were made for apardon.
They settled down in Bavaria in the autumn of 1945, but much of
the remainder of Schindler's life was turbulent.
He suffered several business reverses, emigrated to Argentina
with his wife in 1949, but then returned to Germany later
without her after going bankruptin 1958.
A further bankruptcy followed back in Germany in 1963, as well

(55:05):
as a heart attack and continued poor health thereafter.
However, Schindler was able to survive through these years
based largely on donations from several of the Jewish people
whose lives he had saved and with whom he had maintained
contacts over the years. When he died in October 1974,
his body was taken to Jerusalem,where he was buried on Mount

(55:28):
Zion. It would be hard to find another
figure who stood in such absolute contrast to Aman Gurt.
Amon Gert was amongst the most brutal of the senior and mid
ranking members of the Nazi regime and the's.
What is perhaps striking about this is that there was not an
abundance of evidence of how brutal his tenure as commandant

(55:51):
of Krakov Poisov would be duringhis earlier life.
The only child of a well to do couple who run a prosperous
Viennese publishing house, he certainly exhibited A rebellious
streak from a young age, but there were few signs of overt
brutality. Although his political actions
became more and more extreme as the years went by, we do not

(56:11):
find him engaging in acts of overt violence throughout the
late 1920s, while his terrorist activities in the 1930s were
acts of direct political violence rather than exhibitions
of pure sadism. Indeed, there were even
significant periods of time during which he worked within
the family business, and for nearly three years between 1934

(56:32):
and 1937, he effectively left the s s and was not an active
member of the organization thereafter.
When the war broke out, he performed several largely
administrative roles before being transferred E to work in
the growing network of officialscharged with incarcerating
Poland's Jews and either settingthem to work as slave labor or

(56:53):
deporting them to the death death camps.
It was during these years, in the early 1940s, that the
already ideologically radical Amon developed the brutal streak
which would characterize his reign at Krakov Poisov in Poland
during the early 1940s, he observed his immediate
superiors, figures such as OdiloGlobochnik, terrorized the

(57:14):
Jewish people over whose lives they exercise so much authority.
Consequently, goods time in Katowitz and Lublin acted as a
macabre training school for him to acquire the brutality which
he deployed at Krakov Poisov. Here he dehumanized the
thousands of Jewish inmates and murdered people savagely on a
whim, while others were beaten and tortured.

(57:37):
All were psychologically traumatized by Gert and his
impulsive violence. It's his reign at Krakov Poisov
also attests to the hypocrisy ofthe upper ranks of the S S
Before Krakov Poisov was fully dismantled, it's commandant was
arrested for having profited extensively himself from the
running of the camp, rather thanfiltering the camp's profits to

(57:58):
the Nazi regime back in Berlin. Moreover, his reign there is
lent A darker hue when it standsbeside the noble actions of
Oscar Schindler and his efforts to save as many of the Jews of
Krakov Poisov as he could. What do you?
Think of Amon Gurt. Was he psychologically
unbalanced all along and does this explain some of his

(58:21):
behaviour? Or was he more of an ideological
Nazi committed to the xenophobicpolicies of the Third Reich?
Please let us know in the comments section and in the
meantime, thank you very much for watching.
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(58:42):
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(59:02):
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