As we know from watching Schindler's list, Amon Goeth was the commander of the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow, Poland. He told his prisoners, "I am your god." We learned from the reading of Auschwitz that prisoners didn't believe that God was real because nothing good happened to them. Slowly, they began to believe that the only function was death. Through this we can see that because they had no hope for anything, they were willing to believe whatever they were told. Since Goeth had so much power and authority, people were forced to believe what he told them.
Furthermore, he was in charge of the liquidation of the ghetto at Tarnow. However to him, most of the survivors were unsuitable for slave labor, so they were murdered. During the liquidation, Goeth personally shot 30-90 women and children. This just proved that he had no sympathy, no heart for anyone, no matter their race, gender, sex, or age.
On September 13, 1944 he was charged by the SS with theft of Jewish property, failure to provide adequate food to the prisoners, violation of concentration camp regulations regarding the treatment and punishment of prisoners, and allowing unauthorized access to camp personnel records by prisoners and non-commissioned officers.
He was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland and found guilty. Of course, he was convicted of homicide, for personally killing, maiming and torturing a substantial, unidentified number of people. Finally, exactly two years later, he was hanged at the Montelupich prison in Krakow. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were thrown into the Vistula River.
As Stewart had told us in class, Goeth acted much worse than the movie portrayed. Even in the movie, I could barely watch how he treated his prisoners. Thinking that he did much worse, he deserved the punishment that he received. He had no heart and no respect for others, so no one should have any respect for him. By hanging him, it is showing the rest of the world that these crimes are inexcusable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_G%C3%B6th
I agree that we must hold perpetrators accountable to show that their crimes are inexcusable. The Armenian genocide demonstrated this. To this day, Turkey has still not been held accountable for the Armenian genocide, and they continue to deny that it ever happened. Seeing the Turks go unpunished, the Nazis were emboldened to commit similar atrocities and even had a “success story” to model their practices after. If the Turks had been severely punished, the Nazis wouldn’t have been so emboldened. That’s why the trials after WWII, such as the Nuremberg Trials, were so important.
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that the SS brought him up on charges before the end of the war for his treatment of prisoners and his theft is a testament to how bad Goeth must have been, even though the SS did eventually drop charges.
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