Amon Goeth

As reported at the war crime trial by a survivor of the camp, Moshe Beijski - a Schindler Jew, in 1943 on Yom Kippur, an important holiday of the Jewish year, "Goeth and his SS-men took 50 Jews from the barracks and shot them. Often prisoners were publicly hung, with more than 15,000 inmates lined up on the ground." 

Goeth was known as an Austrian SS soldier and the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland. The camp's existence served for most of the War (World War II). In the beginning, he joined the Nazis youth group at 17 years old and took up all the influences and knowledge it gave to him. In the year 1930, when he was twenty-two years of age, he decided to join joined the then-outlawed Austrian Nazi Party. In the same year, he set forth on his path to joining the S.S.
Later on, Amon Goeth was forced to flee to Germany when he was pursued by Austrian authorities for crimes involving explosives. When word came out of this as he entered Germany, his superior officers admired his devotion, gave him glowing personal evaluations and transferred him to the S.S. Amon Goeth was viewed as a model officer, and his reward was a posting, in August 1942, with Aktion Reinhard, the S.S. operation to liquidate more than two million Polish Jews.His position at Plaszow was amongst his most powerful time in his career. According to many, he made life at that concentration camp dreadful. Prisoners would say they were lucky enough to survive up to 4 weeks. He was a brutal murderer who was invested frequently in Collective punishment. Torture and death were well known and daily events. Many prisoners in the camp, people and groups passing one another on different work shifts reported the daily number of people being killed.

In another case reported, "The case of Olmer, whose daughter lives in Jerusalem, and I know her. He was summoned by the Camp Commandant Amon Goeth. The Camp Commandant had two dogs, Ralf and Rolf, and he set the dogs on him. The dogs ate him up alive. Possibly a little breath still remained in him. He shot him and he was killed." This showed the cruelness he had in him. Even though it could have been certain circumstances that is not an excuse for these behaviors.

As shown in the movie, Shindlers Lists as well many know him for his daily actions including passing his mornings using his high-powered, scoped rifle to shoot at children playing in the camp. He was a vicious person and many feared him more than anything. As many of Schindlers Jews recall it, "When you saw Goeth, you saw death."