Amon Goeth

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## Evil-doer

### Allies

Nazi Party
Schutzstaffel

### Resources

Intelligence
Great strength
Immense durability
Murdering skills
Fierce Intimidation
Marksmanship
Indomitable willpower
Control over the SS
Control over the Nazi military

### Hobby

Shooting Jews
Abusing Helen

### Goals

Keep Jewish workers in fear while they work and have the Płaszów Ghetto liquidated (succeeded).Avoid being captured (failed).

### Moral Event Horizon

Ordering thousands of Jews to be killed.
Personally murdering dozens of innocent people without showing any remorse or consideration for his actions as well as their deaths.
Beating Helen Hirsch to an inch of her life and trying to rape her.

### Kill Count

29 (directly)
Thousands (ordered)
6,000,000+ (indirectly)
1 (attempted)

### Crimes

Genocide
Mass murder (inc. child murder)
Abuse
Corruption
Terrorism
Destruction
Crimes against humanity
Hate crimes
Attempted rape
Stalking
Public endangerment

### Type of Villain

Sadistic Totalitarian

**Amon Leopold Goeth** is the main antagonist of Steven Spielberg's 1993 epic war drama film *Schindler's List* and the novel *Schindler's Ark* by Australian writer Thomas Keneally, which was the novel that the movie was based on.

He is a Junior Lieutenant, later Commander of the SS, responsible for ordering the liquidation of the Płaszów ghetto and murdering Jews in the Kraków ghetto. He is based on the real life Nazi of the same name.

He was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes.

## Biography

Amon Goeth appears in the Kraków Ghetto (after ordering the liquidation of the Płaszów Ghetto), attentively checking the Jews assigned in the ghetto. He hires Helen Hirsch as his maid for his household in the hills above the ghetto. He then kills a Jewish civil engineer who attempts to make a barracks but breaking it down due to issues regarding the space not capable to fit the barracks. However, he follows her orders in tearing down the barracks on construction anyways. Later on, he befriends ethnic businessman Oskar Schindler.

He shows an abusive and sadistic side, as stated by Itzhak Stern, he killed 25 Jews and shot out two of them by sniping them from the balcony since one was tying her boots while carrying a wheelbarrow and one who sat in the stairs, scaring and causing nearby Jews to dig faster, although there wasn't enough progress, but Goeth did not kill them. He killed a Jew that stole the chicken then interrogates a boy on who stole it, but the boy pointed the one that Goeth killed. He tried having Rabbi Lewartow executed (who was supposed to shove coal, but was making hinges instead, but made a small pile of it, lacking real progress) but angrily spares the Rabbi (as both of his guns failed to work).

Goeth later had a conversation with Schindler about what power is and is convinced to show mercy towards the Jews in order to gain that power. However, he later killed a Jewish boy (though Goeth dismissed him from housework, but later reconsidered and shot him in the head with a sniper rifle) then ordered thousands of Jewish corpses burned down after Schindler found ashes in not only his car, but everywhere. He told Schindler that he will make shipments in 30 or 40 days since there were too many dead Jews in the Kraków Ghetto and that there wasn't enough progress to satisfy the Nazi war efforts.

Later, on a few years ago, he beats up Helen after a failed attempt to flirt with her (though he expressed that he feels for Helen but reconsiders when Helen doesn't reciprocate) then however after agreeing to the release of 1100 Jews for Schindler, charges a heavy bribe from him. He finds that the last of Schindler's list has a blank space. Realizing that Schindler wants him to give up Helen, Goeth refuses but later reconsiders and allows Helen to go with Schindler and says goodbye.

While being a patient in Bad Tolz, Goeth was found by the Red Army and was then executed by hanging for crimes against humanity. His last words were "Heil Hitler".

Goeth stands on a wooden stool whilst a extremely thin noose is wrapped around his neck. Two guards kick the stool from under him and Goeth is slowly hanged to death, suffocating for his crimes.

## Personality

Goeth is a pure Nazi; he is psychopathic, arrogant, racist, greedy and vile. He does not cry or show happiness, showing his emotional complexity, which implies that Goeth is incapable of showing any other emotion besides anger. The real life Amon Goeth was diagnosed with a mental illness.

He enjoys killing Jews as far as he can, using many of them for target practice and even murdering ones the Nazis needed for workers. He possesses a highly tactical mind, when he ordered the Płaszów Ghetto liquidated, and anger, as he yelled angrily while beating up Helen Hirsch (for not returning his feelings for her). He hates sparing Jews, as he stops execution of the Rabbi. He harbors deep hate for the Jews, as he killed a lot of them unnecessarily. Goeth is reserved and secretive, since he, according to Schindler, does not allow anyone to know it is a Jew he enjoys. Being a Nazi, Goeth is strongly loyal to Adolf Hitler, proclaiming his allegiance to him moments before his execution.

Despite his polite façade and him fighting for Hitler's cause, Goeth does not have any actual redeeming qualities. He is nothing more than a sadistic monster who kills those he hates for fun, and also shows little true regard for his men.

## What Makes Him Pure Evil?

* He murders a Jewish forewoman who informs him of the poor structure before following her requests to improve the structure just to twist the knife.
* He orchestrates the liquidation and massacre of the Kraków Ghetto.
* He shoots Jewish prisoners from his balcony for sport.
* He tries to execute a rabbi prisoner named Lewartow just for making too few hinges.
* He guns down a prisoner for stealing a chicken, and even threatens to do the same to others before he finds out the truth from a young boy.
* He murders 25 Jewish prisoners in revenge for one of them escaping.
* He sends dozens of sick children to the gas chambers and then laughs while Schindler gives water to the moaning parents on a train, thinking that he's giving them false hope.
* He murders a young boy who failed to clean his bathtub.
* He lusts after and assaults his Jewish maid Helen Hirsch, blaming her for his own lust and then he brutally beat her up to the point of almost raping her.
* Although he gets along with his Nazi comrades, this is out of professionalism rather than any true friendship.
* He defiantly proclaims his allegiance to Adolf Hitler when he is about to be executed, showing absolutely no remorse nor regret whatsoever for his heinous crimes and even lacking the decency to beg for undeserved mercy.
* Overall, he actively participates in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust mainly for his own amusement.

## Trivia

* The real Amon Goeth could not shoot his sniper rifle from the balcony as his house and the Kraków-Płaszów camp were separated by a hill that would obscure his view. Instead, he either rode his horse to the hill or hiked it and from there, he would shoot prisoners. Whether it was mostly for fun or to intimidate prisoners into working harder (like in the movies) is mostly unknown.
* Płaszów camp had to be reconstructed in the nearby Liban quarry, as the site of the original camp was already a nature preserve and that modern high rise apartments were visible from the same site. This version of the camp was viewable from Goeth's villa in the film. Interestingly, Liban quarry was also used by the Germans during their occupation.
* As vile as he is in the movie, Amon Goeth's actions were actually downplayed by the director Steven Spielberg, so people wouldn't think he was too cartoonishly and inhumanely evil (they were also downplayed due to movie's time constraints). The real life Amon Goeth had far more specific mechanisms for the torture and killing of Jews that Spielberg preferred not to show. Even so, Goeth in the movie was still seen by some critics as cartoonishly evil despite being historically accurate.
	+ If the unseen crimes were used in the movie, this would have made Amon way worse.
* Ralph Fiennes bore such a striking resemblance to the real Amon Goeth when in costume that Płaszów camp survivor Mila Pfefferberg trembled in fear when she first met him on the film set, reminding her of the real Goeth.